I'll have one robo, extra cheese, extra salt please. Hold the onions.

Custom Robo sure is a Gamecube game. One of the few that saw regular rentals at my house. My brother and I found it to be a very refreshing alternative to Melee for multiplayer games that we could start fights and lose TV privileges over. Of course, there is an actual whole story in there. One that admittedly blew my ten-year-old mind out of the back of my head. On a recent replay, I had to come to terms with two things: One, that robots make everything cooler. And two, that Nintendo has a really bad habit of taking a concept that should be a guaranteed success and dropping the ball in the end zone.

Just gonna go ahead and get this out of the way: The soundtrack slaps. They could have used some generic, cheesy techno or rock tracks and probably would have gotten by just fine. But they didn't settle, and I'm grateful that they didn't, because gods know I always need more bangers to pump on my commute. Shame they didn't put quite as much effort into the visuals, though - while the arenas and the robos themselves look quite good, the game is far from being a stunner. In particular, the character designs are a bit bland and the amateurish art doesn't help things much. But that's hardly the reason you're here, anyways. I just think stronger visual direction would have done it some good.

At face value, Custom Robo has an excellent framework for an action game. As the title might insinuate, you cobble together a robot from various body types and weapons, and then toss it into an arena with up to three others and duke it out from a third-person perspective. Think Baby's First Armored Core meets Smash Bros. Jump, dash, shoot, take cover, make your enemy's HP reach zero before yours does. The combat moves at a pleasantly brisk speed, although the somewhat clunky controls keep the experience from being as tight as it ought to be, and the arena design doesn't do much to inspire you to change your builds around. Still, running about and hammering away at buttons trying to get an angle on your opponent is good fun, especially with friends.

For all the things I enjoy about Custom Robo, though, there's always another thing holding it back from being great. For starters: Even if the moment-to-moment gameplay is fun, it's thrown off by - you can probably guess - balance. There are a decent variety of parts to choose from, but aside from the base models, a lot of them don't seem to have a marked effect on your robo's performance, or are simply outclassed by other parts with regards to their intended purposes. The guns you can equip generally have the greatest overall impact as your main offensive tool. A lot of them are impractically gimmicky in how they function, and a straightforward gun with good range, good accuracy and decent damage is going to save the day more often than not. Your bombs and pods mostly serve to clutter the arena and limit your opponent's movement options, which is an important aspect of gameplay, but you don't see a whole lot of meaningful variance between how these weapons perform - largely just due to how agile the more powerful robo models are. The arena gets pretty chaotic with just two combatants, and with four, it can be very hard to keep track of what's happening onscreen. The hectic action is admittedly apart of the appeal, but the lack of feedback and zoomed-out perspective can make it very hard to adequately react and strategize. All in all, these issues are more tolerable when playing against other humans, who will still benefit from the fun factor of using a silly build and are just as susceptible to having their brain scrambled as you are. However, against the AI, it really just comes down to whether or not your powerful enemy feels like keeping its eyes shut as projectiles head for it. Approaching an enemy robo in later parts of the game can be an exercise in frustration as it rather conveniently dodges your attacks at the last second and demonstrates an acute awareness of where everything is on the field at once. Backing them into a corner is rarely an option, and you might be tempted to either play in a hyperaggressive manner in hopes of overpowering the AI, or play campy to ensure there's no chance it can do the same to you.

For the game as a whole: Custom Robo is about as linear as linear gets, with you waking up in the morning, walking across the remarkably small map to wherever the plot is supposed to happen that day and then doing it all over again. It's questionable as to why there's a map at all, because aside from seeing some optional dialogue there's pretty much never a reason to visit locations outside of when you're instructed to. People talk, you get into fights, repeat until the staff roll. There's no optional side content, no branching story paths (or at least choices in what tasks you pursue next), not even a parts store for your robo. There might be a few spots towards the end where you could face more or fewer foes depending on your choices. You effectively unlock parts as you progress through the story, and as far as the main game goes, that's it. You'll probably notice as you near the conclusion that there's an awful lot of empty space on your parts list. You haven't missed anything; all of that's just being saved for "The Grand Battle", a post-game story framed as a contest set up between the protagonist and all of the NPCs you've met over the course of your adventure, which is obviously the devs saying "this game needs more content so here's a tournament". The key difference between the Grand Battle and the main story is that you're now scored on your performance, and you're also restricted in various ways as to how you can build your robo, which does at least give more of an incentive to experiment and to perform well - something that the main game largely lacks. In the campaign, if you lose a fight, you simply get a brief custcene showing what happened afterwards before time rewinds to just before the fight, giving you another shot. There are no consequences, in narrative or otherwise, for failure; just adjust your loadout if necessary and try again. There's nothing stopping you from simply brute-forcing a challenging fight with the robo of your choice until you win. In fairness, that is true freedom in customization, but the lack of pressure to diversify your toolkit combined with the relatively short list of parts you have by default somewhat undermines the "Custom" part of Custom Robo. What's more, you can actually find hidden parts by snooping around each area during the Grand Battle... Why that couldn't have been a thing during the main game, I have no idea. Being able to carry over parts from the Grand Battle to a new game doesn't mean a whole lot, either, since all of the fights are exactly the same on a second playthrough. The most value you can get out of it is being able to use an overpowered kit to make the game a complete faceroll.

The story is probably the part of this game that makes me the saddest. The base concepts behind the narrative are actually really cool and beg to be explored further; needless to say, they generally aren't. You start off as a bounty hunter who never actually does much bounty hunting work. Mostly, you just break up squabbles and do other tasks the police force is presumably too busy to handle. At any rate, it doesn't seem like there even would be any crime if not for robos: Conflicts are universally resolved through robo battles, and at no point is any justification made for why the bad guys don't just skip the chance to play with action figures and opt to punch you in the face instead. That probably wouldn't be so noteworthy if they could obviously be used for crime, like, say, Pokemon, but robos seem to be harmless unless you're actively engaged in a fight with them (at least in this game). Along the way you might start to question why a world like this even needs bounty hunters to begin with - a sentiment that is seemingly shared by some of the characters, no less. After a while of being hit with excuse after obvious excuse to get into fights, things suddenly start taking a darker turn. Some pretty big twists are thrown at the player, the stakes get higher, you might be getting authentically excited at this point - and then it's over. The history of Custom Robo's world and its reasons for existing are barely touched upon through its runtime, and while some attempt is made at explaining the odder aspects, none of it quite managed to satisfy my (admittedly over-analytic) brain. The aforementioned Grand Battle segment does give you a little more time to interact with the world and its inhabitants, but considering how the focus is obviously on padding out the amount of gameplay the package has to offer, its existence is a bit baffling. I personally feel that the overall experience would have benefited from moving things like the rankings, battle rules and a wider selection of unlockable parts to the main game, and just taking a bit more time to flesh it out. You could still include post-game activities if you really wanted to - it just feels very strange to have the "extra" content be equal or greater in substance to the main game. It's not really post-game at that point; it's just half the game.

There's a bunch of other "what" moments this game tends to wring out of me. Example: Illegal parts. There's a whole bit in the story about how some robo parts ignore safety standards and can be legitimately dangerous to use when engaging with other robo pilots. Naturally, the main villains have access to these overpowered parts and leverage them with impunity. You would think you'd get an opportunity to claim them during the story and level the playing field, maybe lead to some interesting moral quandaries over the ethics of using them, but no. You can't collect any until post-game, and at that point making use of these powerful, illicit weapons will result in... A deduction to your score. It's a bit underwhelming. In partner battles, why does the player going down result in a loss? I can understand maybe not wanting to lock the player into a situation where they're forced to watch instead of play, but the option to forfeit and retry is always there. It's irritating to lose by a hair when your teammate should be more than capable of finishing the job, especially since the questionable friendly AI sometimes refuses to be an active participant in a fight. What's with all the unskippable tutorials? It makes sense in the early game, at least, with your partner Harry serving as a would-be mentor to your character. However, all it does is slow things down on repeat playthroughs, and it somewhat defeats the purpose of the in-game manual that documents all of the outlined strategies. The fact you can never make him shut up, even when the game literally offers you an opportunity to tell him to shut up, can be grating.

I'm just rambling at this point, and I could keep going, but there wouldn't be much reason to. All in all, Custom Robo is yet another game that I just want to love, but tragically seems to be another case of what the experience is being outstripped by what it isn't.

But you know what this game is? It's funny. While I'd argue that one of the story's failings is that the characters seldom seem to be taking things seriously, it's also one of its greater strengths. The constant quips, comedic back-and-forths and non-sequiturs did manage to get an authentic chuckle out of me every now and again. It's a very self-aware game and you can shake a bit more of that cheese loose - along with a few extra crumbs of lore - by going out of your way to interact with every NPC possible. So even if there's no other good reason to do so, I do recommend you go nose around a bit as you play. I have a soft spot for a few of the characters and found myself wishing the ones that weren't particularly prominent could have had more screentime, one of the few things I'm grateful to the Grand Battle mode for. The core conceit of building your own robot is still fun once you finally have a good list to work from, and it's a good way to spend an afternoon on the couch with friends (if you have any of those). It's entertaining, not overly long, and I suppose that for all of my gripes about the underdeveloped story mode, there are going to be plenty of people who appreciate a significant portion of the game being non-stop battling. It's a cool addition to the Gamecube's library, but not one that I think absolutely everybody needs to play.

Custom Robo has a ton of promise, and that's easy enough to see. Its "sequel" Custom Robo Arena has a bit more meat to it, even in spite of being on the significantly weaker Nintendo DS, and was one of my favorite games for that system. Of course, that came out in the States all the way back in 2007. There's a dedicated, if small, fanbase that's clamoring for Nintendo to give this franchise some love, and I'm right there with them. The Big N has a disappointingly long list of dormant franchises with too much potential to simply be left gathering dust. All of the pieces of a great game are here. They just need to be assembled in a smart way, like building the perfect robot.

A very fun and charming step into the next generation for Custom Robo after the N64 titles. The story and characters are good fun, the battle system and controls are tight and responsive, and the soundtrack and vibe of the game are incredibly stylish. I didn't expect much from the plot but it goes into some very wild directions.

Really my biggest gripe is the entire story is a very slow text-based affair with battles every so often. It got to a point late into the story that I genuinely wanted to stop playing entirely, but I carried on because the game was just fun enough to edge past it.

All that said, this is a great multiplayer game with a lot of customization involved, so grab some friends, build some bots, and get to smackin' each other.

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've played this game so many times since my first playthrough all the way back when I was a kid. And I've played dozens of games since. I've got a collective steam library 1000+ games strong. And let me tell you there has never. EVER. Been a game that plays as fluid, as fun, and as varied as this one.

I'll probably never see a game like it again in my life. I know that for a fact. I've begged and pleaded for something like it for my entire life, from kid to adult. Haven't gotten it. Still haven't. Probably won't. But let me tell you when I say that I don't really need it as much as I beg and plead for it. Because I have it already. And that's all I really need from it.

Custom Robo is a tightly knit little game with great music, impressive visuals, simple controls, and story-wise very entertaining and hilarious dialogue.

Also a twist/reveal that is wonderfully unexpected...then the game does it again!

High recommend, but I advise against marathon running the game. It's robo combat while fun and stimulating, can get repetitive. Take the game in chunks.