"Dash my money away? No thanks."

Apart from having played a previous "Zoids" RPG and knowing that this game was based in a Japanese anime series, there was not much I knew before being given the opportunity to test this game. Personally, perhaps I would have liked it to continue like that.

While it manages to effectively fulfill the task of being a platform game where you can fight tons of attacking enemies by using your weapons, that's the best of this game. From there, it's all the way down the mountain.

Sure, you can select up to 4 weapons to the Zoids you acquire during the levels, but is there any point on doing so when your first weapons turn out being more powerful than the ones acquired later on? I don't believe so.

You eventually get up to 5 different Zoids to select from in a party of 3, all of which should have unique abilities. Fair enough, but after getting a new unit, I think you could, at least, be taught on how to use their special move. However, you aren't, and it will probably take you a long time to find out that the red unit can tear some walls down, let alone some of the other special abilities acquired later units may have.

Then, each level is strangely similar to ones played before and they always end after you defeat its boss battle, which tends to be hard only for the first 2 or 3 levels. From there on, after acquiring your other units, those battles generally become a lot easier and most players may even be able to win without any effort. Those levels can be usually acquired in a certain menu, and more of those seem to come up when you fully complete previous ones. As stated before, with most of them being accessible in previous areas with just some small changes, the game becomes predictable (new area seen in there instantly equals the position of a new boss) and even less interesting than with the existence of the radar. This radar always points at the position of the boss, making it even easier to spot it.

Some of those levels have more than one boss battle, with the player being required to defeat all of them in order to gain as much bonus as possible. While you are not told to do it and you don't actually need to do it (you just need to defeat the main boss), eventually you'll reach a point where you can't get any more levels, hinting you that you need to fully complete previous ones.

Story? You'll hardly notice there's one, since you simply face it before starting the first level and nowhere else, besides probably the usual ending sequence. In that small opportunity, you will see that your main character finds a strange bracelet with some odd powers, but what else there is to it? Maybe we'll never know...

While in the cut scenes the graphics seem to depict anime-like sequences, generally the animations seen in the levels are quite good. They could be better, as the Zoids don't usually feel the other animations or the scenario, but this look will do the job in an effective, yet not-so-shiny, way. The cut scenes, while good looking, are boring and you can't even seem to be able to skip the text.

The sound isn't very nice, it mostly resembles the one heard in previous GBA titles, with most people feeling like turning it off after a while.

So, who should play the game? Only Zoids' fans, as everyone else can pick more interesting games for this same console.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/06