Gotta say, I've really been enjoying this one. At the time of this review, I'm almost 10 hours into the game, after only a night or two.... that's pretty rare for me. I'm finding this game to be constantly engaging and fun, despite a couple of rather nasty flaws.
If you've ever played any of Phr00t's other games, you're going to feel right at home with this one. It has the same feel that most of his games do, and the same wonderfully bizarre and surreal world for you to explore. Rombie tasks you with traversing a desolate world mostly comprised of an endless sea of acid, with only these "islands" of tangled metal serving as any sort of solid ground. Islands entirely populated by robots. Most of whom want you dead. While each funky island structure thing tends to look very similar, I found that the game kept me constantly interested in exploring each one nonetheless... which is something that Phr00t's games have always been good at. I call these structures "islands", but that's a misleading term. Each of these structures is an enormous tangle of rooms and spires, going in all directions. And I really do mean ALL directions. You'll have to do boatloads of vertical navigation to get around these places, as they are just as tall as they are wide. And they are complicated, each one a confusing labyrinth, but in a good way. It's a far cry from the expansive yet flatter worlds of the X089 series.
To aid in this vertical exploration, you are given a jetpack. This is one of the main mechanics of the game, and you'll be using this thing constantly. The jetpack can let you fly around for quite some time before either overheating or running out of energy... this isnt just some dinky little thing meant to make small jumps. You'll be outright flying through the sky with this, even perhaps having midair battles against other robots. When playing the X089 games, one thing that always stands out about them to me is the various fun ways to get around, making the act of exploration that much more entertaining. This game isnt much different as the jetpack is lots of fun to use. Even better when combined with the Dash module.
Of course, it wont be easy to get around. Enemy bots, known as ROMBIEs, litter the landscape, ready to pound your metal face into the ground. What's more, these foes are just as procedural as the rest of the game. Each one is made up of multiple modules, each serving a unique purpose and adding to the bot's physical shape. While bots tend to look similar to one another, this means that they'll often have very different capabilities, so you'll have to be very careful as you go, lest a powerful enemy take you by surprise. This modular system also comes into play during combat, as each piece takes damage seperately. Destroying the core or the head will result in the bot as a whole being defeated, but there are plenty of times when it makes sense to try to target the weapons or shields or other modules. When a bot is beaten, it falls apart, and you can pick up it's modules to use yourself. However, these are usually in a broken state (you did just blow the crap out of the guy, after all), and so will need repairing before you use them. This might sound a little annoying, but it serves an important purpose in balancing the game.
There are alot of different modules to find, and they'll form the core of your build. In the X089 games, there was a fairly typical system of having a variety of stats and earning points to put into them. But here, that's gone. Your stats are purely driven by whatever you have equipped. Cores, generators, shields, weapons, stealth modules, you name it. I love the way the module/equipment system works as a whole. The game keeps me constantly interested in fine-tuning my build, and finding new parts to power up. Some modules are fairly basic, such as shields and power generators. Others are more like activated abilities, such as the dash (which also puts you in a sort of bullet-time mode), or the megablast, or the cloak, or other stuff.
You wont just be getting these parts from enemies though. One returning mechanic from the X089 series is the idea of stations, themed vendor booths that sell all sorts of things, but each one provides exactly one type of service. A shield station will only sell shields, an offensive module station will only sell special attack-related abilities, and so on. These are randomly scattered throughout each of the structures you'll be exploring. One of these terminals will be extra important to you: The job station. This is where you get random missions that you can do to earn credits. These are pretty much the same sorts of things that were in the X089 games. You might have to drop off a black box in a specific location, defeat a set of targeted bots, observe a bot for a time from a stealthy location, or other things. I wish there was a larger variety of mission types, but that's a small complaint. You have bigger quests and such to do of course, but these jobs will comprise most of the goals you have. One way or another, no matter where you are in the game... you have lots of stuff to do, and lots of decisions to make.
Let's get the flaws out of the way now. There are a couple of things that do bug me quite a bit. First is the station finders... a consumable item that shows you the location of all terminals in a structure, for about 30 seconds. With the way that these structures are generated, this is your main way of actually finding the terminals you need. Trying to search for any speciifc terminal without a finder is an exercise in futility and frustration. So if you ever run out, you can expect to spend quite awhile running around like an idiot before you get more. It also is a constant drain on your credits, as you have to keep buying these things. Another issue is the whole acid sea thing. As you progress, you'll be moving from one structure/zone to the next, and between each of these is the acid sea. There are no bridges or anything to help you cross... you gotta jetpack, and it can be a long way from one to the other, often punctuated only by very flat, tiny platforms on the very surface of the acid. It's very easy to either run out of energy or overheat during your flight between structures, and if you end up in the acid, it's a death sentence. You'll get the hang of dealing with the crossing after awhile, but still, it can lead to the occaisional frustrating death nonetheless.
It's also worth noting that this is a LONG game. Of course, so are the X089 games... so this is nothing new. But it bears mentioning.
Overall, I really like Rombie alot. It's everything I've come to expect from Phr00t, similar to the X089 games yet with enough twists to really give it it's own identity. Full of exploration and action, there's never a boring moment here, and there's always something to do, and the combat system is excellent too. All in a gloriously surreal, somewhat spooky world. A criminally overlooked game that I highly recommend.
