izigame.me

Danger is Happening

Story
The game is a spin-off of an already existing wrestling series where most of the characters presumably already went through their own character arcs, which means there isn't much in terms of individual character development in this game. At best, the player is presented with Robox's existential crisis due to him technically being a different character from the original, while still being haunted by his original's memories to some extent during the hacking segments. On the villain side, Dr. Cube is a show-stealing hammy sort of heel, who is both amusing with his antics and horrifying when he decides to get serious with his atrocities. Seriously, how many villains will just start a radio channel and make a slopfest video game just to taunt his enemies? Some people might be put off by how "current" and on-the-nose his dialogue can be at times, but I found it refreshing to read due to my terminal onlineness.
I do think the buildup for the Goobles being villains could have been stronger. There's very little indication that they're a separate villain faction from Cube's posse and we don't get to learn about their motives for devouring Cube. At best, Slo Feng hears a voice warning about a villain far greater than Cube, but we don't get much more than that. The Doodlers seem to have similar origins to the Goobles while being friendly, but even with the translation item, they don't really tell us anything important. I feel like the Doodlers should have been used to hint at the Goobles' motivations and explain what exactly the Goobles' god form is all about. Maybe we'll get a sequel where the Goobles take center stage?
Gameplay
I played the game on the highest difficulty and found it mostly doable, though I do think the Gooble Grande enemy is a bit too OP for the early game area it's in. It's actually harder than the boss of the same area in some ways, which may be a consequence of playing on the highest difficulty. In later dungeons, the difficulty of the enemies feels more consistent, especially when you have more party members and skills.
For some reason, there is a lot of space to the right of the HP bars in battle, but you can't see your MP until you go into a skill submenu, which seems like bad UI design. IMO, the MP should be displayed next to the HP.
The way buffing works is kind of tedious. Individual buffs are fairly weak, but can stack to the stat cap if you cast them repeatedly. This means you will need to devote several turns to actually getting decent mileage out of your buffs, though some food items are stronger than your buffing skills for some reason and can speed up the process. Additionally, debuffing can also be stacked and potentially reduce a character's stats to near 0, which is a tactic that can be used by both the player and the enemy. Personally, I prefer the more common form of buffs in most RPG Maker MV games.
As for player character balance, I like that the charge for Slo Feng was reduced by 1, which gives him the DPS that one would expect of a brute like him. However, I think Silver Potato should learn at least one AOE and learn more skills to set him apart from the Blue Mage, Robox. At this point Robox just seems better than Potato in his own specialty. Also, I have no idea what the devs were cooking with French Toast and his random skill mechanic. His chances of using a highly damaging skill are fairly low and you'd have to be the luckiest mofo on the planet to get him to out-DPS just about anyone else.
Robox is probably the most interesting character in terms of gameplay, since you can collect enemy skills for him and give him the most well-rounded skillset. I also like how he splits all his skills into different submenus to make searching for them more intuitive.
Verdict
7.6/10
Robox's combat is pretty good and in some ways, he feels like the actual protagonist in terms of both skillset and story, being technically a newbie or outsider to the long-running conflict. Dr. Cube is the highlight of the game for me and I like how petty he is, though it does feel like he's overshadowing everyone else and that he's carrying the otherwise mid story. I feel like I would have appreciated the game more if I was actually knowledgeable about the franchise, since I feel like I was blindly dropped into the middle of the series like some poor fool starting with Trails of Cold Steel 4.