Zodi Plays: Custom Robo (Redesign Your Robo, We Know What We're Doing)

[LaZodiac]

Hello, and welcome the next LP by yours truly. Today we're starting up Custom Robo for the Gamecube, the fourth game in the series and first to ever actually come over state-side. Taking place in a world with strange, psychic powered tiny robot toys with live weapons that you control with you brain, it's no surprise that the game was obscurely popular and then basically not touched at all beyond a DS remake of a GBA game. But it's an interesting premise and a rather strong set up for any number of stories, so I kinda hope the series gets revived some day, instead of it languishing in Smash Bros Minor Property Hell.

Let's talk about the LP a bit. This is an action RPG (though it's not very numbery as far as RPGs go) and as far as I can tell there is NO WAY to actually do manual hard saves, at least not yet. So the videos might be a tad longer than my usual 25 or 15. Like always they'll be uploaded Monday and Friday, and new to this LP is that I'll be posting all the Glossary terms (or at least the ones that are interesting) in each video to the thread alongside the video. Somehow this is the first game I've done where something like that feels necessary.

Of course as always no spoilers, but especially in this case since a big draw OF the game is that it has a surprisingly in depth story. So if you happen o be one of the twelve people who played this game (I joke, knowing that I bet almost all of you have played it given my luck) don't spoil it for the rest. Anyway, let's get this train moving.

Zodi Plays: Custom Robo [1] Psychic Robot Duels

Video Length: 45:42

Like I said, videos might be a touch long.

The game opens pretty interestingly I think. We get a dream of our father leaving us, giving us his fancy work watch as a going away present and making it Very Clear the watch is important in some capacity. Then we get woken up by our far too noisy landlady and set out on our adventure to fulfill our father's last will and testament; go, my son, and become a robot jockey. As far as final requests go that's not THAT weird... though it does implicitly require us to become a cop or a bounty hunter and neither job feels particularly comfortable to just kinda push onto your teenage son.

Unfortunately, our hero here is a bit of a doof and has spent the last maybe five or six years sitting in his apartment slowly bleeding his parent's trust fund away because we don't have a robo- kind of a necessity to become a Robo Commander. It also um... has made it so that we don't know literlaly anything about the world, even though literally our neighbor's children have robot fights every day. Our bud here is uh... a little dull around the edges if you catch my meaning. The game is way better for it though, and I'll be doing my best to pick all the dumbass options in dialogue.

However, thanks to the wonderful timing of crime, we at least get to go to the scene of a job with Harry (who genuinely is not as bad as I'm acting here, that's just a consequence of it being awhile since I played this). And of course since this is pretty anime a game, we end up involved in the scuffle using the secret prototype we came here to protect in the first place, and we get our first taste of the game's combat! It's pretty good honestly, though due to the fact that the pods and bomb are both on the Gamecube's shoulder buttons mean they sometimes don't feel as responsive as they SHOULD, and due to the momentum involved in your robo it feels a little clunky to move around since they need to build up speed first. All that said though, the gameplay feels pretty solid after all these years. Zipping around the battlefield, setting up your shots and trying to trap your opponents with a mixture of gunplay and bombs. It's pretty cool.

We beat up all the criminals, and get rewarded with getting to keep our fancy new robot friend. So, job acquired! As well as a name, one which I think you'll all find... pretty good. And that's where we'll call it for today. I hope you all enjoyed, take care!

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Gonna put a little spoiler gutter down here for all the Glossary terms we've gotten in each episode. Let's take a look at our dictionary.

Also here's just a link to each image in case say, imgur decides not to show pictures today: https://imgur.com/gallery/I1wy32s

Spoiler

Show

Custom Robo! The thing this game is about. 30 Centimeters is... a height. I'm bad at height someone please tell me through an image how big that is.



Dive! This is how you put your psychic energy into the robot. Note the description says doing it for a long time leads to uh... damages. I'm sure that won't show up.



Eye-Scan Registration, which is just neat. Nice world building that this is why you can't really just steal someone's cube. I do wonder what it means by "ritual" though, given all you have to do is push a button...



Like I said above I don't know how big distances are so could someone show me a diagram of how big the Hollosseum's are? In game they look super tiny but that feels wrong. Also; casually just mentioning some people are psychic enough to have their robo fights in precious memories. That feels so weird but cool!



I'm noting this one specifically because it is LIES. You do not get the parts your opponent has, you get random parts!



Do you think robo parts have DRM?



And our employer, the Steel Hearts. I like this idea of a noble bounty hunter, I think. Especially since, as shown, the cops are useless.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Zodi, a Canadian: "croissant with chocolate in it"

Anyway, this game looks super cool. The character portraits alone are worth the price of admission!

[DataNinja]

I've never played this game (despite wanting to), but I've always thought it looks really cool. So... that's pretty much my entire lack of experience with it.

Oh, obligatory tragic backstory.

This is giving me real Pokémon Coliseum/XD vibes with how the overworld looks.

I keep getting confused at who's who, because you were the Blue Cube in the cutscene, but now in battle you're Red Cube.

30 Cm is approximately one ruler-height. (The 12-inch ruler is technically slightly more than 30 Cm, but it's about right.) And 3.6 square meters goes to 1.9ish meters on a side. So... 1.9m/6'2" is a tall person per side.

[tyckspoon]

Custom Robo! The thing this game is about. 30 Centimeters is... a height. I'm bad at height someone please tell me through an image how big that is.

Would you be surprised if I told you it's roughly the height of most Gundam figurines? (The build-your-own hobby model ones.)

[LaZodiac]

Zodi, a Canadian: "croissant with chocolate in it"

Anyway, this game looks super cool. The character portraits alone are worth the price of admission!

Don't knock it till you try it

It really is! And also the world is genuinely cool and the writing is actually pretty great and mechanically the game is good and fun. The fact that Custom Robo still managed to just... not do well and also be a dead series is stunning to me.

I've never played this game (despite wanting to), but I've always thought it looks really cool. So... that's pretty much my entire lack of experience with it.

Oh, obligatory tragic backstory.

This is giving me real Pokémon Coliseum/XD vibes with how the overworld looks.

I keep getting confused at who's who, because you were the Blue Cube in the cutscene, but now in battle you're Red Cube.

30 Cm is approximately one ruler-height. (The 12-inch ruler is technically slightly more than 30 Cm, but it's about right.) And 3.6 square meters goes to 1.9ish meters on a side. So... 1.9m/6'2" is a tall person per side.

It is in fact quite cool! And yeah it has the exact same sort of modal feel that Colosseum has.

Yeah the blue cube was just for out of battle. In battle we're red, it's kind of weird.

These words contain too many numbers.

Would you be surprised if I told you it's roughly the height of most Gundam figurines? (The build-your-own hobby model ones.)

This gives me a good reference for how big these bad boys are, and also reminds me that I kinda want to look into doing that at some point...

[DataNinja]

These words contain too many numbers...

Sorry. Robos are school-ruler sized, arenas are about the height of a tall person across. There we go. Numbers removed.

[LaZodiac]

Sorry. Robos are school-ruler sized, arenas are about the height of a tall person across. There we go. Numbers removed.

You must understasnd DataNinja I am asking for pictures. I am fully, 100% incapable of judging height

[Ninja_Prawn]

Sorry. Robos are school-ruler sized

Unless you used 15cm rulers in school...

A medium pizza from Domino's is 29.2cm in diameter. 30cm is also the cutoff where you stop calling a bladed weapon a 'knife' or 'dagger' and start calling it a 'sword'.

1.9m is the distance you're meant to keep away from people so as not to catch airborne viruses.

[LaZodiac]

Unless you used 15cm rulers in school...

A medium pizza from Domino's is 29.2cm in diameter. 30cm is also the cutoff where you stop calling a bladed weapon a 'knife' or 'dagger' and start calling it a 'sword'.

1.9m is the distance you're meant to keep away from people so as not to catch airborne viruses.

That's ****ing gigantic I could bludgeon someone with a custom robo!

[Ninja_Prawn]

Yeah, I was honestly surprised that real life gundam figurines are that big. That's a damn big figurine!

Though obviously it explains why Custom Robo chose the scale it did.

This is an actual photo of my cat alongside a 30cm ruler that I just took:

Spoiler: Photo

Show

As another point of reference, custom robos would probably be somewhere between the FRA beetleweight and featherweight categories. Probably closer to beetleweight, given their form factors. Though obviosuly real-life fighting robots are classed by weight only, not by size.

[Aeson]

Two other points of reference that might help get an idea of size for a 30cm robot are your foot (~26cm, average adult male) and your forearm (~46cm elbow to fingertip or ~26cm elbow to wrist, average adult male).

[Lord Raziere]

On Episode 1:
This looks anime as HFIL

text-sounds remind me of Undertale speak-sounds.

oh god between the between the flahshback and the protagonist awaking up, this game already feels too real to me

ok the father's dead and the protagonist sad about it, good thats less real.

wow, Steel Hearts has fallen on hard times.

and yyeeeeeeah, this is pretty freaking anime, just how I like it.

Those aren't good outfits Zodi. burglars picked like, the wrongest things. I mean its like red and grey, how does that go together color-wise? it doesn't. and whats with that stupid faceplate, who thought this was cool? what are they trying to look like with it, BUGS? and the whole outfits a jumpsuit, and not even a sleek one it looks frumpy like they're janitors who grabbed a red rubber mask-like thing like some old DC superhero reject who put the new grey part one after he realize his mask doesn't actually cover his face. just....ugh. yeah fuller view? these burglars look like some D-list DC villain from Gotham that didn't have any good gimmicks so they just ended up here.

Hero, don't you know staring contests in this world create balls of anti-matter that when you lose the staring context, crashes down on the loser and wipes them out. Clearly you lack social skills as you have never looked people in the eye, a small one forms and dissipates every time you make eye contact but doesn't coalesce into a deadly one unless they intend to fight. its completely normal-oh its custom robos, nevermind

what is that face? the eyes, the red cheeks, the tears.... man if this game was more popular, people would meme this game so hard.

yeah, this game would definitely get memed super hard if it wasn't some obscure gamecube thing. dialogues weird enough, the robo movement seems janky, the expressions are so exaggerated, and the premise is so yu-gi-ohesque:
"I'll foil this robbery by beating you all in a Children's Videogame! involving psychic action figures!"

I mean its a cyperpunk world, Zodi. ambulance fees are just how capitalism works now due to all the hospitals, laws, police, courts, and everything else all being privatized. these burglars? all actually people who couldn't pay their monthly civil rights bill to Police Corp and decided to take their money back, and why indie bounty hunters like steel Hearts are becoming all the rage, they handcraft the crime-fighting experience and serve everyone rather than some corporate exec deciding to cut costs on regular cops to feed their bottom line while they send their elite cops to protect rich people.

yes, stop being a mercenary, become a cop.....when both of those lost while clueless beginner here, just picked up the cube and beat them all without being either. the lesson is? titles sap your strength. be an individual, don't let anyone label you.

Harry is that friend who would be obsessed with twitter and memes, you just know it. he's probably busy checking his reddit feed while your talking to these scientists.

but yeah this lets play seems like it'll be fun to watch.

[LaZodiac]

I'm glad you enjoyed!

I think your take down and read on the robbers is actually 100% straight on correct. I also like the idea that in a universe like say Pokemon, if you akwardly and shyly avoided eye contact you wouldn't ever get into a fight. People are just too nice in worlds like this.

Also, nothing is funnier than thinking of "Mercenary crew, but presented like an indie brewery". Thank you for that brain idea.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm glad you enjoyed!

I think your take down and read on the robbers is actually 100% straight on correct. I also like the idea that in a universe like say Pokemon, if you akwardly and shyly avoided eye contact you wouldn't ever get into a fight. People are just too nice in worlds like this.

Also, nothing is funnier than thinking of "Mercenary crew, but presented like an indie brewery". Thank you for that brain idea.

All I'm saying is that we're clearly following the adventures of socially isolated NEET, who was apparently so hermit-like that his father's dying wish was for him to get a job after he had spent all education to learn through online classes, so he joins a small indie crimefighting company trying to make it big in a world of triple A police stations that are clearly nickel-and-diming crime with microtransactions like lawboxes where you buy it to open what laws they will enforce for you this week. while the criminals are just people too poor to have rights so they are forced by the system to be criminals because no laws actually protect them anyways.

the bright side to all this, is that guns are clearly banned forever. everyone just decided as culture to get rid of them, tired of getting shot accidentally and a children's videogame filled the void. it was actually an attempt by the government to brainwash people into playing it so they forget real weapons ever existed so they don't rise up, but little do they know when the revolution comes the government will be too busy having decadent parties and thus be bad at a children's videogame because they are old people and cannot keep up with the times, thus easily overthrown and dying from the mental trauma of playing it. unfortunately, this will mean that the government that will emerge after, will be a children's videogame-based dictatorship with the strongest player being the ruler until another inevitably defeats them or they die from facing too many challengers at once. of course, its only a matter of time before someone rediscovers that knives can hurt and kill people, and thus the cycle of weaponry will unfortunately begin once again....

[LaZodiac]

Hey Raziere I said no spoilers

(in all seriousness I don't remember every detail of the game's plot, but all I'll say is that... your genuine bull****ting is actually far closer than you think)

[Geno9999]

Custom Robo, now there's a game I haven't heard in a while. I got this game I think sometime after getting Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and liked it enough to pick up and enjoy Custom Robo Arena.

I'd be hard pressed to call this an RPG despite the story structure, it's more of a 3D Fighting game

Harry is a hoot, the portraits in general really brings the characters to life.

Considering that Gyro was moving his head around during the eye-scan registration, I'm surprised it didn't register his cheeks instead.

Pods are great for area denial... but that's more against playing against actual human players. Against CPUs, I honestly just spammed my gun all the way through this game and into playing Custom Robo Arena. Spider and Satellite pods have been my favorites though since they're more fire and forget.

Since I shouldn't spoil any twists, I'll instead say WHAT'S THIS?! A GUNDAM Ray 01?!?

[Lord Raziere]

Hey Raziere I said no spoilers

(in all seriousness I don't remember every detail of the game's plot, but all I'll say is that... your genuine bull****ting is actually far closer than you think)

WHAT!

DARN IT.

could've at least kept it secret whether I was accurate or not. would've been funnier if we found out as we went along. sorry if I accidentally ruined everything by being too right.

[LaZodiac]

Custom Robo, now there's a game I haven't heard in a while. I got this game I think sometime after getting Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and liked it enough to pick up and enjoy Custom Robo Arena.

I'd be hard pressed to call this an RPG despite the story structure, it's more of a 3D Fighting game

Harry is a hoot, the portraits in general really brings the characters to life.

Considering that Gyro was moving his head around during the eye-scan registration, I'm surprised it didn't register his cheeks instead.

Pods are great for area denial... but that's more against playing against actual human players. Against CPUs, I honestly just spammed my gun all the way through this game and into playing Custom Robo Arena. Spider and Satellite pods have been my favorites though since they're more fire and forget.

Since I shouldn't spoil any twists, I'll instead say WHAT'S THIS?! A GUNDAM Ray 01?!?

Arena was fun, honestly. A little... weird, and so very different in style from Custom Robo on the gamecube, but fun.

WHAT!

DARN IT.

could've at least kept it secret whether I was accurate or not. would've been funnier if we found out as we went along. sorry if I accidentally ruined everything by being too right.

Ah, but here is the fun part. Which bit IS the accurate one?

And don'r worry. There are some plot twists no one will guess. But we'll get to those when we get to those

[enderlord99]

We are here to help you. Everything's connected.

[LaZodiac]

Time for some more Custom Robo!

Zodi Plays: Custom Robo [2] Brain Gym

Video Length: 30:14

In this (relatively shorter but still long) video, we return to Steel Hearts, get hired, go to bed, and then wake up for our next job; training! What's funny to me is that our training is literally just going to a local gym, and something about that just strikes me really well. Like imagining going to your local community center and Dog the Bounty Hunter is there, and he's just doing reps or whatever. It feels weird in a cool way that I like.

Anyway, training wise we fight Harry and a buncha AI computers, which give us a bit more detailed tutorial on techniques you can use to maximize your combat potential. It's all pretty interesting stuff, and much of it is self explanitory. We also start getting our parts data, winning random parts from Harry and the AI- though I'm not sure HOW random, since I recall getting Criminal last time I played this too. I'm pretty sure the parts we get are determined via a chart and who we actually fight is irrelavant. But hey, we have parts now, so I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent to talk about how these things actually work!

Spoiler: Mechanics wank

Show

So, parts! As the game so helpfully tells us a little more than needed, a Robo consists of a body, a gun, a bomb, a pod, and a pair of legs. The body is the most important part since it determines the basics of how you fight. In order we have Down, which is either how many shots you need to take before getting one of your three Down marks strucken or is some sort of Down defense that counters a weapon's Down stat, Defense which is just a basic rating of how much damage you take from attacks, Speed which determines how fast you can go, Sky which determines how mobile you are in the way, and Attack which is for your Charge/Melee attack.

Each Body is unique, even within the same class. Harry's robo and Ray 01 are the same type, but differ in stats, just like Buggy and Criminal. I'll be going over them as we get bodies for them. First off, the Shining Fighter! Harry's robo and Ray 01 are both Shining Fighters, and if I recall there are actually more Shining Fighteres than any other type. Shining Fighters tend to have just a simple rush forward for their charge (Ray 01 has you go invisible), and can dash two times in the air. They're your basic all arounder and you'll never go wrong using one.

Trick Flyers are, as the name suggests, a technical robo to use that excels in air combat. They can usually dash up to three times, and if I recall some of them even transform while in the air! Their melee strike is usually a silly spin move that leaves them popped up in the air a bit, pretty useful. They're more focused on dodging attacks than taking them, so be careful if you play one. I also personally think they are the coolest looking of the robos.

Next up part wise, we have guns! Their stats are as follows; Attack, which determines how much damage each shot does. Speed, which I believe is how fast the bullets go. Homing which is how well the bullets "stick", you can see this as we play that there is some degree of the robo "aiming" at the opponent, some shots are more capable of hitting than others. Rapid, which I'm pretty sure is how quickly you can fire the gun. I'm either right or Speed and Rapid are switched. Down is how many shots it takes to inflict one point of "down" to an enemy... to a degree. Given how some bots are more vulnerable to getting knocked down than others (as we see) it may not be that simple. Guns also have Range but because they ran out of space on the UI they put it in the description instead, which determines how far the bullets can actually travel. Finally, some guns fire differently in the air than on the ground, which is pretty cool.

Bombs are much like their right-hand counterparts, a secondary weapon to assist in making sure those shots hit their mark. Stat wise they are near identical to the Gun, with Attack, Speed, and Down all being shared. Size is how big the explosion of a bomb is, and Time is I believe how long it takes to reload the bomb for another use. As we can see with the Standard S we get, bombs are rather hard to hit people with! You can hold the button to move an aiming reticle around, but given the speed of this game that is almost unviable. I feel like bombs ae probably way more useful against human opponents since they are easier to fake out than a perfect AI machine.

Pods are a tricky weapon to use, since the pods are almost always deployed the way your control stick is currently pushed, making it pretty finicky to aim them properly in any real sense. In skilled hands they are pretty strong though. Stat wise, we have Attack which is how much damage they do obviously, Speed which is how fast the pod itself moves, Homing which is how good the pod is at homing in on an opponent, Size which is the size of its explosion, and Time which I believe is how long the pod persists on the field before exploding. There are a variety of types of pods and all of them have uses, and much like the other two weapons they sometimes change properties depending on where you fire them. Unlike Guns and Bombs, the pod description does not tell you this! Cool! Instead it tells you in what general direction a pod's explosion will send someone, which seems utterly useless information for the most part.

Finally, we got our little leggies. Legs do not provide ANY statistically support, which is weird. They do however influence your movement, so it's more correct to consider them accessories than main equipment. Right now we only hve the standard leg, which the game explicitly tells us to replace as soon as possible. We may not actually get any good legs TO replace it with though, but we'll see.

And that's it for today! I hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you all next time for an actual injection of plot, probably! Take care everybody.

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Glossary time! Only one new term today, but it is a fun one.

Spoiler: Glossary EP 2

Show

Training gym! Like I said above there is just something really funny about the bounty hunters hanging out at the local community center working out, even if in this case it is brain exercise. What's funnier is the idea that the Steel Hearts can't afford individual memberships and have to use a group pass. Something about that is just wonderful.

[Toric]

bad at a children's videogame because they are old people and cannot keep up with the times,

Ohoho that's gonna be hilarious much, much later.

Great to see this game getting some love. Just the start menu music gave me goosebumps! Zodi's right, this game has a lot of little extraneous details and handwaves that turn out to not be so. I'm looking forward to this with popcorn bowl at the ready!

[DataNinja]

You forgot to unlist the video.

I mean, I assume the reason it's that giant is so it's visible on the model... but it's a Mega Ring. That's all it is.

Let's see... Custom Robo was 2004 (March in Japan, May in NA), so these were the models released that year. The iPhone was still 3 years out, but cell phones were certainly an established tech, even if not smartphones.

Harry said he could make a Holosseum. Cive him some credit.

[LaZodiac]

You forgot to unlist the video.

I mean, I assume the reason it's that giant is so it's visible on the model... but it's a Mega Ring. That's all it is.

Let's see... Custom Robo was 2004 (March in Japan, May in NA), so these were the models released that year. The iPhone was still 3 years out, but cell phones were certainly an established tech, even if not smartphones.

Harry said he could make a Holosseum. Cive him some credit.

Oops! Fixed!

I did definitely correct myself in video on that point at least

[Geno9999]

Arena was fun, honestly. A little... weird, and so very different in style from Custom Robo on the gamecube, but fun.

Like I said, I enjoyed Arena too, I think the change in art style for Arena worked for it considering that it's a DS game with it's limited texture and screen resolution... though it does make many of the returning Robos look rough, especially the Ray 01.
In hindsight I do have a few qualms about Arena's story, but that's for another day.

Anyway, onto episode 2!

Oh? Never go inside the Lab? Ever? How odd, I could've sworn that [REDACTED BY CUSTOM-ROBO GOVERNMENT]

Oh? You've never heard of the ULTIMATE ROBO COMMANDER MARV!?! Clearly you haven't [REDACTED BY CUSTOM-ROBO GOVERNMENT]

Yeah the watch is on his left wrist, the watch's odd style is even commented on later on in the story.

Little Raiders are my favorite, but they really are the Glass Cannons of the game. Still fun with the Knuckle Gun.

I should've noted it last episode, but the parts you get aren't random, there is a set order/requirement to each part. With the limited and relatively linear set of fights, this is fine, though I do prefer Arena's more traditional RPG approach of just buying the parts at stores.

[LaZodiac]

Aah, okay. I suspected it was that, but I wasn't 100% sure.

Speaking of preferred robo combinations, everyone in the thread is free to give me suggestions for what load outs to try if you're familiar with the game, and what load outs to try if you aren't familiar. Might be fun to experiment. I'll have to keep Little Raider and Knuckle Gun in mind because that sure sounds like a small angry goblin child stabbing people in the shins, which I'm pretty into as an aesthetic, concept, and lifestyle choice.

[Qwertystop]

Trick Flyers are, as the name suggests, a technical robo to use that excels in air combat. They can usually dash up to three times, and if I recall some of them even transform while in the air! Their melee strike is usually a silly spin move that leaves them popped up in the air a bit, pretty useful. They're more focused on dodging attacks than taking them, so be careful if you play one. I also personally think they are the coolest looking of the robos.

The transforming ones are a different kind – I think it was Lightning Sky, but it's been a while. Instead of having air-dashes, they have a single long steerable glide that doesn't interfere with firing weapons. Trick Flyers use their airdashes for mobility – short jump and airdash is faster and turns sharper than running – while Lightning Sky is more "stay in the air for a long time for the air mode of your gun, without being a sitting duck as you fall once your dashes run out".

I think my favorite was the Javelin? Another Trick Flyer, I think you get it pretty soon; its tackle has no invulnerability but also no charge time and barely any cooldown, and its airdash is invisible. Might be misremembering the name and/or conflating the tackle from one frame with the air from another.

Aah, okay. I suspected it was that, but I wasn't 100% sure.

Speaking of preferred robo combinations, everyone in the thread is free to give me suggestions for what load outs to try if you're familiar with the game, and what load outs to try if you aren't familiar. Might be fun to experiment. I'll have to keep Little Raider and Knuckle Gun in mind because that sure sounds like a small angry goblin child stabbing people in the shins, which I'm pretty into as an aesthetic, concept, and lifestyle choice.

Knuckle Gun is indeed fun. For guns... my favorites are all spoilers. Knuckle would be too if someone else hadn't mentioned it; a lot of the fun of this game for me was seeing what crazy stuff they would make into a weapon (mostly the guns, the bombs and pods are less interesting). I want to see the reaction when some of the really mad ones turn up.

[Geno9999]

I'll have to keep Little Raider and Knuckle Gun in mind because that sure sounds like a small angry goblin child stabbing people in the shins, which I'm pretty into as an aesthetic, concept, and lifestyle choice.

That is 100% how you play it, just run around dodging gunfire and bombs until you're close enough to beat down the opponent. Even better when you manage to knock them into a corner!

I think my favorite was the Javelin? Another Trick Flyer, I think you get it pretty soon; its tackle has no invulnerability but also no charge time and barely any cooldown, and its airdash is invisible. Might be misremembering the name and/or conflating the tackle from one frame with the air from another.

Javelin is a Strike Vanisher, a different robo type. They're pretty similar to Shining Fighters, but are invulnerable while using an Air Dash.

There's another Robo type that has the invulnerable Air Dash called the [REDACTED BY CUSTOM-ROBO GOVERNMENT], though most of them are in Arena.

[Lord Raziere]

On Episode 2:
Gyro: Said amateur beat up like four criminals when Harry didn't even get one because he got distracted by something as trivial as me, so.....show more respect.

I feel as if these lab assistants are being told bull so that they don't spill the real reason why Ray-01 was made. they're like interns or something they're not important enough to know what we've been truly given. watch, Ray-01 turns out to be like the ultimate robo to end all robos or the prototype of the antagonists robo thats even better, or designed for a specific plot-important purpose, something that makes it super-special and allows us to the solve the problem and not other people.

"I want to pay him a visit, maybe fight their children."-Zodi 2020, wishing to beat up children.

the ring has some red line on it....maybe its not a watch Zodi. maybe its just a fashion statement of this dystopian cyberpunk future to put on a wristband with a needle in it, that pierces your skin, and draws blood into the wristband to look cool. its a bloodband, its all the rage with angsty teens in this world, because it has a function to put the blood back into you, once your done harming yourself with it. it helps you feel the pain to let you know your alive without losing your blood. the advertisements for it go: its not self harm, its safe harm! :D

so....in other words, Gyro you take on jobs the police should be doing and the police are useless but we're pretending as if the police are taking on bigger jobs somewhere else, got it. can't wait for the inevitable case to start investigating a societal conspiracy orchestrated by some soulless mega-corp for money.

Marcia? hypercompetent woman foil to Harry, noted.

alright, time to do some psychic pushups with your robot, Gyro. we go to 100 reps, start! its funny Zodi, because its a mundanity in a world seemingly of heroic people doing fantastic hero things. normally you'd think that they'd gloss over this kind of thing, but instead they point it out that it works like any other gym.

for once I'd just like to see a game that has the courage to start you with a strange character or thing that isn't a well-rounded mario-like.

something about Harry's mech seems.....harry-ish to me. I dunno, I can't find the words, I'd say its a little extra like harry but all robos are like that? so.....*shrug* fitting?

that girls red visor clearly distorts her vision, its not a watch, its a bloodband, for safe harm.

yeah, the robots if they start getting philosophical, could start their uprising and no one would be able to outsmart them. keeping the robots dumb is humanity's survival.

the design of the robot's robo reminds me of some show I've only seen one episode of, and only vaguely remember because it had a small gundam like robot who loved watermelons for some reason. don't know the name.

I think getting knocked down is just a psychic representation of the combatant losing focus, thus explaining all the bullets disappear: they need to keep their will strong to make sure they exist so if that will is disrupted, the bullets go away.

time for psychic robo crimes? its not as if crime is a bad thing a cyberpunk dystopia like this, gotta take back one's rights from the oppressors somehow.

this buggy robo just looks like some student art project that didn't work out. lime green, yellow red? and spread so unevenly? its garish. its shape reminds me of some old rounded-looking car. must be an older model or something, explains why its handed at someplace like this.

"red ones go faster"-both the Orkz and Charr Aznable agree.

"this game can be a little tricky sometimes": your acting without thinking and dodging into their pattern, see the pattern first then attack around it. its the same mistake dark souls newbs do.

there is no watch Zodi, that girl was mistaken, there is only the bloodband, and its not self harm, its safe harm.

"next time we cockblock harry" Again?

[DataNinja]

for once I'd just like to see a game that has the courage to start you with a strange character or thing that isn't a well-rounded mario-like.

The big problem with that is that games have to try and teach the fundamentals. So, generally you start with the thing that interacts with everything basically, and then branch off to specializations from there. If you started with a hyper-fast shield-less dodge-machine in a game where every other class had a parry-shield as a core feature... that's a problem, because you're not interacting with a fundamental part of the game and learning to use it properly.

So, it's not so much 'courage' as 'making sure that there's good progression for the players, especially if they're new to this stuff'.

[LaZodiac]

Okay Raziere, gonna try and answer these as I go.

Fights are fun! I like fights!

I'm not gonna lie that bloodband idea is uh... disgusting, but also really stylish as a cyberpunk aesthetic thing holy sit. Maybe without the CONSTANT blood drain though.

Harry's mech is very Harry in appearance. It's kinda cool.

The show you are thinking of is Medabots and is ****ing wicked and I love it. Criminal does kinda look like Cyandog but all grown up, nice catch.