A Robot Named Fight! (PC) Review

A Robot Named Fight! has a simple formula. Playing as the titular robot protagonist, Fight, those in control will always wake up in a starting area and make their way through environments of gradually increasing difficulty, searching for upgrades and new weapons to help you progress past certain blocked off rooms, all in an effort to become strong enough to take on the fleshy monsters spread around the planet. Each area has its own enemies and obstacles to overcome, all which are bent on sending players back to square one.

This game does, after all, rely heavily on roguelike elements, so death means losing all upgrades obtained. Since it is procedurally generated, this also means that each run is going to be filled with different rooms and upgrades in unique orders. This is interesting from a metroidvania perspective, since many upgrades serve multiple purposes; the Flamethrower, for instance, both passes through walls (allowing you to hit switches) and burns down certain blockades, and this type of creativity means that there are several ways to progress past a single gate blocking progress. As another example, you always need some kind of jumping upgrade at some point in the run, but there are multiple variations of these jumping upgrades.

What also helps is that these weapons serve effective combat purposes, as well. Going back to the Flamethrower example, the weapon has multiple attacking possibilities, as well, with the way that it's both a short-ranged powerhouse, as well as the way it leaves burns on enemies that damage them over time. The enemies in this game are generally tricky to fight, which really makes you put thought into how to tackle combat situations. As more and more upgrades are unlocked and appear in new playthroughs, you are offered a plethora of options for fighting baddies.

...For a certain amount of time, that is. One noticeable problem is the lack of variety; there are some examples above of how the game actually does variety well, but it doesn't do it well enough in the context of the endgame, because when you are at the end of the run, your loadout is usually going to look the same nearly every time. By utilising shops and shrines around the world, you can expect to finish the majority of runs with the same base gun upgrades, like shooting large bullets or shooting three bullets at a time, for instance. The optional weapons often end up losing their feeling of usefulness by the end of a run, because it's usually just better to spam the basic gun instead, since it almost always becomes overpowered. Since the finale makes having this strong of a gun basically a requirement (the final fights, while still doable, are tedious otherwise), it's not much of an option to rely on anything else - or at least not one that's fun. Room variety can also be a bit limited, as well, and you will probably run into 85% of the same rooms on repeated playthroughs.

It's luckily not something that majorly detracts from enjoyability when looking at the big picture, though, because for the most part taking out enemies is still cool to watch no matter how you do so. If there is one thing that never becomes enjoyable, though, it would have to be the platforming. The controls (which are presumably inspired by Super Metroid) are clunky and movement starts out slow, which causes sections requiring somewhat precise platforming to be a pain, and usually ends with you losing half your health in only a few seconds. This is (mostly) alleviated by the jumping upgrades, but it can take an annoying amount of time to obtain any of those, and having enjoyment of a mechanic as basic as platforming be dictated by luck isn't a fantastic feeling - you will always eventually get a jumping upgrade during a run, but patience may run a bit thin by the time that actually happens. This type of complaint could be applied to roguelikes in general, but in most cases that usually isn't as big of an issue as it is in A Robot Named Fight!.

Since Super Metroid has been brought up, this is a good time to discuss something you have probably been thinking after seeing even a single screenshot, which is to say that yes, this is extremely similar to the Metroid franchise. From the aesthetics, to the overall feel of the gameplay, the whole thing is incredibly reminiscent of the aforementioned Super Metroid. It's arguable whether or not this is a good thing (as well as questioning if it goes overboard with the similarities), but this ultimately does manage to create its own sense of identity with its mechanics that are unique, its sprites and enemy designs that are unique, and so on. Its inspirations are blatant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing since it manages to feel original to an acceptable degree nonetheless.

Beating the game isn't going to take long (most runs should last no longer than an hour), but due to the nature of its gameplay loop, there's plenty of replayability. It's a nice feeling when you unlock a new item and then try to find it in the next playthrough, and see how much havoc can be wreaked with it. Experimenting with different strategies is a rewarding process, even if a lot of runs end with the same general upgrades. There are plenty of secrets to discover, too, which offers even more incentive to keep playing. The game is planned to receive future updates with new content, as well, which means players are probably going to keep coming back for even longer.