I want to start this review with two points:
1) I have been a huge fan of the Ratchet and Clank series since the first game. This game takes a lot of inspiration from the Ratchet and Clank series. I will be comparing the two because of this.
2) I did not finish this game.
Both of these are important to understand where I am coming from for the rest of this review. Akimbot should have been a game that I enjoyed immensely. It should have been an easy win and a great time. But it just could not stick the landing.
I'll start with the positive elements, and the reasons why this game got a 5 from me. The gameplay is smooth as hell. Unlike Ratchet and Clank, the focus here is not on the variety of weapons, but on a small group of well balanced weapons. Weapons do not have ammunition but work on an overheat mechanic: each shot fills up a meter, as it gets closer to full the cooldown between shots increases until it is full at which point you cannot shoot for a short time whilst the meter drains.
During my play time I unlocked three weapons: a rifle, a sniper rifle, and a rocket launcher. The rifle fires rapidly and does less damage. The sniper rifle fires slowly and deals high damage. The rocket launcher deals some splash damage and high direct damage and fires slightly faster than the sniper rifle. Each of these felt useful throughout my time playing, and I never felt that one of these weapons should be used just because I needed to level it up.
The other major combat element is the ultimate weapons. These are one of four weapons that charge up as you defeat enemies, and can then be used until their meter runs out. Each of these are purchased from the shop and can be upgraded by purchasing upgrades from the shop. Each of these weapons feel closer to the type of weapons you would see in Ratchet and Clank, but have a lot more base power. These were fun to use in a pinch but by making them a limited use item I tended to save them for bosses only.
The other element of the game that I really liked was the movement. It may seem silly but the movement mechanics of the game are so smooth that it genuinely gives Ratchet and Clank a run for its money. It doesn't quite reach the same level as Ratchet and Clank, as that has a lot more options for use in combat, but moving around the game feels wonderfully well paced.
With all of that said, all that remains is the negatives and they are some heavy ones: the story, the characters, the level design and the exploration.
I'll start with the lesser of three evils: the exploration. As with Ratchet and Clank, the game gives the player two things to find: breakables that give the player money and text based lore to expand the world a bit. Each of these have an issue with them. The breakables are only distinguishable at a close distance by a highlight. Otherwise it is difficult, if not impossible to discern them at a distance. This means that it is difficult to determine if somewhere is worth the risk of death to explore from a distance (more on that in the level design section). For the lore dumps, these have some comedic moments in them, but no more. These would be the equivalent of the Ratchet and Clank special bolts (Gold, Platinum, Titanium etc.) and those either unlocked special weapons, special mods for weapons or other goodies. These lore dumps just add onto the lore of a story that has very little going for it (more on that in a bit) and thus do not feel worth it to go out of your way to find, again at the risk of death.
Now, that death that I mention comes from the level design. Every level is designed to have areas that will damage Exe, the main character and who you play as, either at set intervals or instantly. This means that most of those hidden areas where extra money or lore dumps tend to be just beyond the main path and over these damaging/instant death zones. The problem with this, is that the environment can make it difficult to determine what is a neat hidden area that you might be able to get to, what is just going to get you killed. And the only way to know is to give it a try. This can actively punish you and resulted in me tending to ignore all but the most obvious paths to extra item.
But what about that story and those characters? This is, in my opinion, the weakest element of the game by far. We start in medias res, with our dynamic duo being transported in the back of some holding ship to somewhere else. Our prerequisite annoying companion is Shipset, who helps us bust out of the holding ship, much to the initial disappoint of our character Exe. We do not learn much about Exe as he does not feel like sharing, but we soon learn that he has combat and hacking skills. We also learn that he was a mercenary before having a bounty placed on his head by the Algorithm. What is the Algorithm? Is it a government? A God? Hecked if I know, because world building in this game is non-existent. All I know is that Exe hates it with such a passion that he entertains the notion of letting the universe die instead of helping the agents of it. This leads to the next major problem which we'll divert to discuss: the characters.
Because of the aforementioned lack of world building, we have no context for our characters and what motivates them. So Exe comes across as prickly for no good reason to most of the people around them. Meanwhile Shipset, the previously mentioned annoying sidekick, feels like Wheatley if his ability to annoy had been turned up to 11. The jokes that he makes fall flat and feel forced, like the person at a party that needs to feel liked by everyone so they attempt to make as many jokes as they can and then laugh loudly at their own jokes. It just makes it that much harder to be immersed in the story when the characters you have to spend the most time with are unlikeable.
But back to the story. After introducing us to the characters, we are told by Shipset that there is a ship for us to get off world at a port in the distance. So we start heading there, whilst getting hounded by members of some sort of organized crime syndicate. We fight them off, get ready to fly off in the ship, when the planet is suddenly attacked by the main villain and his forces. Evilware was a science bot that became enamoured with the object of his research: The Artifact. This macguffin apparently has the power to alter time and Evilware, as we're informed by The Ambassador, wants to use it to rule over the universe. So we're scouted by The Algorithm to get to The Artifact before Evilware can get it.
If that brief summary did not illustrate the problem with the story, then I will state it plainly: the story is paper thin and has little context to back the stakes. It relies on the old "The universe is in danger, and you live in a universe, so go save it" brand of storytelling. Rather than giving us a reason to care about why Exe and Shipset want their freedom, the game speeds onto the next story beat, so that it can make a couple of Wheadonian quips before moving on to the next thing because it got bored. "There's a robomafia after you! Quick escape the planet before they can get to you! No wait, now the planet is being invaded by the BBEG, get to the extraction point to meet with the VIP who gives you your mission. Now you need to race against the BBEG to get to THE THING OF DOOMSTINY! Oh no, he got there first, now you been exploded but definitely not back in time. I wonder where we are and why there are suddenly lots of cave paintings. Oh dang! We got time travelled to the past." The few times the game tries to set things up, it interrupts itself to make a joke about how boring exposition is, then makes another joke later about how we have no idea what we're doing here.
Overall, Akimbot has some good elements, and if you don't give one lick to a well written story, then you might enjoy it. Otherwise I would stay steer clear. I already mentioned that I did not complete the game, and I have no intention of even considering going back. It's a shame, because the rest of the game was well put together, and I hope that the studio behind this can learn from this and make improvements if they want to come back to it.