An interesting spin off from the palystation 2 classic. Create your own Trotmobile and begin to fight!
First off, the game is about you travelling to this city to compete in a battle tournament. You soon meet a mechanic and you both team up to win the tournament. Along the way, you meet a group of villains called the Dark Scorpions. As you defeat people at the coliseum, you raise money and fame points. The more fame points you have, the higher your rank becomes (Ranks go from rank D-S). The ranking systems and coliseum matches are fun, but by the time you get to rank B, there are not a lot of new opponents to challenge.
The missions are fun at first, but they become repetitive over time. There are a lot of missions to do such as delivering items and finding people. If you can't complete a mission, then you can always cancel it. Sometimes you can't cancel some missions though. These missions are usually involved with the story mode. There are only 3 main areas for you to do missions in as well. A forest, ice field, and a wastland type of field. Each one leads up to a volcanoe that you can venture into later on as the game progresses, you'll need a special weapon though to do this.. In each area, there are different types of opponents that are well suited for the environment. There are alot of enemies as well. these include trotmobiles that use flame throwers, cannons, normal blasters, and some even use giant hammers. At first these opponents may seem strong, but they're actually easy to beat near the end of the game. There's also a hidden area where there 10 floors to it. This area reminds me of dungeon games, as you need three things to continue to the next floor: a key, an item, and you need to find the door. There's a surprise though when you complete this dungeon, so it's well worth it.
The graphics and music are decent. They could have been better, but they could have been worse. While playing the game though, you may notice that your character moves in slower. This only happens to me though when I enter and exit buildings. This can also happen when playing in your trotmobile, causing you to miss your target when shooting at them, or causing you to take damage when you try to dodge your opponent's attack. This didn't really happen to me that much.
I mainly liked how you can choose what your character says in situations. Because of this, the game has three endings to it (I suppose there is a true ending, a bad ending, and a random ending.) This game left out some features that the original Steambot Chronicles has however. These are the music games, and changing your character's clothes. Unlike other mech games that give you a more serious, military feeling, this game is more like an RPG as well.
As for controls, this game has new controls for using your Trotmobile. For those of you who liked the controls from the ps2 version, you can simply change it the controls if you wish. Since I didn't play the ps2 version, I found myself most comfortable with the default controls.
I'm mostly disappointed with how short the game is. I've been playing it for 2 days since I got and it was so addicting, but I'm nearly done with it. The game only last for about 15 hours. If you do take the time to complete every signal mission, then you'll probably spend an average of 20 hours to complete everything. Even though it's too short though, I'm sure you'll have fun with customizing your own Trotmobile for certain missions.
Overall, Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament is pretty fun and addictive. The game play is basically a sand box style fighting game. Anyone who's new to the series may like it. People who played the ps2 version may be a little disappointed with this game though. However, I really have no complaints with the game. I only hate that fact that the main story was too short. As I said before, most of the missions do not have to be done to beat the game. So the game is drastically shorten. Anyone who enjoys 3D fighting arena games will definitely enjoy it while it last. Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament will satisfy anyone looking to play a mech game. The game is definitely one of the most unusual rpg games that I have ever played, but that's probably because I never played a mech/rpg game before. It may not be as intense as other games, but the game will win you over with it's unique charm. Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament is a great game that all psp users need to pick up.