Lets Give Kids Missiles, Lasers, Bullets, and More Stuffed Into Toy Robots - Let's Play Medabots: Metabee (GBA)

[Niddo]

Lets Play Medabots: Metabee Version!

Q: Who exactly are you?

A: Niddo. Also go by Nidtendofreak or The Niddo depending what site you look at and how old the account is. I’m new to making LPs but not new to enjoying them. After over 5 years of reading and watching LPs I figured I should give making one a shot! Any and all feedback is welcome as long as its actionable, I don’t doubt I got a bunch to learn through this little adventure.

Q: Alright, fair enough. What exactly are you playing here, it looks vaguely familiar from my childhood/I think I’ve seen a screenshot or two of this before/wasn’t this on the Wii U VC?

A: What you’re looking at here, is one of the few (and the best frankly) of the Medabots series released outside of Japan (known as Medarot within Japan). Developed by Natsume of Harvest Moon fame, the series started back in 1997 and had a fair amount of success. Medarot 1-5 were all created, followed by the spinoff game Medarot G. Then in late 2002 a GBA remake of Medarot 2 was released with two versions: Metabee and Rokusho. The remake went worldwide, with Medabots: Metabee and Medabots: Rokusho releasing outside of Japan. Along with the two versions of the remake release Metabots AX: Metabee/Metabots AX: Rokusho (a… brawler/platform fighter? on the GBA) and Metabots: Infinity (A 3D arena shooter for the Gamecube). Around the same time the anime aired outside of Japan and the toy line was released.

It was a massive hit… for a year or two. And then Medabots faded away outside of Japan. While the series is still ongoing with releases on the DS and 3DS (and even showing up in a Super Robot Wars mobile game), it failed to have a long lasting impact on the rest of the world and Natsume isn’t particularly interested in rolling the dice again.

Q: Mildly interesting. Why are you LPing this game then?

A: Because it was the first RPG I ever played. I started on the Gameboy Pocket, then the Gameboy Colour, and then the Gameboy Advance, but I had never gotten an RPG or even knew what one really was. Yep, no Pokemon for me; didn’t interest me, was busy playing other games. But when the Medabot toys hit my elementary school playground I just had to have them. I’ve always loved robots, they simply fascinate me. Not only did I get the toys (didn’t get to watch the anime sadly, it was always on at the wrong time in my timezone), I saw that they had a GBA game. I immediately bought it and was hooked.

Another reason why I want to LP this game: I think it was sadly overlooked. It got run over by Pokemon pretty hard, Digimon didn’t help, and at my school at least Yu-gi-oh was the final nail in its coffin. All things considered it was pretty rough timing for a NA release: Pokemon started only two years prior but had a massive foothold, and other popular series were coming up shortly afterwards. Kids knew Pokemon and loved it, thought Digimon were a ripoff but still kinda cool, and thought Yu-gi-oh was a cool “big kid” thing to get into. Medabots just… never grabbed a solid foothold. The fact that only the RPG game was any good didn’t help either, even then if you wanted a more robot based/futuristic RPG on the GBA the MegaMan Battle Network line was a better series to go with.

Despite being overlooked it had some really good mechanics behind it. Not flawless, but a lot more detailed than you would perhaps expect at first glance, certainly a lot of things that flew over my tiny brain at the time. But it’s good enough that every few years I come back to it and play it again. Its a shame it wasn’t given a better chance, but I hope people can enjoy exploring it with me.

Q: Why the Metabee version and not the Rokusho version?

A: There’s only a minor handful of differences between the two versions, all of them coming down to who’s using what Medabot. Metabee sticks with common canon for the series (as far as I can tell), Rokusho mixes things up but really its only a handful of Medabots that get swapped out. Metabee version also has my favourite Medabot in terms of design so we’re going with that one.

Q: Less talk, more getting to the fun stuff. What are the rules for this LP and how is it going to work?

A: This is primarily a screenshot LP. I’ll have a few videos here and there, but it is an RPG at the end of the day, those don’t tend to make the most fascinating videos. I’ll aim to be fairly informative without going over ever single little piece of text and I’m certainly not grinding for every single Medapart because that’s just insane as the drops are all RNG luck and its literally impossible to get every part without trading or cheating with a Gameshark. I’ll be aiming to update on Saturdays, work and real life allowing. If I can figure out a good way to post music tracks I may do that as well, some of them are pretty great.

As for spoilers: no plot spoilers, not even in spoiler bars. The game goes to some locations you would not expect as it becomes a rather silly game later on and I’d rather not have that spoiled for anyone. Metaparts and Medals accessible in the near future may be discussed in spoiler tags, use your judgement for what “near future” means. Any Metaparts or Medals already seen are fair game to discuss without any spoiler tags.

Feel free to play along, there’s very few things you’re in danger of missing permanently.

Q: I know you said no spoilers for the plot, but what about the problem in the post-credits part where-

A: NO SPOILERS

First part should be up sometime today or tomorrow hopefully. Until then, enjoy the intro video!

Updates:

• Part 1 Tricking Little Kids To Save Your Hide
• Part 2 Look At Me: I’m The Bully Now
• Part 3.1 School Is For Learning
• Part 3.2 School Is For Even More Learning
• Part 4 That Doesn’t Make Things Any Better
• Miniature Update Riverview Hopmart

[Niddo]

Part 1: Tricking Little Kids To Save Your Hide

Alright, lets get this party started! Lots of talking/exposition in this update, next update will be where the first Robattle happens.

After you’ve pressed Start, you’re taking to a deceptively important screen

The first two are fairly self-explanatory, and the last thing in the options box is simply choosing the battle music. However, its the first two things that you should be aware of.

First up is the Robattle Time. It decides how long Robattles can last until time is up and a winner is decided based on how many Metaparts were destroyed on either side. The default is Long, I’d highly recommend switching to Normal. Short is a bit more of a gamble, particularly early on in the game. It will make more sense once we actually start Robattling, and we can change it later on as we wish (Its actually a smart tactic for a few particular battles), but Normal is where I’d recommend keeping things.

Robattle Message determines if there’s a pop up after every action in a Robattle describing what is about to happen. It disrupts the flow of the fights a bit, but particularly during your first time playing it can be handy to keep on for reasons that will make more sense a few updates from now when I get into the details of Robattles.

With that out of the way, lets move onto the game proper!

We start off with a boy entering some sort of lab. Scientists all around by the looks. Typical place an elementary school kid would be hanging around and marching up to the front desk.
Good afternoon!
Good afternoon. Did you come by to see Dr.Aki again?
Yep!
Well, then you should go check his office all the way in the back.
Okay, thanks a lot!
Now that we have control, lets do what any good RPG protagonist would do: go bug every NPC around instead of the objective. Besides, looks like the kid has been here multiple times before, the other scientists probably at least recognize him as that weirdo who keeps bugging them. Lets start with the one just beyond the entrance lobby:

That’s… reasonably self-evident but sure. The other two further to the left (one off screen) say more or less the same thing in different words. The second one mentions sending off the data to Medabots Corporation, sounds as if there’s at least one company responsible for Medabots.

Nothing interesting from the scientist to the North, so lets go all the way East and into the next room.

Oh hey, this looks more interesting. What we’ve entered is the Medabot Museum. Don’t know why its in the exact same building as a fully functional research facility, but it is pretty small. Lets poke around a bit, shall we?

Let’s start here.
Can it be… The ultra-rare “?” Medal!?

Some sort of rare Medal? Well, makes sense for that to be in a museum. Bit of a weird name though: “?” is its actual name. Next one over is a “CAT” Medal, which gets the same reaction out of the kid.

Let’s look over here now, check out the generic looking sprites.
Its “Sailormate”… The one Erika has is “Brass”, which is the improved version of this Medabot. They don’t even sell this anymore.

Ah, so antique models. Not sure if the kid is reading off of an info card or if he just knows all of this stuff. He identifies the upper three models as Moon Dragon, Natural Color, and Betty Bear.

Enough of the generics, lets check out the two unique sprites, one that looks suspiciously similar to a robot in the intro video.

I wanna touch it…

That’s so cool!!
Product placement in a museum now? Guess the Medabot Corporation is the sponsor or something. Would make sense: people come in to see the rare and antique things, see new shiny things coming soon.

Alright, back to the lab! This time we head North from the main lobby.

Good to know, I’ll be sure to do that last.

Beyond the doors is of course, more computers and scientists. They explain that they’re about to start a test Robattle and that they can’t stop to talk when you bug them.

And this here is the Robattle in question, with the two generic Medabots. If you go to the far West between the two computers you can enter Dr.Aki’s lab, but there’s another door to the North. I wanna see what’s in there!

Nonsense. Everything else has been open to the public. What happens if I try to just waltz in?

I told you this room was off limits, kid!

…Did he just deck an elementary school kid?

Why yes, yes he did. Complete with a punch sound effect and everything. Clearly a reasonable response to a curious kid!

Lets go see that Dr.Aki, report his staff for abusing children. This cannot stand!

There’s the old geezer now. Lets march up and give him a piece of our mind!

Bah, who are we kidding. This is a Japanese RPG. Besides, its not like we were forced to try to go into that door. Kinda our bad… sorta… not really… we’ll just go with it.
Good afternoon, Dr. Aki.
Hmm? Oh, it’s you. you come here quite a lot.
A kid that bugs a laboratory a lot. That sure sounds conducive to a good work environment. No wonder that other scientist decked him, the kid has probably tried to enter multiple times before!
Don’t you know I’m always busy? Um… uh…
Dr. Akiii! You always forget my name! I’m…

Protag naming screen get! Default is Ikki, which is what you’ll see for the rest of this update at least. If the readers decide upon another name before the next update I’ll change it. But at least Dr.Aki has a good reason for not remembering the kid’s name.
Of, of course! you’re Ikki. But I’m busy so I can’t spend too much time with you.
But I wanna learn more about Medabots!
Okay, okay. IF you really mean that, then it’d be best to go visit my granddaughter Nae’s research room.

Smart idea. Dump the kid onto your granddaughter. Her turn to babysit.
Your granddaughter?
My granddaughter Nae has been helping me ever since she was little. She knows almost as much as I do about Medabots.
Really? Yay! Okay, well, I guess I’ll be going!

Successfully pawned off, Ikki rushes away. Since we haven’t ran into a female scientist yet, she clearly must be behind the door we couldn’t get in before. I’m sure if we tell the scientist there that Dr.Aki told us to go in he’ll just let us in-

That would be a no.
Um, is this room…
We’ve got some very important research in progress here. Only those with proper clearance are…

Speaking of Nae, that must be her. Clearly she heard the sound of a child being beaten for a second time and came to investigate.
What’s going on here?
Ah… my apologies, Miss Nae. This kid was trying to get into the room without permission so I was just…

That’s right, you look sheepish-yet-smug you jerk! I bet she’s going to fire you!
Um, I…
Pleased to meet you. My name is Nae, what’s your name?

-sigh- She’s not going to fire him, is he?
Nice to meet you. My name is Ikki.
Nae is Dr.Aki’s granddaughter. She’s well known throughout the Medabot world as the authority on all things that are related to Medabots.
Wow, that’s amazing!
Let us drop the formalities, shall we? So, do you like Medabots?
Yup!
Well then, do you want to come see my research lab?
Wha!? Are you sure it’s okay?
Miss Nae! Surely you can’t be serious about showing such important research to a kid!
I really don’t mind. So, shall we go Ikki?
Okay!

Ah, that’s how she’s handling the situation. Letting him actually see inside of the lab, hope he only talks about that and not about the beating he took. Got it. I only give it about 50/50 odds of actually working though.

We enter the lab and meet Nae up past her computer.

developing now.
Elemental Series? I’ve never heard of that on “Medabots Weekly”.
Actually, it’s still a secret♥︎
Holy Medaroli! I get to see them before anyone else!

…Make that 90% chance that her little plan to avoid the lab getting sued succeeds. Well played Nae, well played.
We’re not finished with them yet, so they aren’t fully functional. But you can go see them for yourself.

And that we shall! From right to left they are:

• Earthkrono, a Tank Type Medabot that can transform its Medaparts to protect allies.
• Saldron, a Floater Type Medabot that can transform its Medaparts to attack.
• Windsail, an Air Type Medabot that can transform its Medaparts to lower enemy abilities.
• Aquacrown, a Sea Type Medabot that can transform its Medaparts to help out allies.

Pretty cool stuff I suppose, getting to see the new models before they’re announced. But what’s in that room behind Nae?

We’ve hit the Medal motherload! I’ll quickly run through them:

• BAT - very compatible with Medaparts that target Air Type Medabots
• CHAMELEON - very compatible with Medaparts that hinder an enemy’s attacks
• KAPPA - very compatible with Medaparts that target Sea Type Medabots
• RABBIT - very compatible with Medaparts that control a Medabot’s speed
• MONKEY - very compatible with Medaparts that confuse Medabots
• MOUSE - very compatible with Medaparts that assist an allies attack

I swear this will all make more sense in an update or two. Just keep in mind for now this cache of medals in the back of your head. But with that, lets leave the lab!

So, this is the outside world huh. Finally get to see it. To the bottom left you can see the school, and to the bottom right the local store, Riverview City Hopmart.
Oh no! Look at the time! I’d better hurry up and get home! “Medabots Weekly” is gonna to start!

Before we do that, lets quickly point out the buildings in town.

NPC lady to the North is blocking a path out, in front of Ikki is an abandoned warehouse.

The blue house belongs to somebody, but there’s no name out front. Below from left to right we have Samantha’s, Spike’s, and Sloan’s houses. I’m sure we’ll get to know them soon.

Erika’s house, the person who has the Brass model of Medabot. And the dark blue house is Ikki’s. Let’s race inside, the show is about to start!

Looks like Ikki’s mom was waiting for us to return.

Where did you go? You always just disappear on me.
Later! I’ve gotta run!
Hold on!

No time to hold on Mom, TV awaits! 'side you’d think the lab would have told her by now that Ikki is constantly bugging them so she knew where he was. Pretty tiny town after all.

Upstairs we’re greeted by our dog, Salty. He’s a good boy, but we have more important things to do in our elementary school mind. Must. Watch. TV.

For my sanity’s sake I’m not going to quote the show word for word. I’ll go over what it covers in more detail in an update or two. Here’s the main take aways from it though:

• Medabots start with a Tinpet. Its a blue or red metal frame that Medaparts go onto, male or female respectively.
• First up is a Head Medapart. Metabee’s is called “Missile”
• Next is Right Arm. Metabee’s is “Revolver”
• After that is Left Arm. Metabee’s is “Submachinegun”
• Final Medapart is Legs. Metabee’s is “Ochitsuka”
• You also need to include a Medal to make the robot activate. That’s why they’re called Medabots.
  
  
  
  Mom has had quite enough of our crap for one day though, and has decided TV time is done.
  Wha? Mommmm!
  If you’ve got time to sit around and watch TV, then you’ve got time to go down to the Hopmart and pick up some Spice-a-roni for tonight’s dinner.
  Maaaan.
  Do you have a problem?
  Okay. Okay.
  
  I’m just going to use $ instead out of convenience when I talk about money in this game. But boy, talk about a large sum of money for a little kid like Ikki. Well, nothing else to do but head North to the store I suppose.
  
  
  
  Here’s the store. Like the rest of the town, small. To our left is where we can normally buy Medaparts but they aren’t set up yet. Top right the magic staff holding lady is where you could link two GBAs together to trade Medaparts or Robattle. Let me tell you, the trading of parts was slooooow. Had a painfully long animation and you had to do it one at a time, ugh. But directly in front of us, an employee is getting ripped a new one by his boss.

You’ll have to forgive me for not giving some generic NPCs their sprites. Scientists come up just enough in the plot that I decided it was worth uploading theirs. That, and that goofy sheepish/smirk combo mugshot had to be seen.

Boss NPC: You idiotic fool!! Why in the world did you buy such expensive Medaparts without permission!? Just WHAT are you gonna do with them!?
Well…
Boss NPC What do you mean “Well”!? I said “What are you going to do!”
Yeah, I wonder what I should do with them.
Boss NPC If you want to keep your job, you’d better figure it out!

-Boss NPC storms out of store-

Man, my boss can be such a jerk sometimes.

Hey, you’re the loser who bought apparently some rather expensive parts without permission. Kinda stupid of you don’t you think? Ah well, lets go ask him where the Spice-A-Roni is, I don’t see it around here…

Oh, can I help you? A Medabot? I have a a great one for you!

Oh no. No, no no no no no. Oh no you don’t. Don’t dump your dumb mistake on me.

Um… no, I need Spice-A-Roni…
I’ve got a sweet deal on a totally awesome Kabuto model here! Your friends definitely won’t have THIS! You’ll be the coolest kid in town!

Wait, Kabuto? As in the one we saw in the museum? Like maybe not that exact model, but maybe like the one that was shown on Medabots Weekly today? Hmm… maybe we could buy both things…

Um… I…
So how much do you have? $50? Perfect! I’ll give you a great deal on the whole set for $49.80! Okay, all set! I’ll even throw in a Tinpet.

Wait, hold on, we can’t afford that we need Spice-A-Roni-

Ah crap. Sure enough, we get each piece listed on Medabots Weekly along with a male Tinpet. I think we just got tricked to save his job.

Now you’re a Medafighter! So what’s your name anyway? Mine’s Henry. What’s yours?
Well, I’m Ikki, but…
Ikki huh? That’s a great name for a Medafighter, don’t ya think? Well, now you’re all ready to make your big debut in the Robattle world!

Welp. That ended uh… poorly. As Ikki leaves though:

Wait, what? Did the Professor and Henry set up a scam for tricking kids out of their money? Actually, who is this Professor anyways? We know a Dr.Aki, but I don’t know if he’s actually a professor or just a researcher. Suspicious either way.

Either way, I guess we gotta go home and face the music. One thing we could try I suppose…

But, Spice-A-Roni is not the kind of thing that you ask neighbors for…

Worth a shot. Home we go.

Um… uh…
What’s that box you have there?
Waaah! T-that’s!
I can’t believe you did this! You don’t mean that you bought a toy with our dinner money!?
I did…
Go think about it in your room!!
Okay…

Well uh, that went well. Sheesh. Stupid Henry.

Salty tries to cheer Ikki up. Since he’s stuck up there, Ikki decides he might as well build the silly thing. A few moments later:

All done!
Huh? It’s not moving? What’s wrong?
Oops! I forgot the most important part!
Sniff… sniff…

Well, that sucks. Can’t even play with the toy that for some reason Ikki’s mom let him keep. Dad should be home soon, let’s see how this is going to turn out.

There he is now. But then from off screen:
Bwa ha ha ha ha!
What?

Cue the sinister/mysterious music here!
W-who are you! I-if you want money, I’m broke!
Do not fear. It is I! The Phantom Renegade! I have come to bring you a present.
??? The Phantom who?
Bwa ha ha ha ha! It doesn’t matter! Take this Medal!

Give this to your child! Present this to your boy!! Put this near his pillow while he is alseep!!! Any way you want, just give it to him! Farewell!

Your thoughts match mine.

Oh! Isn’t that a Medabot?
Dad…
Could this be the reason why your Mother is all bent out of shape?
Yeah…
Let me see. Oh, there’s no Medal inside. He can’t move without a Medal. Its called a Medabot because of the Medals, you know. See, we put the Medal inside just like this… Tah dah!

Its alive!

Woah! It moved!
Next you need to have a Medawatch to command your Medabot. Here, look what Daddy got you.
Wowwwwwww!! Thanks a lot Dad!
Ha ha ha. Looks like you’re all better now.

Welp, we got our first Medal as well! Medabot names are tied to the Medal, not the machine itself. Default here is Metabee, every other time the default is the name of the Medal itself. Like with Ikki, I’ll let the thread rename the Medal if they like. You can expect to see this Medal in every single fight I do, its an excellent one to use.

And now we have access to the menu by pressing the B button! We’ll get into that, and actual Robattles next update! I know this was a long one, but I wanted to get all of the introduction out of the way in one go so we can get to the more interesting stuff quicker.

[Kaed1234]

I loved Medabots as a kid! I had no idea that it was a game too. Can’t wait to see more.

[Niddo]

Next update time! Its going to be a little bit of a shorter one due to a surprise 52 hour work week, but the cutoff point leaves me in a good spot for expanding upon the mechanics next week, and as promised we’ll get some fights in today.

Part 2: Look At Me: I’m The Bully Now

Where we last left off, Ikki had gotten his first Medabot, Medal, and Medawatch. Lets take a look at that watch first of all. As mentioned you bring it up by pressing the B button.

4 different options show up, we’ll be going through them in order. The first one brings up the Medawatch’s actual functions

Spiffy new submenu. The image on the watch changes to the option you’re highlighting: a Tinpet for the Medabots screen, a generic Medal for the Medal screen, and a trio of tools for the Medaparts screen.

First screen here is for selecting your Medabots. Its actually the same screen you see at the start of a Robattle so you can choose who’s going to fight. However, when accessed through the Medawatch you also have the option to reorder your Medabots or choose one to customize by switching out its parts. As we literally just got our first Medabot we won’t be doing that as well, I can’t yet!

Since we’re on this screen I’ll briefly touch upon Metabee himself: he’s a very solid starting Medabot. If you wanted to you could easily use him as is through the first mini/tutorial adventure, the second adventure, and at least the start of the third adventure. By that point however you’re probably going to want to have replaced at least a few parts if not all but the head. But he’s excellent for our current situation, as long as you know what you’re doing. For reasons I’ll explain when I go into each individual part of his in more detail next update, his head stands out in particular as something fairly unique in the game and worth using up to potentially endgame.

Also, I’m never not using the Kabuto Medal. One of the best Medals in the game period.

Next up is the Medal screen. Its mainly for inspecting your Medal’s stats and not much else. There is a more detailed menu for each screen, that’s also planned for next update. But as you can see we can hold up to potentially 30 Medals. Without trading you can get pretty close to filling up those slots by the end of the game.

The Medapart menu is frankly the least useful page. Any part you’ve collected you can pull up in the menu, and then choose it to see its stats more detailed… but you can access the detailed stats through the Medabots page as well when building a Medabot. You can also see how many copies of the part you have on hand, and if it fits on Male or Female Tinpets.

As you can see from the top of the page you sort by Head/Left Arm/Right Arm/Legs. Each Medabot holds a particular spot on the Medaparts list, so in the above picture if I were to switch to Left Arm the Revolver part would be in the same spot the Missile part was: bottom of page 11.

Yes there are about 120 Medabots in the game, for a total of 480 Medaparts. You can’t collect all of the parts without trading as some you can only fight once or twice. But you can get the vast majority of them if you really wanted to.

Items menu is just where key items are stored. If they’re usable you can use them from the menu, most aren’t.

The Vehicle menu won’t be relevant for a kinda frustratingly long time.

And the Save menu is mostly what you’d expect! It also tells you how many Medals and Medaparts you have which is nice. There’s also a Wins/Total Battles category you can check out.

Enough looking at the menu, lets see what our parents have to say about us being ready to head out and conquer the world!

Be good and listen to your mother.

Huh. Surprisingly light sentence considering what Ikki did. I wonder how that conversation went.

You’re finally home! You have no idea what Ikki just did with the $50 I gave him for food. I can’t believe he would do such a thing! You go up there right now and give him a piece of your mind!
That’s nice dear. A strange man in a costume and mask just gave me a Medal and Medawatch and told me to give it to Ikki. Don’t know why, its not like he has a Medabot but it sounds like a good idea to me.

---

So I gave him the Medal and the Medawatch. Seems pretty happy to me, don’t know why you’re so upset about him having a Medabot
. . .
Oh yeah, right. I’ll tell him to behave next time I see him
. . .I give up.

I mean, really. Even if Ikki did get tricked… he never told his mom that. As far as both parents know Ikki just decided on his own to blow the $50 on a toy. That is a huge deal and absolutely nothing happens to him. The conversation had to have gone something pretty similar to that.

But who cares! Time to face the world and step outside, Metabee in tow.

Where we are immediately confronted by somebody!
Camera: Click!
Camera: Click Click!
Erika! You bought a camera?
I need one if I’m going to become a reporter.
What about you, Ikki? You’ve got a Medawatch, don’tcha? Have you Robattled yet?
Hmm? Well, sorta…
Hmmm, could it be that you haven’t started to Robattle yet? If that’s the case, then I’ll be your first opponent!
Wha!? Now hold on Erika. I’m not ready for…
I know! You don’t want to lose any Medaparts, right? This Robattle is just for fun so win or lose nobody will have to give up anything, okay? How there’s no reason not to, right? So let’s do it!

Cue the Robattle music, lets get out first fight on! Also, what she implied is true: normally when Robattling if you lose you have to give up a Medapart you were using in the battle. Which part you’re given up is chosen randomly. Also, if you have no fully built Medabots available you get a game over. Because you don’t have a chance to reequip parts during the ending of a battle, until Ikki gets a second Tinpet, Medal, and set of parts, any battle he loses is an instant game over.

Here is what the start of a Robattle looks like. Each character has a start of battle quote and displays their Medabots for the fight. You can bring up to three Medabots into a fight at once, you get to choose which three of yours you’re bringing on the next screen. The top left also lists the Robattle Field type: its not important quite yet, but in short order it will be a huge factor.

Like I said earlier, same page as the one on the Medawatch screen but without options outside of picking which Medabots you’re bringing.

This is what the Robattle Field itself looks like. You can see each team as well as that barrier in the middle. That’s the location each Medabot is running towards. Once they reach that barrier they get to launch their attack, then run back to the starting area to receive new orders. You can also see the Medawatch at the bottom of the screen with a lot of menus you can go through, and some sort of MF meter in the bottom left.

For boss fights I plan on showing video footage of them, while with generic fights I’ll just describe how the Medabots work with a screenshot. In both cases I’ll include a general strategy on how to beat that fight.

I’ll be doing it slightly differently in this case. The game just tosses you into a fight, but lets you do whatever without any consequences. Thus, I’m not going to go over any kind of strategy or the like. Instead I’m going to throw you the viewer into the fight as well! I’ll show off the various menus on the Medawatch so you can determine how much you can figure out on your own, and then start the fight without any explanation. Much like how a first time player is expected to behave.

Erika Robattle

But I won’t lose next time!
Oh yeah! This isn’t the time or place for this. There’s a big Robattle contest going on at the school, you know! I’m gonna go on ahead, okay? See you there!

And with that, Erika races on up to the school. With nothing else left to do, Ikki wanders up that way as well.

Hey Erika. What’s up with the Robattle contest?
You’re late. It’s already over. It looks like the leader of the Screws was the winner. They’ve got full control of the place.

Wow, that was pretty fast considering Ikki was like a minute at most behind Erika. We must have missed most of the fighting period while we were busy in our room. Well, might as well go up and talk with the winners. Kinda an odd name for the a group though, the Screws. But first lets see what else Erika has to say about them:

Those guys fight so dirty! They always say “The 3 of us count as 1 so if you can’t beat all 3 of us, then you can’t win.” They also say incredibly lame excuses that not even grade-schoolers use anymore.
Erika… Don’t forget that we are all still grade schoolers, you know…

Grade-schoolers/grade schoolers difference is from the game, not me. But it sounds like we got ourselves a small gang of bullies. The NPCs in the area don’t seem to really mind, one even enjoyed the battles. But let’s see what the trio themselves have to say from their podium.

I have to do laundry when I get home.

Uh… that’s nice? Okay, what about the other guy there?

If there is someone who thinks they can stand up to the Screws, bring it on!

Righto. Standard bragging. And the little lady up there?

Okay, I’ll take it easy on you.

We get a pop-up box asking if we’ll say yes or no. Ikki ain’t no wimp… okay he kinda is actually thinking back on how he responds to confrontation… but its because he’s that type of wimp he’s going to take them on! Because he doesn’t know how to say no! Also, its a “but though must” situation as if you try to back out Erika threatens to write an article about Ikki being the biggest chicken on campus.

Le… Let’s do it.
Ikki, say cheese!
I think you’re pointing your camera at the wrong person. We will be the winners.
Sloan, go for it!
I’m gonna mess your clothes up!

O_o Yeaaah, in case you haven’t figured out by his two lines already, almost everything Sloan says is clothing or laundry related. For some reason. Don’t ask, I don’t know.

Also, the Screws are playing for keeps. You lose, game over. Hope you saved before hand!

Sloan Fight
The fight against Sloan’s Totalizer here is a complete damage race. His arm attacks are very slow when combined with him being a tank type, but he can take a lot of punishment in return. What can, and will, catch you off guard is his head attack. He only has two shots with it, but they are fast to get going. Any attack that lands on Metabee is wiping out a part.

What you want to do is use the Submachine Gun attack until 3/4 of Totalizer’s parts are weakened by the damage. If you try to use it past that point, Totalizer will destroy Metabee’s left arm and make you miss the attack. After that, stick to spamming Missile until Totalizer goes down. If you try to use Revolver you can’t get enough damage in quickly enough and you risk him ripping you to shreds, since he has a pattern of Left Arm > Head > Right Arm > Head. If you destroy an arm he’ll skip to the next step. So if you’re fighting on a Short timer, use Revolver too much, and end up with 3 parts destroyed, you’re in trouble.

You see, if the battle ends due to time whoever has destroyed the most parts is the victor. Tie goes to the enemy. So in that situation, using Revolver could very much cause you to game over even though Metabee still has his head part and Totalizer is probably down to just his head part and is out of shots.

I’d say in a way Totalizer is the most difficult fight of the three Screws, because you’re kinda expected to lose during your first attempt. Most new players will still be doing random things and during the only previous battle they had with Erika Brass wasn’t doing much damage. And then suddenly they’re facing this slow guy who’s just absorbing damage. Player keeps messing around, Totalizer gets his arm shot in and suddenly the player realizes that he’s in potential trouble. The player will probably use either Submachine Gun or Missile next in response, and that’s when Totalizer will get his head attack in. It will always destroy Metabee’s left arm next (I’ll explain why in a minute), potentially causing Metabee to be unable to attack. If that happens the player is probably screwed.

For the record, I’d highly recommend replaying this fight repeatedly until you get the Tryanolaser head part. I got lucky and got it on my first try. His Megalaser is… acceptable but risky. Gigalaser is far too slow and Rollertank is just not going to be helpful at this stage of the game.

Thank you for taking care of Sloan.
Your next Spyke! Get him!
I’m gonna take your useless Medaparts!

Spyke Fight
If Sloan was a tutorial on damage racing, Spyke is a tutorial on picking out your shots. You can damage race his Cyandog to good effect as well, but its a bit of a gamble. Cyandog has a not so low chance of dealing a critical hit at this stage of the game, particularly when using Linear Cannon. If he pegs Metabee in the head with that once or twice and disables Metabee, that’s game over for you. If it hits an arm, the arm is gone.

What you may have noticed in the previous fights, is that when choosing what attack to use, an enemy’s Medapart will grow and shrink, kinda like in this picture

You can clearly see that Cyandog’s left arm seems larger. That’s because Metabee’s Missile attack will attempt to aim for that part.

Attempt is the keyword. There’s calculations involved with the target’s defensive stats from their leg parts, Medal bonuses, the part’s offensive stats, any attack buffs you have on, etc etc. If the defensive stats win out, the Metabot being hit will flinch but not be sent flying back. In that case the damage will be redirect to whichever out of legs, left arm, or right arm has the most HP left. It will never be redirected to the head as if the head is destroyed the Medabot is instantly destroyed. Generally speaking a Metabot’s legs will have the most HP to start out but not always.

If a Medabot goes stumbling backwards, the damage will all go where ever you aimed it. If they go stumbling back and the words Critical Hit appears, you’ll deal even more damage than the part normally can do. In the case of any kind of hit, if the total damage is more than the HP left on the part its wasted damage unless the attack has the ability to chain damage. If it can chain damage, the extra damage all goes into another random part. Its not a super common effect, but all missile type attacks (as in the actual attack type, not to be confused with Metabee’s Missile part) automatically have this built in.

As for the fight itself, Cyandog is nearly as fast as Metabee and nearly as strong, while having more HP. What I’d recommend doing is cycling through your parts and picking the one that can hit Cyandog’s head, and trying to disable Cyandog ASAP. Submachine Gun is particularly good at ripping Cyandog apart, Missile will most likely be defended against. If you can’t take out the head, prioritize the left arm. For most Medabots, their left arm is stronger than their right arm. Its not a difficult fight, but you can get unlucky particularly with that Linear Cannon going. Leaving Cyandog armless is the most risky thing you can do (which naturally I did in the video), if you can leave his right arm so he has something much weaker to spam that’s ideal.

As for rewards, I’d say it’s an equal weighting between Snipe Rifle and Gunner parts. If you have the ideal Totalizer reward part then don’t worry too much about which Cyandog part you get, but if you settled for something lessor from Totalizer really try to get one of the two better Cyandog parts. Linnear Cannon is decent, and Assault is… usable but its a distant 4th compared to the others.

How pitiful.
I will face you next.

Samantha Robattle
Ah, Samantha. Weakest of the Screws despite being their leader. Peppercat just does such low damage, it takes a lot of hits before it starts to add up. She’s there to teach the player that status effects exist in the game such as stop but its a large non-factor in the fight. She also exists to teach the player that Medabots can in fact dodge attacks: she’ll almost always dodge Submachine Gun. Revolver and Missile will hit. Pretty much just spam Revolver until Peppercat is getting low on HP, then spam Missile.

As for reward: doesn’t matter. Frankly none of the parts are great, and you can’t use any of them for a while: they only fit on Female Tinpets and when you get your first one it comes with parts better than what Peppercat has to offer you.

Amazing! I got some great shots of the Robattle! I can see the headline now, “Miracle Victory!”
“Miracle”?

Kinda harsh Erika. It wasn’t that close, in fact we wiped the floor with all three really. I guess I can kinda see why some Medabots would have a hard time fighting all three in a row but Metabee has some good offensive power to him. Well, time to do a victory lap I suppose!

Now what! Didn’t we settle this fight?
We were playing by kids rules so the win doesn’t count. I’ll show you something amazing using the real rules. Peppercat! Transport!

Oh, you want a rematch? Bring it on!

Spyke! Sloan! Transport your Medabots too!

Oh. That uh, that might be punching a bit above Metabee’s range. If it was just Sloan and one other it might be doable with good targeting, but Peppercat slowing us down while Cyandog is taking potshots and Totalizer is charging up his laser? Sheesh that’s a tall order. Maybe if Metabee gets lucky and can target Cyandog’s head with Submachine Gun for his first attack, gets a critical hit…

3 against one is cheating!
Sorry, official rules. You’d better be prepared!
H-hold on a sec…

Well, this doesn’t look good. They’re not showing Ikki any mercy and technically speaking that’s allowed by the rules. I don’t think we can really-

What’s that heroic, determined theme I hear playing suddenly?

Screws: Our Medabots!! What the heck is that thing!? A Kabuto Medabot doesn’t have the data to even DO a technique like that! I’m gonna wet my pants!

I dunno what you did, but I refuse to accept this loss.
Someday you’ll be the one doing laundry!
You haven’t seen the last of us!

…What was that? Metabee apparently just one shotted all three opponents and the Screws are not happy. They storm off into the school while Erika takes another photo.

Wasn’t that amazing! What WAS that just now?
Umm… I don’t really know. Anyway Erika, what’s the headline of the school’s paper gonna be?
Hmm… How about “Awesome Medabot Appears!” What do you think?
I like “Awesome Medafighter Appears.”
No no, your Medabot was awesome, not you Ikki.
Aw man…
Okay, well I’m gonna go start writing the article, so why don’t you go look for Robattle opponents around school?
Well, guess I’ll go look around school for some Robattles.

Translation: we’ve overthrown the school bullies, and now its time to take our lunch money tolls. But just what did Metabee manage to pull off there?

Next time: I finally explain the battle system in depth! As its only then that a player can really learn much beyond some very barebones things.

[Niddo]

Apologies, today’s update will have to be delayed by a few days. Another week of mandatory overtime, some panicky situations with some other IRL stuff, and needing a bit more time to research some of the damage formulas under the hood because the only source I’ve found is a topic on GameFAQs from 8 years ago. I have all of the footage recorded though and I have some extra days off next week so I should be locked in for a Monday update.

[Niddo]

Lets get most of the battle system stuff out of the way in this update.

Part 3.1: School Is For Learning

Very first thing we’re going to do here, is go into the Medawatch and look at a stat breakdown for Metabee’s parts. We’re going to start swapping them out this update but lets break them down right now. First up is going to be Head, Left Arm, and Right Arm as they all have the same stat system behind them:

Starting at the left side of the screen, the first blue box below the Medapart’s picture describes the type of action take, Shoot or Aim Shot in this case. The second blue box describes the Medal capability. There’s categories such as Shoot, Strike, Anti-Air, Heal, etc etc, basically broader buckets that each action type can fall into. Medals will always synergies well with one particular category (occasionally with a particular action type instead), and will always force the Medabot to target a specific category/action type if it exists on the enemy team. I’ll go into that in more detail when covering Medals later on.

Something worth noting is that the difference between Shoot and Aim Shot isn’t just for show. Certain actions have bonuses or penalties tied to them. In Aim Shot’s case, it has a bonus to its chance of a critical hit (couldn’t find information on exactly how large the bonus is). However when returning from an attack the Medabot is unable to evade any incoming attacks.

Its also worth noting that the Missile head part is extremely rare in how it operates. Normally the second blue box would classify it as being compatible with Missile Medal interactions. Outside of Medabee’s and Rokusho’s head parts, the game follows a very strict “your Medal compatibility will be exactly what the part itself does”. I cannot think of any other exceptions outside of their line of Medaparts off of the top of my head.

In between the two blue boxes and the green list is a small square with a symbol that designates if its a “Remoteness Medapart” or “Proximity Medapart”. Basically with guns you can aim at targets, with melee weapons you just strike at the closest target with no choice of aim.

Going down the green list:

• Armor is how much HP a particular part has. When it reaches 0 the part is destroyed. If the Head is destroyed the Medabot shuts down
• Rate of Success is… not as straight forwards as it looks. Its what the Medapart itself adds to the RoS, on top of bonuses from Medals and other factors. To be more specific (all formulas are credited to gsk6390 on GameFAQs because that is all I could find): TotalROS = TotalCompatibilityBonus + MedalSkill(which skill obviously depends on type of action) + ROS + (Proximity or Remoteness). Basic thing to keep in mind, you want the RoS number to be high, and you want to be using parts your Medal is compatible with, or at least has a good skill rating in. You’ll see the skill rating bit in the Medal breakdown later this update.
• Power is… also something added to a formula, this time for damage. Damage = TotalROS/4 + Power + (Berserk only, Propulsion/2) - EnemyDefense/(2 or 4) - EnemyTotalCompatibilityBonus/4 - EnemyLevel/(2 or 4). Its worth noting that a Critical Hit ignores defence entirely, and that the minimum damage a part can do is equal to the Power of that part (plus half of your Propulsion for Berserk parts). So if say, Metabee scores a critical hit with his Missile Part (which has that little icon in the Power row to indicate it deals Chain Damage), you can absolutely tear Medabots to pieces. Its also why its worth using Aim Shot attacks a lot even though you can’t evade afterwards: a critical hit has a very good chance of outright destroying a Medapart.
• Charge and Radiation affect a Medabot’s speed: Charge specifically going to the middle of the field and Radiation leaving the middle of the field. Don’t have a fancy formula for this one, just know you want those two numbers to be as low as possible. Noticeably the head part doesn’t have these two numbers: they always go as fast as the Medabot’s little legs can take them in exchange for having a limited number of uses. Missile has 4 shots.

Now onto the Legs part and its different chart:

The two blue boxes share a similar story to before: first one tells you the type of movement used by the part (as does the small box beside it, that’s the box that will show up in Robattles so you can know what type of movement your opponent is using), second one is for Medal compatibilities. The green list is a bit different though:

• Armor is still the same
• Propulsion plays a large role in how fast your Medabot can move. Same with the movement type and Robattle fields. Everywhere we’ve fought so far have been Grasslands, and the inside of the school has Forest, so Two-Legged is king. However if you were to take a Two-Legged Medabot and put them on Beach fields it will be heavily bogged down. I’ll go over the field types as they come up, though generally you only know what type of legs work best there with everything after that being a bit of a guessing game as to how much of a penalty to Propulsion is being taken. As for the Propulsion number itself, higher is good. If I had to take a very rough guess to the overall movement formula it would be Speed = (Propulsion*FieldMultiplier - ChargeorRadiation)/StatusEffect. Yes there are statuses that either increase or decrease a Medabot’s speed.
• Evasion is more or less what you expect. Again, don’t know the formula on how it interacts with opponent’s RoS numbers. Generally speaking you shouldn’t expect any leg part that isn’t Sea or Air type to dodge a lot as everything else has meh to horrible Evasion. And then there are all of the parts that don’t let you evade while on Radiation phase. Its just not something to reply on.
• Defense you saw pop up in the Damage formula. Here is where its calculated for the entire Medabot.
• Proximity and Remoteness give bonuses to their respective attack types, as also seen in the RoS formula.

Also worth noting, when a Leg part is destroyed, the 5 stats that it provides (Propulsion, Evasion, Defense, Proximity, Remoteness) each get halved, so along with the Medabot receiving more damage, having less evasion, less speed etc, the minimum damage for a Berserk part will also fall.

All in all, Metabee’s starting parts are as I said earlier, decent. But we already have what I consider to be an upgrade:

For more Armor and the same RoS you get very minor Power/Charge/Radiation penalties. You won’t notice the speed difference, and the Shoot attack on my build it always a “if I must” option so I don’t care about that small of a penalty to damage. More importantly, the extra armour on the Right Arm compared to Left Arm means that instead of the damage on Metabee going Legs > Left Arm > Right Arm, its going to go Legs > Right Arm > Left Arm. Left Arm has the Aim Shot, its more important. Thus, its an upgrade to use Snipe Rifle over Revolver, but only in a minor way.

You may be thinking that I should be using Totalizer’s head part since its stronger than Metabee’s Missile in terms of armor and damage in exchange for less shots and a lower chance to hit. However, the Medal compatibility doesn’t match: its for Laser and not Shoot. Its not something I’ll strictly follow, but Missile is such a good part that its a good enough reason not to swap out the head part.

Churleybear uses Float for their Leg Part type. Don’t use Float. Its equally bad in all field types due to them never having high Propulsion. The most you can say is that they tend to have higher armor and defence but its not nearly enough. No good parts to really use among either of these two but you’ll end up collecting a full set anyways. At least keep Kintaro’s legs for when you’re building a second Medabot: you’ll be doing that sooner than you may think!

Anyway, lets see who the random encounters are for the school:

Neither of these two are threats, no strategies needed. They are punching bags for you to try out your new Medaparts on and to continue to get a hang for how the battle system works. Kintaro as expected has two Proximity attacks, however his head’s attack (along with all of Churlybear’s attack’s) are Gravity types. Kintaro’s is Press type, Churlybear’s is Break type, I’m not aware of any major differences between the two outside of flavour. How Gravity attacks work is that they throw an orb up into the air that comes down and hits your Medabot with… gravity itself. Somehow. As an attack type gravity attacks tend to have lower damage, but they have a special attribute.

If you look back at the picture for Metabee’s Missile attack, you’d see the yellow box explaining that as a Missile type attack (not to be mistaken for being the Missile named Medapart…) it has 100% hit rate and Chain Damage. Gravity type attacks have the RoS value of the part itself doubled in all formulas. For the record, Laser type attacks have the Power number doubled for damage formulas. That would be why most Laser attacks have massive Charge and Radiation numbers, along with quite low RoS. Also why I said to grab Totalizer’s Head Part: as a head it avoids the Charge and Radiation penalties.

Into the school itself. Two rows of classrooms and then an upper floor with the same layout. I’ll start with the bottom left and work my way across, showing off anything worthwhile.

Lets talk to this first NPC girl here

-blinks-
What?

Alrighty, I uh, think we found our next miniature story arc. A… Medabot that tickles school girls. Wow. Okay. Moving on. Far left is actually the boy’s bathroom.

I don’t know, seems pretty normal to me. Bunch of urinals too close for comfort, not enough stalls for peak time, not enough sinks, etc etc.

Next up is the teacher’s lounge. Nothing much of note until you work your way up to the top left professor.

Whoops? What you gonna do about it?

Oh. You’re going to be our tutorial into “hey each side can have more than one Medabot on the field at a time”. This guy makes for an interesting fight believe it or not: he will be a generic fight later on but in an environment his Tankars are much better suited for.

You see, they are using wheels and not two legs. They are fighting in the Forest field. They are heavily slowed down. Metabee can get off around 4-6 attacks before the first Tankar can attack you, which is with his weaker Vulcan attack. Gatling Gun is significantly stronger but a bit slower, which translates into much slower when fighting in the Forest. Victory Armor nullifies or cures status effects, nothing we have to worry about here.

Its a slog fight for you at this point, because its a 2v1. Not because you have to destroy two Medabots, you only ever have to destroy the Medabot at the top of the screen to win. But because Metabee is using only shooting attacks, his attack options are whatever the three parts are willing to aim at for that turn. Its entirely possibly to have all three parts decide they want to aim at the bottom Tankar, making it basically wasted attack. They also have high defence as most wheel based legs have, so you’ll have to weaken their legs and both arms before you can start destroying parts outside of a lucky Critical Hit.

There’s a few strategies you can deploy. One is to only use Submachine Gun on the upper Tankar whenever possible until its weakened, then spam Missile. Another option is to work on destroy both Tankar’s arms. With all four guns out of the way, you’ve won. Be aware that Gatling Gun deals 44 damage: it will destroy a part when it lands because Vulcan will fire off one before unless you somehow managed to destroy it on the first Tankar, meaning that the legs will already be damaged and Gatling Gun will hit an arm.

Finally, you could swap Metabee’s arms for Kintaro’s arms and go ham with melee attacks. This early in the game using suboptimal parts for a Metabot isn’t a big worry, and because the first Tankar will be moving faster (and thus be closer to the middle) all of the attacks will hit it.

I’d highly recommend saving, and then replaying this fight until you get Gatling Gun. Vulcan is acceptable if you didn’t get the left arm from Cyandog but lets look at the stats:

Certainly an upgrade over any left arm Metabee currently has, but not by a huge margin. On the other hand you could have this:

Huge upgrade! Very minor hit to RoS, Charge hit is noticeable but not game breaking with the right leg parts. And that boost in Power is fantastic. Gatling Gun is an arm you can use long into midgame, even edging into endgame. Its only real downside is that its Armor is high enough to make it targeted over any Left Arm that Metabee could equip right now. But right now that frankly won’t be an issue: just make sure any legs you equip have 45 armor or more.

Let’s look in here.

Finally, an actual classroom. The boy mentions that the Select Corps and Rubberrobo Gang are fighting each other as usual. What are those, some sort of school gangs? I thought the Screws were the top dogs around here until we game in.

Something the game never tells you but you really want to do during your first time playing: check the very top left of each classroom, like so:

“Leg Medaparts with high propulsion can avoid Traps easily!”

Yep, gameplay mechanics hidden on the wall with no visual indicator to make you click on them! Each classroom has one of these.

Lets see what the top left classroom one says:

“After a Strike attack, you cannot defend”.

Translation: after some types of melee attacks, any attacks that hit you during your Radiation phase will automatically be a Critical Hit.

That’s pretty bad! Though you can still dodge if you’re lucky enough, and most melee attacks have very fast Radiation phases so with the right legs you’ll almost never be caught. But if you are its going to hurt.

The boy in the same classroom has the balls to challenge Ikki with a Kintaro. Apparently he hasn’t heard about what happened to the Screws yet.

I’m getting to that, I’m getting to that. Sheesh even the NPCs are on my back about covering all of the game mechanics. Lets see what the other one has to say:

Boy NPC: Long, long ago… The Heroes of Justice, the Select Corps and the Servants of Evil, the Rubberrobo Gang were the same. That’s the rumor I heard, but I wonder if its really true?

Interesting. Still no clue what either one is. Next classroom!

Kid, you don’t wanna head down that road. Get your head out of there while you still have it.

“After an Aimed Shot, you cannot evade.”

Same thing I covered earlier. Last classroom on the bottom floor!

That’s one way to look at it. I suppose.

“After a Berserk attack, you cannot evade or defend.”

Berserk is the other type of melee attack besides Strike, has the Chain Damage attribute that Missiles have. One serious downside though; you ain’t evading until you get new orders and you’re taking Critical Hits all day everyday. And Berserk attacks tend to have a little bit more Radiation than Strike attacks do. They’re the biggest gambles in the game, usually pay off but they can absolutely cost you.

Second Floor now. Afraid I’m in a bit of a time crunch, the rest will go up tomorrow or the day afterwards.

Next time on Lets Play Medabots RPG Metabee Version: More Robattle information! More stat pages! More weirdness!

[Niddo]

Surprise last minute schedule changes at work made things interesting. Lets see if I can actually get this update finished now.

Part 3.2 School Is For Even More Learning

Top floor, pretty much the same layout as the first. Going top left down for this one. However, the very first fight I run into here is… different.

This fight is rare to run into. Painfully rare most of the time. In previous playthroughs I’ve spent an hour trying to find this guy. But he just fell into my lap for once! You may notice that he looks very similar to Spyke’s Cyandog. There’s a reason for that, Krosserdog is the “upgraded” version of Cyandog. Upgrade was in quotations for a very good reason.

Anyhow, the strategy for this fight is exactly the same as it was against Cyandog, except you now have more powerful weapons. That and you don’t really have to worry about Krosserdog’s damage quite as much. Compare his Left Arm with the one from Cyandog we’re currently rocking:

Unlike going from Revolver to Snipe Rifle, going from Snipe Rifle to Aim Rifle is not really an upgrade. Same armor, same charge/radiation, losing yet another 3 damage for 10 additional RoS.

I suppose some people would like the tradeoff, but to me its completely unnecessary. Remember, its not only the part’s RoS that matters, there’s a lot of other factors involved. Frankly in a lot of cases the RoS on the part itself matters the least. We also get no other benefit and we lose damage on an already fairly weak part.

All direct “upgrade” Medabots are like this; same armour, same or close to same charge/radiation, higher RoS, less damage. Its weird quite frankly, to me it should have been slightly higher armor, higher RoS and a higher power rating but in exchange for higher charge/radiation penalties.

Because this fight is so rare I actually scummed it with the emulator so I could go over all of the parts and see if there are any I would actually recommend keeping. The Right Arm isn’t any better really, being a measly 20 damage while we’re rocking 44. The Head is okay, not something you’d replace on Metabee but serviceable on another Medabot. I ultimately went with his legs:

Not that I’m switching to them of course. That propulsion difference of just 5 points is noticeable, I tested it out in a few battles and Metabee would be a field sprite farther back before Kintaro could use his first attack on him. The slightly higher armor is nice but the lower defence kinda counteracts that. Don’t even get a slight damage boost from Remoteness as its identical, only get one if you were silly enough to slap a melee part onto Metabee.

Despite all of those downsides, these are probably the second best shooting based legs you can get for a while, all the rest are melee focused or something crappy like floating. So if you happen to run into one while playing on an emulator this early in the game and you want to take advantage of it, save scum to get the leg parts.

Surprise rare encounter aside, lets continue onto the far left classroom.

Boy NPC: However, he’s pretty weak and doesn’t come to school that often either. Isn’t he in your class?

Don’t know. Lets see what combat tip we can get here.

“When Leg Medaparts with high propulsion are equipped, Berserk attacks get stronger.”

Something I covered last update, but a good reminder. Next classroom:

Aha! Found the Screws hiding hole. First, the Robattling tip: “Robattle Basics. Step 6. It’s easy to get critical hits when you use Aimed Shot attacks.”

I’ll drop you in a washing machine and put you in the spin cycle!
You’d better remember this! I won’t take this lying down!
The same trick won’t work twice in a row.

Yep, still sore losers. Lets see, next room-

Alright. What about the one after that?

Whoops! Bottom row of classrooms it is then. Less classrooms on the upper floor than the bottom floor it would seem.

Girl NPC: At least that’s what I heard the other day…

That’s a name alright, if true.

“If you destroy a lot of your enemy’s Medaparts, the chances of you getting parts you don’t have goes up.”

This is very useful information to know, and also a reason why you shouldn’t always just go for the headshot ASAP. I don’t know how much each part destruction increases the odds, but its something to keep in mind: when farming for new parts, destroy everything. If you destroy every part the chance of getting a new one is nearly 100%, I know that much from experience. Its also not 0% if you only destroy one part. Beyond that its going to be a bit of a learn by doing situation.

There is actually only one classroom left, and its where the plot progresses.

The boy in the back challenges us to a Robattle when we talk to him. Kintaro as usual. Yawn.

“If your Leg Medapart gets destroyed mid-Robattle, your mobility is halved”

I believe that’s the last Robattle Basic we’re going to find in the school. All together some really good, useful information for first time players… that’s completely hidden with no indication that checking a random corner of each classroom with tell you that. Its a shame, there should have been at least a random NPC that tells you to check the walls for them, new players would probably talk to every NPC and be able to find out that way. If you don’t have this knowledge the Robattles can feel really bizarre with Medabots suddenly not avoiding attacks they could normally avoid and whatnot. And good luck ever figuring out that propulsion boost to Berserk attacks on your own.

Lets check out the newspaper, see if we can catch the headline Erika choose.

Well its… decent at least. We actually get mentioned instead of just our Medabot. Lets see what she has to say.
Hey Erika. Did you write a good article?
Hmm? I’m writing it now. But more importantly, there is a rumour going around that some weirdo is using a Medabot to tickle girls. His hideout has to be in town for sure. Go check it out and I’ll be there right after I finish this article.
Why do I have to go?
The culprit will escape while you stand there complaining! Get going!

Yep, we’re committing to this being the next mini-plot. Ugh. But before we can even step out of the classroom to go poking around town for a serial tickler, something happens after the next random encounter.

Oh yes, it has happened. I can finally talk about Medals in depth now that one of the pages won’t be just blank!

First up, the main page for a Medal. Attribute tells you what Medapart type it gains bonuses from. Aim tells you what type of Medapart the Medal will force a Medabot to target if its present on the enemy team. Remember back before the cutscene of the Screws 3-on-1 attack, when I said maybe Metabee could pull out the win? This here is exactly why: Metabee is forced to aim at Strike parts. Peppercat would naturally be in the leader spot of the 3-on-1, so every attack Metabee used would have to target her. So if Metabee could shutdown Peppercat before Totalizer got a shot off or before the combined chip damage from Peppercat and Cyandog shut him down, he actually could win that fight legitimately. In the Rokusho version of the game it wouldn’t be nearly as easy: Rokusho is a melee Medabot so he only attacks whoever is closest with both Peppercat and Cyandog moving pretty quickly.

Anyhow, Compatibility tells you the RoS bonus you get for each compatible Medapart. That RoS bonus is for every Medapart the Medabot is using, not just the compatible ones by the way. So if say, I swapped out one of Metabee’s arms for Kintaro’s Light Axe arm, his total RoS bonus would go down from 16 to 12, but that 12 would also apply to the Light Axe. Its one of the ways you can balance out using Laser based attacks and making sure they still actually hit: make the other parts give RoS bonuses.

Now, this is the page where I can finally start talking about Medaforce attacks. What Metabee just unlocked in game (and what he used a super version of in the Screws 3-on-1 cutscene), is an attack called Ultra Shot.

With all Medaforce attacks, the gauge at the bottom left of the screen during the battle needs to be full, 80/80. You can spend an action charging it by 40, and whenever that Medabot takes damage they gain 20. However, each Medaforce attack will use a different amount of the gauge. In Ultra Shot’s case it uses the full 80 because its an amazing attack. As it states, it uses all of the power of your shooting parts in one blow. Doesn’t have to be bullet based attacks, just anything that is classified as shooting or aimed shots. Lasers count (but they don’t get their double damage bonus used in the calculation), Missiles count, Gravity attacks count, you get the picture. And its Chain Damage enabled. To be specific, its formula is Dmg = Power + TotalCompatibilityBonus/8 + MedalSkill/8, with
Power = 10 + Power of all shoot & aim shot Medaparts
chain dmg to 1 enemy.

As I said, its kinda nuts. And its why the Kabuto Medal will never leave my team. And why it will only ever equip shooting parts unless I have a really good reason to do otherwise.

Unlike in the cutscene, it only hits one target, hence the single red arrow beside the Ultra Shot name. The Skill box says its an Aim Shot attack, but Medaforce attacks don’t follow the rules of normal Medapart attacks for penalties/bonuses: its mostly for show and to explain how the attack is launched.

Medaforce attacks are unlocked at set Medal levels, same level for everyone. Each Medal has their own set of three: the first one is unique to that Medal (with 4 exceptions for Medals we won’t see for a looooooong time), while the second and third ones are shared with one other Medal.

Here is something I pretty much never use. You can set up an automated attack rotation for each Medal, choosing from Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Charge Medaforce, Medaforce 1, Medaforce 2, Medaforce 3, and Random. You can use to use the attack rotation in battle, and your Medabot will fight on its own for the rest of the battle. If a part is broken it will replace that part of the rotation with a random attack.

Personally I rather keep control of all actions, just to make sure nothing stupid happens. You can also shorten the rotation, and I guess its good if you’re grinding a particular fight and have a particular path that always destroys all Medaparts? But even then nothing is quite guaranteed.

This is the big one: how well your Medal actually does at each type of part action. Those are all of the possible categories, I should point out Defend is different from when a Medabot avoids a Critical Hit and redirects the damage to the healthiest part, its a specific action we’ll see later on in the game.

Those little pips indicate how far along a particular action is to levelling up. Using that particular type of action adds to the pip though the higher the level of that action, the more times you have to repeat that action to gain a pip. So lets say at Level 6 it only takes 2 Shoot attacks to gain a pip, it might take 50 at Level 80.

Once a pip bar is filled up, your Medal gains a level in that specific area and it will pop up in the middle of a Robattle to tell you as much. Its those levels that influence the RoS and damage formulas from before. And while this early on it doesn’t matter as much, by an arc or two you really don’t want to be using action types that your Medal isn’t good at; it will either completely whiff if its an attack or if its an effect it will barely last. I’ve seen effects last for literally a handful of frames because the Medal had zero training in Strike and it was tied to a Strike attack.

Every Medal start off really good at two things, and then kinda good at two other things. So in the Kabuto Medal’s case it started off with high Shoot and Aim Shot levels, and a small bump to Defend and Support. Its nice they give you that flexibility, it matters a lot more for later Medals where you probably don’t want to be pigeonhole’d into certain things.

If you really wanted to, you can bruteforce levels of any type of action into any Medal and force it to become good at it. But keep in mind during every fight the Medal gains experience and starts to level up its overall level in the upper left corner. When that hits 100, the Medal can no longer grow at all. All action levels are locked. Choose wisely!

Anyhow, let’s head outside to start looking around for a hideout. I have a pretty good idea in mind.

-bark bark-
Eeek!
That’s Salty! But who was that other voice?

And cue the lovey dovey sounding music.
Is this your dog?
Wow, cute… Um! I mean… was my dog bothering you?
Not at all. He suddenly came running out and I was just surprised.
O-oh, is that all? Thank goodness. Um…
Nice to meet you. My name is Karin.
Wow… Karin… Um, I’m Ikki Tenryou.
By the way, did you see a boy from the next town over whose name was Koji?
I, I didn’t see him.
I see… Please tell me if you do see him.
Okaaay…
Well, I’ll see you later then.

Otherwise, everyone would be talking about a cute girl like that.

Welp, Ikki was smitten at first sight alright. Given that Erika and Samantha are the only two non-generic girls in the school, I get his point about politeness as well.

Now lets go look around town.

Wait, Ikki, I think you took the idea of a hideout the wrong way.
Good afternoon, Ikki.
Check out my cool new Medawatch!
Well then, I’ll just have to give you a present to congratulate you on your new Medabot! Please go into the room next door and select one Medal of your choice.
Are you sure it’s Okay? Yay! Thank you very much!

O_O. Nae just giving away Medals now? Must really be trying to keep Ikki quiet about the whole punching incident earlier. But yes, at certain times in the game if you go talk to Nae you get to pick a Medal. These are all limited time windows however, you miss one and you miss it for good.

I’ll let the thread decide what Medal we grab. Just a reminder as to what they are now that you all have a bit of a better idea of what Medals do:

• BAT - very compatible with Medaparts that target Air Type Medabots
• CHAMELEON - very compatible with Medaparts that hinder an enemy’s attacks
• KAPPA - very compatible with Medaparts that target Sea Type Medabots
• RABBIT - very compatible with Medaparts that control a Medabot’s speed
• MONKEY - very compatible with Medaparts that confuse Medabots
• MOUSE - very compatible with Medaparts that assist an allies attack

That’s all of the information you have to go on when making a choice. If no consensus is reach I’ll use an RNG generator to pick one. I will say that the shop in town’s store is open and they are carrying an Anti-Air Medabot and a Support Medabot. Neither one are exactly good, I’d be reluctant to buy many, if any of those parts, but they exist and its something a new player would know about. I’ll show off those parts next update.

Now onto the plot progression trigger

The one suspicious building in town.
This place looks pretty shady.
Immediately afterwards, Erika runs up. Boy she was done fast.

Ikki! We’ve got trouble! A Medafighter came from the neighbouring town’s Rosewood Private School and started picking fights in our own school! He’s in there now!
Why?
Don’t sak me! Hurry and come to school!
But why do I have to go?
Just come! Got it?

Fine fine. Might as well add another name to our list.

You walk SO slow! The Medafighter is already here!

Not only that, he has his own heroic sounding theme!

How dare you talk to me like that! I’ll challenge you but don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.
Hey Boss. If we beat this guy, it’s going to be a real smack in the face to Rosewood Private School!
I’m gonna mess up your clothes too!
I’ll take you all on! Time to Robattle!

What a scoop!
-click!-

-click!-

-health depleting sound-

-click!-

-click!-
Hey you! Don’t take only my bad side!
-click!-

Medabot, retreat!

What should we do, Boss?
Now I’ve gotta wash my Medabot too!
Men! Resort to Plan B!
Let’s get outta here!

I’ll say. He won a 3-on-1 without a surprise attack out of nowhere!

Is this the time to be impressed? Let’s go!
Wha?

And with that, Erika races off. But still, another guy who can beat the Screws in a 3-on-1? Sounds like a worthy Medafighter to be sure.

Next time on Lets Play Medabots RPG Metabee Version: Robattles, Skirts, and Latex Suits.

[Niddo]

Part 4: That Doesn’t Make Things Any Better

Last time on Medabots, somebody wiped the floor with the Screws just like we did, but without relying on some sort of secret power. And they were pissed about something. So let’s do the natural thing and chase after them with Erika!

We find Erika up on the second floor, presumably looking at the Medafighter from the next town over.

Yep, that be him alright.

Umm… He really looks ticked off.
Go ahead. Just do it like last time!
D-don’t push me! Ah ah ah!

With the “coaxing” from Erika, Ikki stumbles forwards into the kid.

Robattle me man to man!

I like this guy. Has guts. Let’s see what we’re up against then.

Koji Robattle

Sumilidon always has been and always will be my favourite Medabot. Would not shock me if later on down the road a get a cat and name it Sumilidon. Not an amazing Medabot as a whole package, but still a very solid machine. Against a new player he can and will lay the smack down… unless you unleash the Ultra Shot like I did. I was not exaggerating about it being absolutely bonkers, it just about one shot Sumilidon there.

What you saw towards the end of the fight after the Ultra Shot was a trap, something we saw mentioned in the Robattle Basics notes earlier. Sumilidon’s is set to punish shooting attacks: when its set if you use a shooting attack you take damage. The more times the trap has been applied, the higher damage it deals each time is sprung and the more attacks it lasts through before being removed.

Traps are… interesting. Almost always better in the enemy hands. You can avoid them, but its highly unlikely. A few varieties exist out there and there’s a handful of robattles where going with a trap strategy wouldn’t be a bad idea. But I wouldn’t build a Medabot around the idea, its too unreliable for my liking.

Likewise, the part we got for this run of the fight is absolutely nothing special. Slightly better than the Kintaro parts we can get already.

How about we do that fight again, while giving Koji a fighting chance by not using Medaforce? Most likely a player would have it as it only takes about 8-10 fights to reach level 10 and you can easily hit that while wandering around the school. But I didn’t always have it on hand when I was younger, and a new player certainly may not realize its power. What if we wanted to tackle Koji the old-fashioned way?

Well there’s a few ways to go about it then. Despite the damage you saw the trap doing towards the end of the video, its not actually that strong in most cases, he was just forced to spam it as he had no other moves. Generally speaking if you just use a few quick shooting attacks you’ll break the trap and not have to worry about it for a while. But that comes with a risk, you’re taking a lot of chip damage between the Straw Hammer and the trap, at which point he follows up with this bad boy:

This is what you should repeat the fight until you earn by the way. Flexsorsword is in short, amazing. Can use it up until endgame easily. The base damage is bonkers, the charge/radiation penalties are borderline non-existant, and the hit rate is honestly good provided you’re using a Medal with a good Berserk rating or you got some synergies going. Only bad thing is that its armor is average for early game melee parts, by end game you’ll find melee parts with 45 armor pretty easily and close-but-not-quite as good of attack power behind them.

In Koji’s hands, its what can end you. You’ll take a hit from the Straw Hammer and kinda shrug, take some damage from the trap and wince at how low your armor is getting, then Sumilidon will whip this out and destroy 3 of your parts even if you defend because they were all damaged. And then he’ll plant another trap and you’ll destroy yourself using Missile. If you’re going this route prioritize destroying Sumilidon’s right arm ASAP.

Another route you can go is slapping on the Kintaro arms. Even if none of your parts use shooting attacks Sumilidon will still lay out a trap to start off. It will never trigger, you’ll wail on him, you’ll probably win unless Flexsorsword gets a critical hit and the Chain Damage goes into the head. Then you just die but there’s not much you can do about that no matter how you try to approach the fight.

Also of note, this is the first major deviation between the Metabee and Rokusho versions of this game. Several named characters use different Medabots, with Koji being the first one. Instead he’s using Warbandit

Warbandit’s gimmick his that his head part lets him buff himself to move significantly faster. Rokusho doesn’t have a lot of defence/armor and the Kintaro pieces aren’t much better, so Warbandit can tear Rokusho to shreds due to his high damage right arm.

That’s the theme with Koji’s Medabots: the right arm is the dangerous one where with most Medabots its the left arm. Like with most melee robots the left arm is the berserk based one while the right one is the strike based one. No clue why that’s the case but there you go.

You’re not bad…
That was so boring. You just fought normally.
Excuse me, did you not see the giant energy beam of doom I nearly one shotted Sumilidon with Erika? Curse you story and gameplay segregation!

Huh?
I wanted to take a picture of that thing you did last time.
Why is it that I win and you still end up complaining?

Oh hey, what’s up Karin? Weren’t you trying to find somebody earlier? What was his name again…

Koji: Karin!
Ikki: Oh, you’re Karin.
Karin: Oh my, we meet again, Ikki.
Erika: Who’s this, Ikki? When did you meet such a cute girl?

What’s happening?
That is to say… the truth is I… um…
Huh?
Smooth you two. Real smooth.

It’s not necessary to ask him anything! Get away from him!
But…
Say it! Say it! You know who the culprit is, don’t you?
Who did… to Karin… they… uh
“Tickled Karin,” right?
What did you just say!?
Oh come on Ikki, you hadn’t figured that out yet? Cute girl comes in town looking for somebody, said somebody is ripping the school apart looking for a culprit for something, all the word in school right now is that a Medabot is tickling girls. Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

Now I got it. You’re Koji, right? The reason you came to our school is to find the person who is using a Medabot to tickle girls, correct?

Exactly what I said!

W-who the heck are you?
“The Journalist of the Future”, Erika Amazake! In any case, the culprit isn’t a student of our school. In fact, we are looking for the culprit ourselves.

That’s a bit of a jump to make, saying it isn’t anyone in the school. Nobody in your class maybe, but a school kid would seem like the most likely suspect; a kid doing some sort of teasing/prank. If its not a kid and its an adult the whole situation gets uh, a whole lot more creepy.

Hmph. Seems I guessed wrong. I’ll look somewhere else then.

Next time you’re going down!
Ikki, sorry about all this. I’ve been telling Koji to stop worrying about me so much, but…
Karin! Let’s go!

Exit Koji and Karin off the top of the screen, though not without Karin stopping to look at Ikki for a moment.
Well, one problem is over.
What are you saying! We’re not done looking yet! Don’t you feel ashamed that you’re the one that got in trouble?
I don’t care anymore, what’s done is done.
Are you kidddding!? Come to my house right away! I’ve got a great idea!
Here we go again…

You said it Ikki. She seemed fairly pissed at us though, probably between her photo ruined and Karin’s… existence really. Ah, Elementary/Middle School drama where the girls are starting to figure things out and the boys are still clueless. Might as well see what she wants over at her place.

But first, lets quickly swing by Nae’s lab and get the Medal of choice.

The RABBIT Medal, now renamed into Hopstar. Hopstar is the one Rabbit-Type Medabot I could easily find, we’ll run into one way later in the game.

As for the choice of Medal, I’d say its probably the third best option overall when considering foreknowledge of its Medaforce abilities and whatnot. MOUSE would be best both short and long term, BAT best close but not long term, CHAMELEON long term but not short term. So MOUSE > BAT > RABBIT > CHAMELEON > MONKEY > KAPPA. Keep in mind this ordering will change as the game goes on and our accessibility to parts and other Medals changes. Don’t expect the BAT Medal to be that high up next time we have the chance to grab one.

RABBIT is compatible with Time parts, like Warbandit’s head part that I spoke of earlier. It also turns out that what I described for the Medal attributes in a previous update was more of a guideline than a rule. It majors in Support (naturally, as Time parts fall under Support) and Shoot, with a minor in Berserk. For where we’re at for this point of the game, that’s pretty good!

Well, lets bite the bullet and find out what Erika’s crazy plan is.

Hey, Erika. What are we gonna do?
Wear this.
This is… a SKIRT!?
This is revenge for knowing Karin exists and ruining the photo-op, isn’t it?
Wow, even YOU have a skirt, Erika?
Just what do you mean by that!?
Just put on this skirt and walk around town.
Wha? No wayyyy.
No backtalk! Wear it! Or don’t you care that I might get tickled?
Yeeeep, this is revenge. Let’s just get this over with Ikki.
Okay, okay… I just gotta wear this, right?

Sprite change and everything! And the pigtails bob when you walk around. And yes, Ikki’s talking mugshots also change accordingly.

It looks good on you. Okay, let’s go!

The moment we step outside however, well… its best shown in screenshots and without me breaking it up with text.

The rumours were true alright! They failed to mention it was a sassy Medabot though. Lets catch that Medabot!

Maybe after some shopping fir-

Fine fine.

Lets try the Warehouse then.

I heard that a long time ago this place used to make Medabots. Hmmmm… Very suspicious… VERY suspicious.

Looks somewhat rundown alright. Certainly not in active use.

There’s our Medabot! And the person ordering him… er… what is his wearing?

…Is that a head to toe black latex suit?
…With black mirrored sunglasses?
…With a giant yellow zipper?
…And a giant yellow antenna?
…With goofy villainy theme playing in the background?
…Wat?
Also, to reiterate, this guy is going around trying to have his Medabot tickle school girls. While wearing that sort of getup. Somebody call the police, I think we have a pedo on our hands! Or at least a very disturbing individual!

Aaaand now the situation is even worse. Karin what on earth are you doing here, I expected Erika to follow us in not you!
Oh dear, I seem to be lost again. Where in the world am I this time?
Hello? Ikki, is that you?
Wow, you look very nice in a skirt.
By the way, what’s that over there?

You’re behind this aren’t you?
Say what? Aha! Look! There’s another cute girl! You know what that means!
Like I’m gonna let you tickle me!

I always found that bit with Karin kinda weird, nobody responds to her presence and in one bit of optional dialogue later on its pretty clear Ikki never realized she was behind him.

Anyhow, lets beat up this Rubberrobo creep. The first of very many we’ll be laying the smackdown on throughout this game. None of them are particularly challenging, though they do have a small variety of Medabots they can use Foxuno here is probably their best one and he’s still not very threatening. No video since this is actually a generic fight we’re just taking on in advance, but I’ll still break down a general strategy for him.

He’s slightly on the dodgy side so if you’re trying out your new Medal and have no compatibility bonuses he might dodge an attack with a low hit rate, generally not an issue though. Both of his arm attacks, while fast, aren’t dealing much damage. Head is launching a fairly weak gravity attack, normally hits for 26 damage. Shoot him until he’s dead, make sure you’re using your good Medal.

No part in particular to aim for I’d say, overall he’s a marginal upgrade over Kintaro in most areas. Maybe take the Foxarmor or Hakama until you have something better for a second Medabot.

Y-you got me…
Is that all you got? Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?
I’ve always wanted to say that line. (blush)
I’m doomed.
Yeah I don’t think the law is going to go light on a creep in a latex suit chansing school girls using a robot with knives sticking our of its wrists. You’re doomed.

Wha!? Someone’s here! If somebody seem me like this, I’ll die. I’d better go hide.
I think that’s the point where Ikki finally realizes somebody was behind him; as Karin is leaving to make way for somebody else to come in.

That looks like the police to me! Slightly goofy sounding music for the police, but it could be worse.

Select Yellow!
We are… THE SELECT TRIO!
…The slight goofy tone to the theme makes sense now. Each Medabot spun after saying their line. And yes, the yellow one is Select Blue and the blue one is Select Yellow.
Robo ow ow.
Ho ho. It looks like someone’s given you the beating you deserved. How convenient for us. I do so love to take credit for the hard work of others! Take him away, Select 3!
Aye aye, sir.

Oh no!

Whew, that was close.
It would be real cool to be one of the Medafighters of Justice.
-Ikki spins in place-
Behold! The Medafighter of Justice, Ikki has arrived! Maybe that’s a bit much…
This skirt just isn’t me. I’ll go back to Erika’s house to give back this skirt.

Good idea, you almost got caught in it by no less than three people. But before you go off to Erika’s house, you should check the boxes. Or rather, just one in particular.

Named it after the only laser Medabot we know, Totalizer… just not with the right spelling because I’m an idiot, and I can’t change it now for a while.

Anyhow, the TORTOISE Medal is overall decent. Majors in Shoot, minors in Strike, Aim Shot, and Heal. If you pick the wrong Medal at Mae’s lab you can easily default to this one. Or this is the one you’re getting if you don’t think to check Mae’s lab because we’re going to have a second Medabot real soon.

Off to Erika’s house though.

I thought I should give this back. And besides, I really need my pants back.
It’s okay, go ahead and change. After all, the incident is over, right?

And then Ikki apparently just changes back into his pants right in front of Erika. Which also implies he changed into the skirt right in front of her earlier. Huh. Pretty easy going about that sort of thing.
I’ll give you the skirt back.
I don’t want it. Not like I’m gonna be wearing it again.
Hey, you can’t do that to me. I have no reason to keep it either.
Well anyway, the members of the Select Corps. were pretty cool, weren’t they? They just showed up and gave the Rubberrobo Gang what was coming to them.
Oh, really?
Oh really indeed! Stand up for yourself Ikki, don’t let them take your credit! Be like Koji, be a man!
Yeah. I saw it all myself. They were taking the Rubberrobo away somewhere. What were you doing while the Select Corps. was busy beating the Rubberrobos?
Well… I… that is…
Aaaand he’s going to let the “Select Trio” walk right all over him. Lovely.
Man, you just can’t be depended on, can you? I’ve gotta go back and start writing up the school paper’s headline. You can come too if you want, but stay out of my way, okay?

Maybe you should grow a spine Ikki! But at least we got rid of the possibly pedo Rubberrobo member. Would have had to had him over to the Select Corps. anyways.

Next time on Lets Play Medabots RPG Metabee Version: Alright gang, we have a mystery to solve, lets get in the Mystery Machine!

[Niddo]

More work schedule shuffling. I’ll try to have at least a mini-update out this week and then a full update this weekend. Already have all footage recorded.

[Niddo]

Miniature Update: Riverview Hopmart

As I said before, miniature update to tide things over until the weekend.

Namely, going over the shop in town. You could purchase Medaparts from the counter as soon as you leave the school for the first time but I haven’t had a natural spot to quickly go over its offerings.

This is the screen you get when you go up to the counter, fairly self-evident. I won’t go over the Sell Medaparts menu but I will give this piece of advice: never ever sell non-duplicates. A few parts in the game are needed to progress and if you don’t have them it can be a pain to get them again.

Both menus are sorted by Medapart type, as expected. For now we only have two Medabot sets we can purchase parts from. Each shop has its own selection, and over time a few sets are added to the shops.

As you can see, the prices aren’t exactly cheap. Jorat and Noctobat are the two sets we can pick over. Thankfully you can press the Start button and see the details of a particular part before you purchase it.

First up, Jorat:

Yep, every single one of its parts is tied to Scouting. That’s a bit of a weakness for this game as a whole: a lot of Medabots only do one action, repeated across all three parts. When its a shooting or melee based action its not really a problem as you have the Strike/Berserk and Shoot/Aim Shot balance to consider. When its all Scout or Heal or something similar however it can make for a very self-redundant Medabot. Which of course enemies will use in complete sets, as they only ever use complete sets.

Anyhow, Jorat’s parts are worth looking at this early in the game for your second Medabot (which we will have very quickly in the next update). Jorat will be very quickly outdated, but if you don’t have a good Head part its probably more useful to have Full Moused than the Kintaro part. I actually purchased Spotter, more for the armour to keep Flexorsword alive and to try to help its early game hit rate out, as none of our Medals are great at Berserk attacks yet nor do we have access to any leg parts that help it out.

Speaking of leg parts, Mover is just bad. 12 propulsion means if you try to do pretty much anything other than a Head attack you’re going to take forever to perform it.

Also, if you had picked the MOUSE Medal from Nae, they all would have proficiency bonuses with it. A good thing to keep in mind.

And now for Noctobat.

Hey, its our first Air type Medabot! You can see its very much a glass cannon type build, as are the majority of flying types. Fantastic propulsion, good evade, not much in the way of armour and that defence is actually pretty decent for Air legs.

But uh, those damage numbers. Yeah, those aren’t errors, neither are the Charge or Radiation numbers. Outside of whatever Totalizer arm parts you may have gotten Sonic Missile is the slowest part we have access to right now for a grand total of… 5 damage.

Now, those numbers do sky rocket against Air Medabots. But even for being a dedicated Anti-Air Medabot, Noctobat is not great at its job. Other Anti-Air Medabots will easily destroy 2.5-3 Medaparts if it hits an Air Medabot while Noctobat’s non-Head parts are probably destroying 1.5-2 Medaparts.

Granted you could make things slightly better by choosing the BAT Medal from Nae, but its probably not worth your time going that route. I wouldn’t touch any of these parts. If you really wanted to you could grab Grave just to make sure you have access to Air legs, but that’s not necessary. Better to keep your money for a rainy day.

As a side note for the upcoming update: who do you guys prefer between Erika and Karin? If you care at all, best to speak up now as there’s a game long side quest related to choosing one or the other and it starts in the next update. With no warning. Or hint that it exists.

[Niddo]

Apologies for the delay again, upon reviewing the footage I realized I messed up the Erika vs Karin sidequest and had to replay a chunk of the game. I’ll need some time to sort out what footage from what playthrough I’ll be using.