Robothorium – Switch review

Robothorium is a sci-fi tactical turn-based RPG with a bit of a dungeon crawling feel to it, it has been developed and produced by Goblinz studios. The game takes place in the future as you can imagine, in 2052 robots have been endowed with state-of-the-art artificial intelligence which as helped to develop a powerful and prosperous society but sadly not everything is as good as it seems. Robots feel they are being exploited and oppressed and they begin to demonstrate and for their rights, but the human race didn’t agree, and they were met with a predictable and violent response.

Now the world is on the brink of a civil war between robots and humans, you play the part of S.A.I.A who is a artificial intelligence that has been made with the purpose of offering a future to robots. At the start of the game you meet Sarah Simov who is the emissary of the rebel forces and she informs you she is there to help you, she tells you to take control of 3 of the robots that are lying around. There is a total of 8 different robot classes in the game which range abilities, there names do tend to give you a good idea of what they do which is always helpful. I started off with Riot, repair and guard on my play through as I figured from the names would give me a good mix of abilities. As with all RPG you have a choice of support, defence and offensive robots to make up your team of 5 but you can also have up to 9 in reserve to swap between or to send on solo missions.

Each robot has its own background info about where they are made, and they all have different personality types which will affect how they perform and their stats so it is worth keeping a eye out later on when you can buy more. The tutorial is nice and simple and build into the first level or two of the game, it takes you thought the controls and menus, so you know where to find everything.

Robothorium has made the upgrading of your robots nice and easy, at a glance as when you pick up new items if they are better than what you are using the have a little green arrow on them to let you know that they are going to improve you robot. You acquire the new parts from winning fights, completing levels, the black market or you can craft set items once you unlock the workshop and find the blue prints. Also, each time you change a part the look of your robot will change slightly which I realise seems like a minor detail but one I picked up on and liked.

There are 5 different rebel factions you will encounter in the game and each decision you make will gain or lose you reputation with them, each choice you make will affect how the story progresses as well as the more you work with one faction another will like you less. This all changes the stories progression as you move through the game. The factions range from the likes of Humanobots who want everyone to live in peace together and stop the fighting to the like of Supremachine who think humans need to go for robots to survive. This all means you have many story arcs to explore and a lot of choices to make as to what sort of world you are working to build or destroy.

Robothorium gives you 3 mission types that you will encounter on the world map, the red ones are the missions you just send a robot to complete and don’t have to think about which can gain them experience and find you guns or parts. There are side and main quests so if you feel you’re a little underpowered for the main quest line you can do some of the side ones to level up and acquire some new robots and gear. As you do level up your robots you will get to increase their abilities with a 4-tier talent wheel and each level gives you another point to put into the talent pool. These can boost current abilities or even unlock new ones, so it is worth looking at them before deciding which you want. Also a tip – use the touch screen to open and close the talents menu but use the thumb stick to look around, otherwise you will assign points by accident and sometimes when you use b to leave the talent menu it can sometimes loop you back into it again.

Robothorium has 3 difficulty setting to the game Rebellion (easy), Insurrection (normal) and Revolution (yup you guessed it, hard mode), each mode affects the mechanics slightly as well for example on revolution if you robots die in battle they are gone for good and if the whole team dies its game over.

As much fun as I have had playing this game and I am going to continue to do so as I want to see what some of the other story arcs are like due to the story being really interesting, there are a couple things on Robothorium that does bug me but it is just small stuff and it doesn’t take away too much from the game play. There is a delay when you open menu’s and it take what I think is a bit too long to switch between tabs in the mission screen and a delay opening equipment and menus in game as well, as I said minor detail but I feel it slows the game down but I am guessing this is a issue with the switch as videos I have seen for the game on steam seem to be a lot more fluid. But this is part of the price you pay for portability with your gaming I guess, other than that the game has been fine with no delay in combat or anything like that which is good to see.

Over all Robothorium has been a joy to play, I am not always the biggest fan of RPG’s  as sometimes they can be too slow and long winded but I enjoyed the story in this game and I like the choice system that changes the game so much, it has a lot of replay to the game due to this exact reason. So far, I have not even used 2 of the classes 8 yet as I have 5 that I really like and I am stubborn and I don’t like to break up a winning team, so I still need to test out 2 of them to see how they handle in combat.

Overall score 7/10, if they can make the game a bit more stable with the menu’s I would give it a higher score.