Robots at Midnight - PS5 Review

Robots at Midnight by developer Finish Line Games and publisher Snail Games USA—Playstation 5 review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Do you want to bash your way through a series of hostile robots on a ruined planet? How about interacting with some really quirky non-hostile robot friends? You wanna get called a squishy for being the only known human on the planet? Well then, Robots at Midnight may be what you’re looking for.

In Robots at Midnight you take the role of Zoe, a young girl who used to live on a space station, but there was a robot uprising and she had to get shot off in an escape pod. Waking up from stasis, she is found by the robot Doug, and so begins her journey to get her robot helper back online, find a way back to the space station, and find out what has happened to her dad, all on the ruined world of Yob!

Now despite what the title would imply, the bulk of the game does not, in fact, take place at midnight. Zoe, like any reasonable person, sets out on her adventure during the day. What happens at midnight you ask? Well, you’ll have to find that out yourself. Gameplay is the same between daytime and midnight though, and there is no “time system”, so midnight occurs as a plot device not after a certain amount of time passes.

Robots at Midnight is an action RPG in the soulslike style. You have a stamina bar, a dodge, a parry mechanic, and different weapons and combos, and on death you return to the last campfire you lit and lose ten percent of your cash. All in all it isn’t really all that punishing material-wise, but having to make your way back to the last place you left off can be annoying if it’s a long walk.

So let’s talk a bit about general gameplay and exploration a little. For the most part you will be wandering around a few different environments beating up bots, looking for treasure, and doing some mildly unwieldly platforming. You have a sort of rocket propelled jump you can use while a charge gauge is full, but it kinda blasts you off in one direction at full power, so it isn’t that great for precision landings. It’s a good thing the platforming segments are generally pretty light.

Once you’ve decided to knock out some baddy bots, combat will be fairly standard soulslike fare. You have your stamina that depletes when taking an action such as rolling or attacking, you have a parry and guard as well. You also have a special move that charges pretty quick over time that also acts as a boosted dodge. Now, unlike standard soulslike combat, you can ragdoll almost all enemies. Which is…weird and can cause some issues, but can be kind of funny? You also have access to a glove that has a few interesting functions, such as a powered punch or a laser, which requires a charge gauge to fire/use.

I mentioned it just now, but you can ragdoll enemies if you hit them enough or with strong hits. By the way, it feels like strong hits only increase your stagger/ragdoll effect and not actual damage for some weapons, but I’d need some more testing to confirm that. Now, ragdolling still living enemies you’d think would be a good thing, right? Well, a third of the time the enemy falls over and it’s free real-estate. One third of the time they go flying and you have to decide whether you want to try and get a hit or two in or just wait until they come back and your stamina comes back. The last third of the time? They glitch out of the environment. Yes, this can happen on bosses. No, sometimes they cannot get back into the boss arena.

The combat itself can feel really clunky depending on your weapon choice. It isn’t the worst by any means, but it feels like you overcommit to almost any attack you do when using a heavy weapon. The light weapons aren’t an issue with overcommitting, but the decreased range tends to put you in targeting distance of enemies. Add to this that some enemies, or groups of enemies, can flinch you constantly and you better be prepared for some really cheap deaths. As an added bonus, there is a delay when drawing your weapon, so you need to take that into account on the first hit when getting into combat.

Oh, and I forgot to mention this, but you have a limited guard based on “tokens” tied primarily to the armour you wear. If you get hit while guarding you lose tokens. If you run out, you can’t block attacks anymore. As long as you have at least half a token you’re ok though. They recover over time, so playing a little more defensively is a perfectly fine strategy. Just be careful not to block while out of tokens, otherwise YOU might be the one getting ragdolled.

That’s it combat wise, but there are a few other issues I had with the game. The plot isn’t particularly explained very well, and not in a souls type “find the story yourself”, but in a “we only give you two thirds”. Honestly I finished the game and felt like I played a prequel or long demo for the main game. There aren’t many enemy types either, with tall lanky robots, short and round bots, and floating head types. Some of the bosses are a little more unique, but it takes a while to get to those. As a nice aside, there is a tutorial available in-game any time you pause in case you forget some of the controls, which is really nice.

The graphics and character design are pretty decent, and I did like the soundtrack, but neither are really stand-out. Ultimately Robots at Midnight is a pretty ok game, but it doesn’t really put itself super out there in terms of really catching you off guard in a good way. That being said, it is by no means a bad game. I actually had a lot of fun. Robots at Midnight is kind of like a more easily playable soulslike, or perhaps a casual souls type game. While the harder difficulty mode can pose a challenge at certain points, the base difficulty isn’t too tough for those unused to the gameplay or those looking for less of a challenge.

Robots at Midnight also features a crafting style upgrade mechanic where you can improve most of the weapons you acquire. In fact, this is where all your stats and bonus effects come from. Some gear may give increases to attack, defense token amount, recharge rate of the charge gauge, or even some demerits to balance other bonuses. Upgrading can get expensive however, so be aware of that and think about what weapons and armour you prefer to use.

Overall Robots at Midnight is a pretty fun title that doesn’t really bring much new to the table. It’s pretty short, but it’s also not super expensive either, so it’s not the worst tradeoff. While there are a number of bugs, quirks, and glitches, there isn’t too much that isn’t workable or solvable in some way. While I did have plenty of fun, it’s hard to say Robots at Midnight really stands out in the genre. If you’re looking for a quick and casual souls type style, Robots at Midnight may certainly scratch that itch, but for more veteran players of souls-style games, it would definitely feel lacking. Take a look at Robots at Midnight to see if you think it may be interesting, I certainly had fun with it.

 

Score: 7 / 10