Still enjoying Metal Max 3. Every time I think I'm stuck behind a boss or quest I realize I just haven't explored enough. I found a mountain pass leading to the next region to the north and from there I found a bridge over the main river to the west. Still have more to explore and I'm not even halfway through the game.
I like how the towns are set up, they have a lot of detail and hidden goodies to find, and a good variety of shops and services. Luckily there is a fast travel item you can equip on a tank. It's a good collection of post-apoc tropes and they clearly tried to give every town some unique flavor or history.
-Wara - Just an armed farming complex, makes sense given the setting, farms would be quite valuable. The locals are rivals of the Shelter faction and give you a quest to deliver mutant killer watermelons, this gives you a quest at the Shelter to kill the watermelons, so you can repeat the cycle endlessly. Doesn't seem to lead to anything else though.
-Shelter - A pre-war bunker, the owner lives in an artificial habitat at the bottom, the surface is a shanty slum. You take an early story mission here that gets botched, returning causes you to be thrown in prison, leading to an escape through a side-dungeon of access tunnels through the bunker. Later you can become a guard and do various small missions, doesn't seem to lead anywhere but I maxed out my faction rep with them.
-Big Cap - Nothing special about this place but it's an old satellite dish complex, the residents use the dish to collect rainwater which I thought was a neat touch.
-Rusty Maiden - A beached tanker, home to the Happy Cult. There's a way to deal with the cult but I have to do more quests, right now stuck on something the leader wants from the port town. I bought the series classic Red Wolf tank here for 30k after saving up multiple bounties.
-Hohohole - An old strip mine, tricky to navigate with tanks. Its a small maze of cranes and gondolas, some hidden tunnels and secrets to uncover. At the bottom was a new tank to dig out, actually a Tunguska AA gun, haven't found much use for it so far so I'm using it for extra cargo.
-Porto Mori - A seaport with people living in the old warehouses and cargo containers. The biggest town I've been to so far and home to the game's sewer level, running all over the city. Amusingly every tank-equipment vendor is pulled into the sewer by a tentacle monster on arrival, so if I want access to new gear I have to beat it. I tried once and it kicked my ass pretty bad so I have to wait for now.
-Evilla - Actually a dungeon, the north part of the map is covered in a forest, I found a bounty boss and beat it, this research building was on the other side. The ground floor encounter rate was insane, every couple of steps, but once I had fought enough battles the game told me all the enemies had been defeated and that was it. The complex is full of hostile robots but as I clear them out the floors become safe and a faction of mechanics moves in. They want me to clear out the basement levels but I ran into a boss that was too hard on foot, I think I need to navigate my tanks around to it.
- Gameplay drags it down too much. If you're interested, watch a let's play or hope for an animu adaptation.
