RoboPhobik

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

RoboPhobik is an Action-RPG with Dungeon Crawler elements released on PC in 2020 and ported to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game puts players in the role of a young woman in a resistance group fighting against a robotic uprising that has taken over the appropriately-named Robot City.

The art style used here is a fairly simply low-poly affair with characters that look like Miis or Playmobil figurines, blocky-looking robotic enemies, and blocky-looking tile-based levels that make use of a “depth of field” focus. This is nowhere near as visually interesting as the way this sort of style was done in the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but I suppose it does at least set it apart from most of the crowd. Unfortunately, despite the low quality of the graphics on display here, this game does occasionally run into inexplicable framerate issues.

While the visual presentation seems to have attempted something unique and full of personality, the sound doesn’t seem to have followed suit, with what little music there is here being fairly low-key, and with the most memorable sound effect is the LEGO-style clacking noises that accompany people talking. I could see the argument that this game is aiming for something atmospheric with its sound design, but given the simple, childishly cartoony nature of the visuals, I don’t think anything atmospheric was ever in the cards here, and the result is a game that just feels oddly quiet given its cartoonish appearance.

This inability to commit to a style seems to extend to the Action-RPG gameplay. I would almost be tempted to say that this game is a Dungeon Crawler, since it at least appears to copy that genre’s tile-based gameplay and its “enemies move when you move” mechanic. Except both of those things aren’t quite represented here.

Enemies do indeed stay still until you move or attack, but once one of those enemies commits to an action, that action plays out in real time. Trigger a turret’s guns, and the turret will warm up for a moment and then fire, and a charging enemy that gets you in its sights won’t wait for you to move to charge at you. This on its own wouldn’t be a terrible thing – there are Dungeon Crawlers with real-time elements that have made for a fun twist on the genre before. Unfortunately, its other half-executed element, the tile-based gameplay, mucks that up.

While enemies and the player both move on tiles, the player can inadvertently inch forward without completing a movement, causing enemies to respond even if you haven’t fully moved yet. This means that even if you’re changing direction to try to aim at an enemy, you could be giving that enemy an extra movement you didn’t intend them to have… which could then lead to them starting an attack that you’re force to respond to in real-time, which has you scrambling to run and kills any sort of slow, thoughtful, puzzle-solving approach you could have to the game’s confrontations.

This game does have RPG elements, with levels to gain, new weapons to obtain, and optional goals to complete. However, the mostly linear level-based structure of the game and lack of any sort of full-fledged character customization keeps this from being an especially compelling part of the game. You might almost view this more as a Puzzle game with RPG elements, but the aforementioned real-time elements that force players to abandon thoughtful planning kinda’ throw a wrench in that idea as well.

To be clear, RoboPhobik is absolutely not a terrible game, but I do think that this lack of commitment in its art direction and its gameplay keeps it from being a particularly good one. There are strong elements here that could have been taken in any number of interesting directions. However, these disparate elements all compete with one another and keep each other from being fully realized, and the result is a game that just doesn’t work well as a cohesive experience. If you’re a fan of Action-RPGs and Dungeon Crawlers in particular and are curious to se a different take on the genre, you may find some elements of RoboPhobik to be intriguing, but overall this game doesn’t do any particular thing well enough to be especially memorable.

tl;dr – RoboPhobik is an Action-RPG with elements of Dungeon Crawlers about a woman fighting a robot takeover of a city. While there are individual elements here that have potential, overall these elements don’t work well together and the result is a game that fails to come together as a cohesive whole.

Grade: C

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