Solatorobo proves itself to be a really standout piece on the Nintendo DS with its gorgeous art and complex world and truly interesting story, but fails at what should have perhaps been its primary function - to be a fun game.

The gameplay is very same-y for most of the game. You go to an island, you select a quest and you do it. You spend the majority of your time on your robot doing very repetitive combat, usually consisting of waiting out an attack or running up to an enemy to mash A, and to throw them 3 times, and rinse and repeat, and when you're not fighting, you're usually moving boxes around, if you're not in the rare gimmick section. You might go fishing, operate a mounted gun, race in a flight section or free-roam and fly around. While it undeniably offers a wide range of activities and collectibles for the player, none of them feel particularly fleshed out or compelling to play on their own.

In the latter half of the game, you do get to unlock a few new combat abilities to make the combos a bit more interesting, but this isn't until about 10 hours in. In fact, most of the juicy stuff isn't available until about 10 hours in, which is a ridiculously high cost to enter. Sure, for a game with a story as complex as Solatorobo, it makes sense that you should spend time with the characters to understand their motivations and the world around them, but 10 hours? It's a little much.

Still, I was compelled to continue, even as quests became more of a slog to progress through, and as my distaste for the gameplay grew. The all around design of the game, narratively and artistically, is just so compelling that I needed to finish it out and see it all. I can't stress how inspired and just pleasing to look at so many of the characters, machines, and locations are. Looking through artbooks for Solatorobo, it's so clear that a great amount of thought and passion went into the design of the world, which makes it all the more disappointing that the gameplay is just so boring.

More than once did I pause and think to myself that Solatorobo could have benefitted from being a different genre than it was. Solatorobo is regarded as an action RPG, but it hardly leans into the RPG side of things - sure, you can upgrade your stats, and you can change out your fuselage for some different stats and abilities late in the game, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that it could have really benefitted from being a turn based RPG. Sometimes I even considered that it might have benefitted from being in an entirely different medium - a manga, an anime, even a film!

Still, Solatorobo is a really great experience, despite its failures with its gameplay. The world of Solatorobo, and Little Tail Bronx (the series to which Solatorobo belongs) is so rich and interesting that it certainly warrants some time spent with it. I wish I hadn't missed out on this as a kid.

TL;DR: I wish this was an anime.