The gameplay is actually pretty fantastic (abusing psychic abilities to both destroy enemies and navigate the offices is very satisfying), but I can't in good conscience recommend this game. It crashes constantly, and the last crash I experienced completely corrupted my save data, to the point where reloading to mission select didn't restore any of the loot boxes or necessary mission triggers to progress any side missions or the main narrative. I've spent so many hours restarting and contacting support only to be told that they don't plan on addressing this in patches because "it's an isolated incident." I wanted to play this all the way through and enjoy it, but I'm fed up with trying at this point.

The one and a half stars taken off is mainly because this game is a tough nut to crack to make it run well; you either have to open the game at a different resolution and play in a small window, or you have to use Borderless Gaming after making it run window mode and hope it doesn't crash before you set it up with Borderless Gaming. As is, the game also instantly crashes if you alt tab out at any point.

Now, having said my piece about the technical issues, this game is surprisingly compelling in how it manages to weave its narrative about fate and the limits and ethics of technology. It doesn't overstay its welcome either; it leads you comfortably through the plot and its questions with virtually no gaping plot holes, and then sends you on your way. I didn't feel it was overly preachy either; the game gives you a lot of leeway on how to interpret its philosophy, and I appreciate that. It's definitely worth a playthrough if you're into a more introspective and short title.

EDIT: Looking back at this a year later, hasn't aged as well as I'd thought due to its depiction of mental health struggles...

It's your standard Kirby game with really nice graphics and satisfying copy abilities. Grinding for stickers for the UFO powerup (as the true 100%) is a little annoying, but that's generally a minor complaint since the base game is pretty good. Bonus points for the final boss, it really reminded me of the Kirby 64 final boss in a good way. Only other minor complaint is that the dash attack for most copy abilities comes out too often when I'm trying to do other attacks (maybe the controls are too sensitive?) which can make fighting some bosses a bit annoying, but regardless of this, Robobot is definitely one of the best Kirby games out there.

So the gameplay is actually pretty fun. It gets most of what I like about Super Smash Bros Melee and other clones (minus the lack of back air, which I've sort of adapted to, and the lack of dash dancing, which I really hope gets added in the future). It's fast paced and with tons of great combo potential, so I couldn't ask for much more on that frontier.

That said, it is very clearly lacking a lot of features and polish on other ends. The graphics are serviceable I'd say; they're not especially hideous, but they look sort of comparable to a Gamecube game at times, and could use a bit of touching up. The soundtrack is just not memorable, and really could use some licensed tracks from other Nickelodeon franchise video games/original shows. The sound design is also a bit lacking; I can't recall any specific character sound effects that you would expect from Smash games/clones, and the lack of voice overs or any voice lines at all from characters makes the game feel a little lifeless at times.

A few other things; there's no stats page, so I can't tell how many games I've won online or how many games I've played locally. Sort of a minor gripe, but I don't think that's asking for much. Arcade mode is extremely barebones; you just fight 7 characters across 7 stages and they spout lines of text before the fight starts with fairly little fanfare otherwise. There are no alternate character skins/colors so different players using the same characters are only distinguished with the tag above; this does feel a little lazy, considering Smash 64 had alternate colors. Online ranked kind of sucks and I can't tell how the matching algorithm works or how I rank in comparison to others/my friends/the world. Also related to online; rollback netcode means that the game's online is generally as lag-free as possible, but if you get matched with people playing online that are on Wi-Fi instead of wired (and I ran into plenty), it's extremely excruciating to either have to suffer through those matches on moon physics lag, or quit those laggy matches and lose ranking score because there's no way to account for this happening. I don't know how this specific problem would be addressed, but I do hope that Ludosity becomes aware of this at least.

With all that out of the way, I don't actually regret my purchase because this game is that much fun to play, especially with friends you know. Ludosity has mentioned further polishing the game and adding more DLC characters (the answer to the question: what happened to Jimmy Neutron, Fairly OddParents, Hey Arnold from Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, etc) if this game gets more attention and support. Considering the amount of hubbub it's gotten from both Nickelodeon fans and players who like Smash clones, I'll remain cautiously optimistic that some of the flaws and missing features I've mentioned above get addressed and patched up, in which case I would be more than happy to improve my rating on this game.

I originally characterized Scarlet Nexus as Nier Automata inspired but less ambitious, but as I played more and more, I realized this game has its own charm. The combat is very solid, though it doesn't change much throughout the game and the dodge mechanic is a little finnicky until you get the correct plug-in to deal with this (so I wish it was just more consistent in general). Story's not bad though they don't always do the best job explaining all the phenomena, so you might have to do your own research. And the visuals and soundtrack weren't bad at all either. Regardless, it might not be the best JRPG I've ever played, but the gameplay is engaging enough and I did slowly warm up to some of the characters as time passed. Wouldn't mind playing a sequel to this someday, and I'll probably try the other character's route on Gamepass in the near future.