Rumbling With Robots, Romance, Mystery and More

There are a few reasons this review of ROBOTICS;NOTES DOUBLE PACK is later than the initial release. For one thing, both games included in this package are pretty massive, and combined can take upwards of 100+ hours to finish. Another reason, and one I’m probably gonna get some crap for, is that I went into the adventure somewhat blind. I had no idea at the outset that ROBOTICS;NOTES is set in the same universe as STEINS;GATE (though I guess the capitalization should have been a clue). Unfortunately, I have yet to read through STEINS;GATE, so I took extra time to familiarize myself with some of the key plot elements. And though I am a big fan of other Visual Novels published by Spike Chunsoft, notably the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series, I had some difficulty getting into the meat of this duo. Not cause it’s horrible, mind you, but because it suffers from some avoidable structural issues. But before we get into that, let’s cover the main strokes of both games.

I Hope You Like Phone Games

ROBOTICS;NOTES ELITE starts off as a slice of life drama. At first, there’s little at stake other than relieving boredom and getting through high school. The main characters are Akiho and Kaito, two lifelong friends who have weathered some remarkable situations together, and come out of them all the closer. Akiho is energetic, has a never-say-die attitude, and is charmingly obsessed with robots. Kaito is the exact opposite. He’s obsessed with a game called Kill Ballad, even going so far as to challenge others to matches if they want favors from him. He’s lackadaisical and will do the least amount necessary to get by. Yet he’s still willing to help his longtime friend Akiho, who herself has feelings for the lunkhead. The story starts by detailing their robot club and its misadventures. Set up years ago by Akiho’s cold sister, Misako, it has since fallen into disfavor. That despite the world’s sudden obsession with robot culture and especially hobby battles. It takes a long while to get going, but the plot does eventually start to ramp up, with new characters joining the team. There’s arrogant, glasses-wearing Subaru; sweet and timid Junna; and a perverted yet delightful uber programmer, Frau. As they start to become allies and work together, things get legitimately interesting. Eventually, the story goes far from the slice of life drama and moves into regions involving murder, conspiracy, global crisis, and shady goings-on. Hell, they even introduce an interesting character later on which is essentially a powerful AI that suspiciously seems more advanced than a mere computer.

Back to Tanegashima

By contrast, ROBOTICS;NOTES DaSH takes place 6 months after ELITE. Our team of valiant goofballs has managed to save the world, and things have calmed down once more. To mix things up, they introduce a new wrinkle into the story – a character some may be familiar with named Itaru Hashida, AKA Uncle Daru. Yes, the same one from STEINS;GATE. Though I was unfamiliar with him personally, I didn’t feel I needed to know everything about his past antics to appreciate his inclusion. Daru adds a decidedly ridiculous element to the story of DaSH and tends to bring an air of levity to everything that occurs, which is ironic since the sequel starts to ramp up the drama much faster than ELITE. Without spoilers, a familiar threat from the first game reappears here and instantly stirs up trouble. I was pretty excited by this pacing, but it quickly petered out. The high stakes game of life and death consequences rapidly becomes an Easter egg hunt to prevent chaotic pranks. That said, I did think this story overall balanced its time more effectively. It was also really nice to see all the characters all grown up, especially Kaito. No longer a lackadaisical lout, he now sports a “cool” look and has learned to work better with others.

Gotta Love the Leet Pervert Hackers!

Cue the award for best girl.

You can probably tell there’s a good deal I’m leaving out, and that’s mostly cause I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t played the games yet. That said, there’s a lot I can still cover. First of all, the visual presentation in both ROBOTICS;NOTES games is fantastic. I love how they make use of 3D models to accentuate the dialogue instead of just static models. It allows a wider breadth of emotion to be expressed, especially by Akiho. Likewise, the voice acting is also pretty great. Granted, it’s in Japanese, but there’s a lot of nuances that can be conveyed this way that wouldn’t happen with just reading the bare text. Special appreciation goes to Frau and all the insane things that come out of her mouth. Though the music is generally pretty laid back, it’s also fitting for what’s happening on screen. It amps up noticeably during moments of tension, such as when robot battles are occurring.

Rock’em Sock’em

Given the title ROBOTICS;NOTES, it’s understandable robotics is at the forefront of the games. In ELITE, you get to control robots in certain segments. Whenever Kaito is bored, he’ll be playing Kill Ballad, which is supposed to be a phone game. In the DOUBLE PACK, you control his robot by inputting commands on either your keyboard or a gamepad. I thought it worked fine on the keyboard, so I stuck with rapid-fire input of WASD to crush my enemies. You can lose these battles, but the main thing at stake are some achievements and your own pride. The Kill Ballad sections work well enough, which is good since those controls are implemented in other sections as well. That said, the controls for the rest of the experience have some issues. For one thing, I found it odd that neither ELITE nor DaSH ever explains the main controls. They tell you that autosaves happen when a square icon is on screen, but neglect to mention you can manually save. Additionally, there’s a bunch of tips and notes that scroll by when specific keywords are uttered, and it took me a while before I found I could go to the main menu to read up on them. Some are more helpful than others, but I wish the game had been transparent about all its systems. Case in point, I actually lost a couple of hours of progress early on when I had to quit before an autosave. The chapters are long, and without knowing I could manually save, they were a bit stressful as well. Thankfully I did eventually remedy this problem, but I also feel it shouldn’t have been one, to begin with.

Small Island, Big Map

Though most of ELITE involves reading and Kill Ballad / robot competitions, DaSH is a bit different. Besides being more of a humorous tale, DaSH also introduces some new quirks. One is that you are given locations on a map you can explore in the order you choose. I liked this, since it made me feel more like I had direct control over the story, even if that was largely not the case. They even have you go on what I call virtual egg hunts throughout the game. These aren’t just for fun; they’re done to prevent the threat in this game from causing real damage to the small island of Tanegashima, which is the main location for both stories. My issue with these geotag hunts is that often it’s quite easy to miss them. I actually got an achievement for such, and it’s not something I’m proud of. You use the keyboard to move the camera around, zooming or scaling back to find nodes you can investigate. It sounds easy, but the farther you get, the more complex these become. Frankly, I much preferred the keyboard battles to these hunts, since there was no chance of being stuck in them for long periods of time.

Epic Robots, Silly Antics

I would say the writing for both ROBOTICS;NOTES games is great overall, with a proviso – the pacing is horrible. ELITE’s plot in particular moves like a rollercoaster, dipping down briefly for tense moments, then moving upwards for long, slow tracks of boredom. I enjoy the characters, and there’s not too many typos, but I kept feeling they were wasting time setting up the exposition. DaSH is a bit better, but it ruins that momentum with the singular focus on trying to be funny. It’s hard to feel the real-world stakes when the villain starts out by using solar radiation to put girls in cat maid outfits, for example. And while I love seeing how all the characters grow, it takes a very long time to get there. Plus, much as I feel Daru is an interesting character, I also don’t think he was necessary to move the story in the second game. They could have easily driven the plot with the same team that was present in ELITE. His presence just felt like a clumsy afterthought. Sure there were some fun interactions between him and the other characters, especially Akiho, but not enough to make me feel he was necessary.

Little Sisters are the Best

Now for the part of any review I hate – touching on those areas that were the most messy. I had already expressed some dissatisfaction with the controls not being explained in the ROBOTICS;NOTES DOUBLE PACK, but what’s worse is when they don’t properly work. I had the game lock up on me in DaSH while I was on a geotag hunt, and was totally unable to go to the main menu, only managing to quit using control escape. I also had times in ELITE where I would press a button to proceed the dialogue or load the game, only for it to be randomly unresponsive. Yes, I probably should have tried a gamepad, but honestly that shouldn’t be necessary either. It also irked me to no end you can’t move the dialogue by clicking your mouse. I would have much preferred that to constantly pressing Enter or Spacebar to keep things moving. It also bothered me a bit that sometimes the story would describe something happening on screen, only for what you see to not match it at all. Or in some cases, minor characters don’t merit a portrait or model, and are just relayed as text and voice acting. This felt frankly lazy to me, and that was a surprise given the professional quality of the rest of the package.

This Robot Has Some Glitches To Work Out

I have pretty mixed feelings about ROBOTICS;NOTES ELITE & DaSH DOUBLE PACK. On the one hand, the story in both is pretty fascinating and full of great characters. The artwork and music likewise are good. Yet the pacing is so poor that it brings the entire experience down, as does the lack of clarity on the control setup. When placed next to the other Spike Chunsoft published VN series I love, unfortunately, this is diminished. I truly wanted to love the DOUBLE PACK, and was honestly excited to try it. As it is, I can only recommend it to those with a ton of free time and preferably past experience with the STEINS;GATE story. For everybody else, this is a harder sell.

Final Verdict:  3.5/5

Available on: PC (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4; Publisher: Spike Chunsoft; Developer: MAGES; Players: 1; Released: October 13, 2020; ESRB: T for Teen, Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence; MSRP: $59.48

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.