I just beat this game (the old translated SNES version) and really enjoyed it. I was filtered by this game as a kid and only just now came back to it now and completely crushed it. The mission that filtered me as a kid was when you fight against Hell's Wall. The elite squad that are straight up more powerful than you in an honest head-to-head fight, but the secret is to abuse their poor AI as they aren't all aggro'd at the start and they're easily funneled and stuck in the back of a line of damaged arm-less wanzers.

I found myself meticulously upgrading my wanzers after almost every mission, half for the fun of it and half because I wanted an edge in every mission. Early on there is new gear after every mission, then toward the mid-game and onwards they start only giving you new equipment after every 2-3 missions instead. I only had to grind the Colosseum early on for money, by the end I had no shortage of money.

I enjoyed the power progression. I notice that during the "early to early mid-game" that melee wanzers were king. Keith learned Double really early (double punching move where you punch with one hand and then the other), then I got Yang and Gregorio who similarly had very early melee "fight" skills (First and Stun respectively). Gun skills didn't come until the mid-game, but when they came, holy fuck, they're way stronger than Melee. As OP as Speed, Switch, and Duel are, you don't get them until far into the game AND it seems to take even longer for others to level them. Duel lets you target any part and, at lv3, there is no accuracy penalty (as far as I can tell, while there is a tremendous penalty at lv1). At the end of the game, only Lloyd and Natalie had Duel lv3 and it's an auto-kill on basically everything when you target the Body. (especially if you get Speed and Switch to trigger as well)

story was interesting. talented pilots having their brains harvested and being turned into wanzer combat computers.