Custom Robo Arena is like a cross between the handheld Pokemon games and Armored Core. You play the child-like RPG to meet friends and collect items to use in combat, then you enter combat and it's fast-paced robot butt kickings for everyone. I could do without the RPG element, really, but as a mechanic to upgrade your robot, it's good enough. The combat is what really gets me. It's fast paced, mildly strategic, and fun as hell. Over a wireless DS link it approaches AWESOME, but doesn't quite make it.

So you start the game as a boy (no girl characters allowed, to the consternation of my wife) who has just moved to town. To celebrate this in-no-way special event, your father gives you a robot, 3 guns, a miniature robot garage, a cleaning cloth, and a cell phone. To your sister, sitting at the same breakfast table, he gives NOTHING. Way to go, parents. The father also points out how badly whipped he is by asking the mother's permission for every action, which I think is more of a comedic dig at American culture than a character flaw, but still, annoying.

So you take your exorbitant new presents and go to school, where you are very quickly introduced to 3 or 4 permanent plot characters (we know they're permanent because anime-style drawings of them are present in the back of the instruction manual). You are immediately asked to join one of your school's robo-battle clubs, and thrown into a battle against a low-level opponent. Your club president gives you some pointers along the way, and you should get a good feel for the combat, which is where the game really shines.

Your robo consists of 5 parts: Body, legs, gun, bomb, and pod. The body, from what I can tell, determines armor, energy, and speed. The legs determine speed and jumping height, and the other three are weapons. The gun is your primary weapon, and you can choose between short-range, high-damage weapons like a shotgun, to long range homing missiles that do little damage (but always hit). When you fire a bomb, your Robo stops moving and a targeting reticule appears on the ground near your opponent. You move the target around, then fire your bombs, which travel in an arc (normally) to the target and explode. Pods are very very VERY slow-moving bombs, basically. I'm not entirely sure what they're good for, though I do use them when I find myself attempting to make a quick exit from a close-range situation.

There are a few minor annoyances, like how you have to use polishing cloths and the DS stylus to actually polish your Robo between battles (a clean robo is more effective). Also, single-cart DS play is very limited. One arena and about 15 weapons (which still adds up to a lot of combinations, but some of the weapons are useless) is all you get. If you find someone with another custom robo cart, you're in for a treat.

All in all, the combat is what the game is about, and the RPG element is really only for storytelling and item collecting. The term "RPG" as it applies to video games is usually in reference to combat rather than the actual walking around town, so I guess I should say this is a fast-paced robot arena combat game where you inexplicably play the boring parts of Pokemon in between each battle. Therefore, the combat gets an AWESOME, and the rest brings it down to a WIN.