by powerrave
I have always been a big fan of Medabots (Medarot/メダロット is the original Japanese name) and I was extremely happy when I found out that there was going to be a Nintendo DS game of it after it had been dead for about 8 years, if not longer. I was hoping for it to be released worldwide, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. After a while, I decided to just get the games and play them in Japanese.
Like with all medarot games that there have been, there is a Kabuto version and a Kuwagata version. The differences between the two versions are the Medaparts that you can get from some enemy’s, the medals you get and most importantly, the Medabot you start with. The Medabot you starts with pretty much determines how difficult this game can be. Kabuto version gives you a shooting type Medabot and the Kuwagata version gives you a Medabot that is specialised in hand-to-hand combat. Each has its own upsides and downsides. I find the Kuwagata version easier. Someone else might find the Kabuto version easier (I have quite some trouble there).
Like stated before, this title was only released in Japan and I have played it in Japanese. I haven’t really been able to follow the story very well since I actually can’t read Japanese. Kinda to bad. So I can’t say if the story is any good. For the rest, Medarot DS is actually quite easy to follow. I was able to get trough it fairly well. I need some help from someone who knew its way in this game and was able to read Japanese (Goes by the name Scarlet/Scarletreisen on the internet. He was a great help to me). The menu and all make perfect sense, so it’s not hard to find your way there. For a Japan only game, it is quite accessible for others who can’t read Japanese.
Now for something different, the gameplay. In the main world, you just walk around with your character and talk to people, go to places and look for fights. In different places, you can get random encounters. You will know when you can get random encounters as you then see a little warning sign on your lower screen. The battles are the most interesting of course. I personally really like the battle system of the Medarot games. You give your command to the Medabot the needs to get a command. Either let it use its head-part, right arm or left arm to perform an action or let it wait and gather energy. The effect of the action done with one of the parts depends on what parts it has equipped. Before an action is performed, the Medabot needs to go to the middle line in the field. How long that takes also depends on what part it uses. After that, It needs to go back to get a new command.
The goal is to destroy the head-part of the enemy his/her leader. Then you win and get a part from the one you beat. The part you get is randomly selected by the game itself. Fighting also helps to improve the skills of a medal. There are only 3 things a medal can improve on. Those are different per medal. So you do need to think when putting parts onto your Medabot. The battles allow you to use a total of 3 Medabots with one of them being the leader, so, thinking up a good tactic should be easy.
On graphics, this game doesn’t score to high. It is nice that they want to show the Medabot in 3D, but with how much the Nintendo DS can give, it doesn’t look very good. I think it is safe to say that they sometimes look… A bit retarded. Yes… … The world you walk in looks okay though, but that is a simple 2D world. I don’t have anything else to say about the graphics.
There is also a multi-player function in Medarot DS for both Wi-fi and the normal wireless connection function from a DS. Here you can fight others, get news updates that sometimes also give extra stuff and with the wireless connection you can also just send parts to others. Why this is not there for Wi-fi, I don’t know. On-line fighting can be quite great, though you need to go with very good tactics and high power in order to stand a chance. The on-line part of Medarot DS doesn’t always work that well though. Chance of getting disconnected and getting network errors is high even if everything is okay. Kinda sad that the on-line is this bugged. Further it is great though.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Good battle system; Parts are balanced pretty well; Easily playable despite only being in Japanese | It's only in Japanese, can't follow the story if you can't read it; Bugged multiplayer; 3D graphics could have been better, but it isn't in the way |
| Rating |
