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I was first introduced to Robot Alchemic Drive through clips of the game’s voice acting, and how laughably bad it was. Those clips too were the main motivator to why I chose to play this game, and because of that, I didn’t have too high of expectations for the game. Honestly, I thought it was going to be bad, but oh how wrong I was. Genuinely I was mesmerized by this game, the concept of its gameplay is unique, and it provided for this really engaging experience. And everything that isn’t conventionally “good” about this game adds to the experience as well because it gives the game a level of charm and memorability that it wouldn’t have otherwise. Robot Alchemic Drive was a surprise hit that I loved playing through from start to end.

It's likely best to acknowledge this first, but yeah, the voice acting is bad. However I think the voice acting being bad actually adds to this game. I think the absolute highlight to this point is Nanao, who’s easily one of the best characters in the game. She constantly suffers misfortune after misfortune, yet she always sounds unaware and content in a way I can’t describe. The “Bread and Water Soup” scene is one of the funniest scenes throughout the game. The bad voice acting creates a unique vibe to the game that I wish I could better describe, as it creates a certain level of charm for the game.

As I said prior, this game has such a unique concept, and it kept me engaged throughout the entire game. While the game is about fighting giant robots with a giant robot of your own, you’re always in the perspective of the robot’s pilot, who controls it remotely. That means each and every time, you have to maneuver the pilot to a position to where they can see the robot, the enemy, and still be safe from the carnage both cause. Sometimes after you knock an enemy back, you have to move the pilot so that you can still see it. If you’re on a building there’s a chance it could be destroyed from the fighting, and you have to move to a new one to stay in a safer location. It’s a really fun and engaging system that makes the game stand out just so much more.

The robot combat, while challenging to control, is always really fun. The robot mainly moves using tank controls, which can definitely be challenging, especially when the robot is farther away. However when both your robot and enemies move rather slowly, it’s balanced out quite well. Combat is mainly done through the joysticks, where each joystick controls the respective arms. While it can definitely be tough cause it’s hard to tell when some hits will land (I don’t have the best depth perception already), it makes for a rather fun feeling game overall. Aside from all of that though, I honestly think the robot being difficult to control is extremely fitting for a game like this. Not every game needs to have the same conventional control scheme, and sometimes it’s good for a game to have a control scheme that isn’t “conventionally good”. I think Robot Alchemic Drive is an example of such a game. The character you play as is not the robot itself, but the human controlling the robot, so moving the robot isn’t meant to feel natural. That combined with the weight that every single movement, every step, every knockdown is felt throughout the game gives the game this larger sense of scale that some games may not have. It just creates this unique feeling that makes the game stand out just that much more.

There’s also something really fun with the game’s destructible environments. Each and every building can be destroyed, though sometimes you have to prevent certain buildings from being destroyed. Honestly those are some of the harder missions because it’s really easy to end up destroying buildings on accident, either by knocking down an enemy, or being knocked down yourself. However what’s really fun is the number of buildings that, if destroyed, end up affecting the story in some way. I had a situation where after destroying a company building over and over during missions, it led to that company going into massive debt. And that consequence remained with me for the entire game, and influenced the epilogue in some form as well. It’d be really fun to see how exactly avoiding destroying buildings, or destroying buildings as much as possible would affect the story and the epilogue.

I also want to highlight playing as just the pilot. While the main way of fighting enemies is using the robot, it’s entirely possible to beat missions without using it thanks to the grenades you can get. Sometimes its actively better to use the grenades instead of the robot, as some levels make using the robot noticeably harder. For example, there were some levels around halfway through the game that prevented you from using the robot because there were jammers blocking your connection to it. While the game wants you to destroy the jammers and then fight the enemy, it ends up being easier to just throw grenades at the enemy and not worry about the jammers at all. And there’s something so entertaining about being able to destroy these robots by just throwing grenades at their feet. These robots are 20-story beasts that can destroy whole buildings with a single punch, and you can just kill them with 20 or so grenades. It’s to the point that one of the easiest ways to beat the final boss is, as you would likely guess, just using grenades.

Yet again, I can’t say enough how surprised I was by this game. A game I was introduced to by its bad voice acting ended up being a surprisingly amazing game. I haven’t even acknowledged how they got the character designer of Cowboy Bebop, and Masafumi Takada to work on this game as well. Everything that isn’t conventionally “good” about this game just adds to the charm and memorability of the game just that much more. I’m really glad I sat down and played this game, as it was far more amazing than I thought it was.