![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Solatorobo: Red The Hunter
When a routine mission to retrieve stolen corporate documents leaves him with a medallion and a mysterious boy, the bounty hunter Red will inevitably get caught up in a world-shaking series of events. Even though all he and his sidekick Chocolat are trying to do is get paid...
This game falls on the spectrum of "Action RPG". There's a lot of talking, some robot customization, XP from defeating enemies, anime cutscenes and that sort of thing; but the actual dungeons and battles are done in your long-armed robot that fights by picking up enemies and bouncing them around. You need to master throwing enemies at each other, dodging attacks, and button-mashing to do combos in order to do really well at this game.
There are also sudden gameplay changes--in chapter 3, you get to experience your robot in "flight mode", and then you get to play a racing minigame. (The racing minigame makes up a bunch of the later sidequests but is generally optional; I never got particularly good at it.) In chapter 7, you get access to the fishing minigame, which you need to succeed at to finish the chapter. Chapter 10 introduces a transformation for Red himself, but that doesn't really affect the style of play.
The action is mostly divided into quests that you get from the quest guild, some of which progress the story (in the style of the FF Tactics Advance games), though there are also story segments in each chapter that kick off when you enter a new area, and are generally longer and more adventure-oriented than quests.
This game realizes that it's a game and wants to be fun. You get talking animals, wacky coincidences, cardboard villians, absurd boss monsters and some--but not too many--challenges to your gaming reflexes. But you also get edge gravity, plenty of hints, and a "try again" option when you die. The game isn't that difficult (especially if you do every quest and upgrade your robot a bit), and they're moderately generous with healing items and save points alonmg the way. Basically, the designers came up with an interesting concept for an action game, and then put you through a lot of variations on that.
All in all, kinda like a Kirby game, but with actual characters and more plot. Actually, for what's basically a funny animal cartoon--the main character constantly has a bone hanging out of his mouth--it's surprisingly deep, and the world is impressively well fleshed-out. Except for a near-universal tendency for characters (heroes and villians) to shrug off when their friends try to kill them, there's some real characterization and pathos here.
When you finish chapter 10 (listed as the "Final Chapter"), that completes the story and the credits roll. But then there's a whole additional ten chapters and another 35 quests; basically a packed-in sequel. (This is similar to Master of the Monster Lair, which also allowed the game to be over in a satisfactory manner at the halfway point if you wanted it to be; and better than A Witch's Tale, which forced you to replay the same game to get a proper ending. The second half does have new material.)
Overall: They set out to make a fun, cartoony action-rpg with some plot behind it and a clever gameplay gimmick. They succeeded. As one of the last games released for the DS, it's a fitting way to close out the system's lifespan.
This game falls on the spectrum of "Action RPG". There's a lot of talking, some robot customization, XP from defeating enemies, anime cutscenes and that sort of thing; but the actual dungeons and battles are done in your long-armed robot that fights by picking up enemies and bouncing them around. You need to master throwing enemies at each other, dodging attacks, and button-mashing to do combos in order to do really well at this game.
There are also sudden gameplay changes--in chapter 3, you get to experience your robot in "flight mode", and then you get to play a racing minigame. (The racing minigame makes up a bunch of the later sidequests but is generally optional; I never got particularly good at it.) In chapter 7, you get access to the fishing minigame, which you need to succeed at to finish the chapter. Chapter 10 introduces a transformation for Red himself, but that doesn't really affect the style of play.
The action is mostly divided into quests that you get from the quest guild, some of which progress the story (in the style of the FF Tactics Advance games), though there are also story segments in each chapter that kick off when you enter a new area, and are generally longer and more adventure-oriented than quests.
This game realizes that it's a game and wants to be fun. You get talking animals, wacky coincidences, cardboard villians, absurd boss monsters and some--but not too many--challenges to your gaming reflexes. But you also get edge gravity, plenty of hints, and a "try again" option when you die. The game isn't that difficult (especially if you do every quest and upgrade your robot a bit), and they're moderately generous with healing items and save points alonmg the way. Basically, the designers came up with an interesting concept for an action game, and then put you through a lot of variations on that.
All in all, kinda like a Kirby game, but with actual characters and more plot. Actually, for what's basically a funny animal cartoon--the main character constantly has a bone hanging out of his mouth--it's surprisingly deep, and the world is impressively well fleshed-out. Except for a near-universal tendency for characters (heroes and villians) to shrug off when their friends try to kill them, there's some real characterization and pathos here.
When you finish chapter 10 (listed as the "Final Chapter"), that completes the story and the credits roll. But then there's a whole additional ten chapters and another 35 quests; basically a packed-in sequel. (This is similar to Master of the Monster Lair, which also allowed the game to be over in a satisfactory manner at the halfway point if you wanted it to be; and better than A Witch's Tale, which forced you to replay the same game to get a proper ending. The second half does have new material.)
Overall: They set out to make a fun, cartoony action-rpg with some plot behind it and a clever gameplay gimmick. They succeeded. As one of the last games released for the DS, it's a fitting way to close out the system's lifespan.