Custom Robo is a severely underrated and under appreciated series. Custom Robo Arena on DS was the only one in the series that came out here in Europe so it's taken me far too long to play this one.

As an action RPG, it cuts out all the fluff of other traditional RPGs like experience points and random encounters instead putting the majority of it's focus on it's fantastic battle system with customisable robots that duke it out in real time in a wide variety of battle arenas.

There's nothing else I've experienced quite like it and I adore it. Battles rarely last a few minutes and everything is in your control for how well you do. Using the various arena's layouts for cover and attacking from range with bombs or air dashing into a pressurised attack are all viable strategies and as you unlock parts throughout the story via winning battles, you gain even more options to experiment with.

The story itself isn't much to write home about until it takes a weird but interesting turn towards the end. It's short and sweet but does a good job at getting at getting you used to how the battles function and the characters and music help push it along nicely. The post game is all tournament stuff, designed to get you used to different rulesets like tag battles or 2 on 2 battles and unlocking the rest of the parts. It's a little repetitive but also includes additional context for the aftermath of the main story so it's a welcome addition for those that need a bit more time with the game.

Where this shines compared to the DS game for me is in it's multiplayer. Local multiplayer allows up to four people to duke it out including 2 on 2 battles as well as 3 and 4 player battle royales which are chaotic fun.

For me Custom Robo is a quintessential GameCube era game. It offers a solid story mode for single player and a great multiplayer mode as the cherry on top and neither side feels like an afterthought. This would've easily been up there with F-Zero GX, Mario Kart Double Dash and StarFox Assault as a multiplayer classic for me and my brothers if it released in Europe back in 2004. While we may have missed out, it doesn't stop this being added to my favourite GameCube games of all time and further cementing the GameCube library as one of my favourites. Now if Nintendo would like to make a new one of these I would very much appreciate it

This game is great. Very very fun. Gameplay style isn't for everyone, but I enjoy it a lot and always have since I was young. The music is incredible, a great vibe for a futuristic game and almost all the songs nail that vibe perfectly, both for the story and the battles. The story isn't the greatest but is still super cool and the characters are so fun that they make you more engaged with the world. Art style of the character portraits especially is great. Unfortunate that the series is dead, but maybe something good will pop up to fill its niche someday.

I love the premise of this game. An arena shooter where you can customize the pieces of your mech, tinkering until you have the perfect machine for your playstyle. It seems like it would be a lot of menial work, but it surprisingly blends well together to create this strategic yet swift gameplay loop of optimization and battle.

That is before mentioning the controls too. Each weapon has a dedicated button to it, all of which are intuitive. It makes for some frantic yet strategic gameplay of when to dodge, and which weapon will be best suited. It's fun and very addictive.

It is a shame that the story and pacing of the plot are so slow and generic, that getting through it was tough at times. Of course, some of the characters were pretty memorable and to be honest, the ending to this game was weird in a funny way, but the slow pacing of the overworld and exploration sections bogged down the experience.

The graphics are pretty grainy, but in combat, each robot is distinct enough that you won't get lost. The music was pretty good as well, nothing memorable but not bad either. Overall, the gameplay and the realization of the concept truly hold this game up. I hope that this series can come back in the future as a more polished story could do wonders for this franchise.

I feel like most Nintendo fans have that one obscure title that they absolutely adore despite how niche of a reach it has. This is that Nintendo game for me. It has a banger of a fighting system that promotes creates loadout-making with a lot of versatility to it in spite of how simple it is, overall. To a point where it almost feels like a mix between a fighting game an a mech game.

Each weapon has its niche purpose. You can stick to a main loadout, but hardly any combination of parts is everything-proof, I simply wish you got new parts at a faster pace or at least that the main story was a little longer, because it's only towards the end and the post-game that you really get an opportunity to think out your matches and figure out a counter-build for your opponent. Though maybe that is for the best, since the postgame content is very much designed for the folks that want to stick around to keep playing. The game isn't the hardest, but it still has plenty of bite, especially for the postgame battles.

Needle Gun ended up being a mainstay for me for its relatively reliable poke but also really smarting when I get a chance to dive in and shoot it point-blank. Ended up switching between Float and Throwing pods, the former for the aerial space denial and the latter for being good at locking opponents into a corner. There's all sorts of combinations to mix and match that it's a delight to toy around and experiment. While some parts are more versatile than others, nothing felt blatantly overtuned and like it didn't have a notable weak spot of some kind. At least apart from illegal parts, but. They're illegal parts. D'uh, they're a little overpowered. I know Custom Robo Arena was a thing and had wi-fi matches, but I swear this game could make for a really compelling competitive multiplayer game in the same vein as a Smash or a Splatoon.

I do think the battles featuring any more than 2 fighters have a tendency to get a little chaotic. While there's no friendly fire for guns, there is friendly fire for bombs and pods, and 4 active fighters at once means there's a lot of explosions happening all over the place and little pods bumming around to a point where I've probably been blind-sided a stray pod from my own ally once or twice. It feels a bit like sensory overload, especially during the 3 vs 1 final boss of the main story.

The characters are delightful, colorful, and expressive. I only wish the main story had a bit more going on so that the plot punches could punch more, cause some of the things fall flat due to ham-fisted foreshadowing and just. Some of the characters not getting a ton of screentime to develop past their very simple anime-esque arcs. But it's hard to complain about the writing when it has so many touches despite it being a mid-to-short-length game. Losing in most games just boots you back to a the last checkpoint, here they have brief what-if scenes. And there's plenty more where that came from, with a lot of amusing character interactions and how each tutorial prompt from Helper Character Harry has a "mock or bully Harry" option where he repeats himself either out of frustration or sometimes just to spite you. And it has one of the best "but thou must" scenes in all the games I've played.

Underrated classic. If you can run Gamecube-level games on your PC, this game runs on Dolphin pretty much flawlessly. Play it.