I am going to continue doing different kinds of games between SRPGs. First up was a random selection from my complete list of games.

The first game that came up was a PSP game called Jikandia, developed by Idea Factory. I was not able to find the Japanese version so I did the English instead.

This is a rather strange game that in the end seems more like a platform action game than an RPG, so I went to the next game.

Next up was Slayers Royal 2. I had initially put these games on my SRPG list but I covered the first game in a short previous post — this lacks the character development that I want from an RPG and is more like a story-based game with some simulation battles. At least in SR2 they got rid of the AI-based gameplay of the first one and just made it a straight command battle system.

I think this is still primarily a game for Slayers fans rather than SRPG fans.

Finally I rolled Medarot 3, so I decided to play the first Medarot game in its Wonderswan remake. This is a long-running series that has been described as “robot pokemon”; some of the games and anime in the franchise were released in the US under the name Medabots, but not the first game.

The similarities to Pokemon are hard to miss. It came out about a year after Pokemon for the Game Boy, in two different versions (Kabuto and Kuwagata, two types of stag beetle). Your main character is a young boy who brings robots out of his phone to fight other people who have their own robots. There is a “collect them all” aspect to the game. Despite the similarities I think it was able to forge its own path; there were 9 main Medarot games (up to 2015), associated media, and the most recent (non-RPG?) game came out just a few weeks ago.

The main character isn’t in to Medarot fighting at the beginning but his dad is. But his dog accidentally steals a medal from the enemy “boroboro group,” and he gets his first Medarot called “Metabee.” The Medals are the core of the medarots; they’re what level up and they also determine the overall strength.

Beyond that you can equip four different parts. They can have various stats; some give you attacks, some are more defensive oriented. You gain the parts in various ways — defeated enemies will give you parts, you can buy them, find them in dungeons, and such.

The save screen shows how many parts (out of 240) you have found so far. I would assume as with Pokemon you have to do link battles with someone that has the other version to get all 240.

The battles are kind of long. You have at most a 3 vs 3 fight, although all you have to do is defeat the leader for the battle to end. You choose an attack and then it happens — each part has its own HP bar and when you destroy a part, the attack associated with that part can no longer be used.

The length of the battles is kind of an issue and it’s the biggest problem I see people talk about with the game.

At first the main character is simply learning how to use his new Medarot. He goes down to a seaside cave where first he has to fight a “shark” (who is actually one of the enemy Boroboro Group bots), and then in the cave you can find a new Medal so that you can create a second Medarot.

This is as far as I played. From what I can tell looking around at reviews, it seems like people think the first game was OK but that the series doesn’t really hit its stride until the second game. I never really was able to get into Pokemon (I didn’t play it when it first came out, and somehow by the time I did play it in my 20s it just felt too simplistic), so I don’t know if would like any game in this series better.