So when I played Smash Bros. Melee I noticed some interesting characters in the figurines gallery. The description said it was from a game called Custom Robo. I soon learned it was a somewhat long running Japanese only Nintendo series of games where you build customized robots and fought them. I had to get this game.
Honestly, now that I have the game it’s not the greatest game in the world. My expectations were slightly higher than what I got. However, the game is not poop. If you’re like me and you really like robots you’ll like this game, especially if you liked games like virtual on and power stone.
The best part of this game is the multiplayer action. Surprisingly the 1 on 1 is better than any of the other modes. The 2 v 2 is also really fun. Don’t even bother playing the 3 player battle royale, there is no point. No matter what you pick as your robot you will lose if the other two players attack you simultaneously. The 4 way isn’t quite so bad, but its so insane that all advanced strategies and tactics break down. When you first open the box the multiplayer isn’t so fun, because you don’t have anything to customize your robos with. This leads us into the bad part of the game.
Most of the fun in this game lies in the fact that there are tons of different items with which to customize your robots. And its a blast to set up a flying robot with a dragon gun, bee pods and a wave bomb. But in order to get those things you have to play the story mode. The story mode sucks.
Well, the combat that occurs in story mode is alright. The problem is that the story is 100% linear. You don’t actually do anything except walk around and talk to people. You can go different places to make different things happen or search for items or anything. All you do is press A to talk to people and inspect things. The game always points you to where you need to go, and its the only place you can go to do anything. Sometimes the game just takes control and walks you there. They could have just put all the fights in a row, which they did in Arcade mode. But you can’t unlock arcade mode without beating story mode. The story itself is so poor, I’d rather go see a Pokemon movie. Seriously. And when the plot gets to its most serious points (which are still stupid) characters keep chiming in with annoying crap you don’t want to hear. At least in a Final Fantasy I get to look for treasure chests and have to figure out where to go.
So if you can deal with a terrible story mode and you unlock all the good stuff that the game rewards you with for beating it, the game gets awesome. Arcade mode, first person mode, tons of items and Grand Challenge mode. These things are fun and great.
So, this game out of the box is pretty lame. But if you can spend the time to beat story mode its worth it. But then you’ll only beat story mode if you really like robots and that sort of thing. The fun is in the customizing. This isn’t a must buy game, but nothing else is coming out soon.
