Interesting idea -- but marred by flawed camerawork and irritating slowdowns.
The core idea behind Tokobot is that you are controlling a set of little robots which can be used to perform different moves. Some of the moves involve the bots in their normal forms. For example, "Throw" swings a column of bots which can function as a stick to beat enemies with, a ladder to climb, or a rope to swing on. "Spin" can be used to bash enemies, activate gears, or glide in the air like a helicopter. And so on -- you uncover more moves throughout the game.
The bots can also be used to form different machines such as the Mono Choo-Choo (a train that rides on a monorail), the Samurai Hover-bot (a floating warrior with a sword), the Super Cannon (a big gun), and so on. All of these forms are unlockable as you progress through the game.
Personally, I like the basic idea. I wanted to check out Tokobot because I knew it could make for a great game if it were done right. And it's true, there are a lot of very interesting elements in the game ... but Tokobot doesn't quite succeed in putting them all together as well as it could have. Let's break it down.
SPEED: The gameplay feels poky and is marked by annoying slowdowns. As Bolt, you wander through a big landscape, but you're completely unable to run. This gets obnoxious later in the game when you revisit areas you've been through before. If you die -- which happens often -- there is no auto-continue feature; you must manually load from the previous save point. While this doesn't waste a great deal of time, it's irritating and unnecessary. Similarly, if you die during a boss fight, the game forces you to sit through the lead-in dialogue every time. (Dialogue segments can be cancelled with the Start button, but since there are often four or five segments before a boss fight, you have to push it over and over again. So even this "acceleration" feature feels slow.) The slowness isn't a technical problem, and there isn't any one thing you can point to that is the primary cause of it feeling slow; there are a lot of reasons. It's death by a thousand cuts.
CAMERA: Pretty bad. In the normal course of the game it's bearable, even though it often winds up pointing in exactly the wrong direction. In boss and miniboss fights it degrades to horrendous, and you all too often wind up fighting an unseen enemy. Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting the camera more than the bad guys.
STORY: Yawn. Straight from the Japanese RPG factory's default storyline. Someone's out to steal the Power to Rule the World, I guess, and you and your tedious cohorts are out to stop them. There's occasionally a small and thoroughly predictable twist. You have an "operator", Ruby, who tells you how to do stuff but can be deliberately and mind-blowingly stupid. Example: Let's see -- I just got the ability to transform into the "Mecha-Wheel", which lets me activate vertical gears when I stand on a special Mecha-Wheel symbol. But the bridge is out and in its place there's a mecha-wheel symbol next to a gear. How, oh how, do I get across? Ruby doesn't seem to have any idea. What I'm trying to say is that she's not exactly a mental giant. Neither are any of the other characters in the game.
GRAPHICS: Boring. Many of the enemy models are just variations on spheres and cubes, with cone-shaped spikes added to indicate areas that aren't vulnerable to Tokobot attacks. Trust me, it's even less exciting than it sounds. No in-game movies. There's a tiny bit of stylish 2D still art to show characters when they're talking, but that's about as graphically interesting as the game gets.
SOUND: Average. Not much to say here... straight from the Japanese RPG factory. I didn't bother to listen to it very much but it seemed okay.
GAMEPLAY: This is the reason I wanted Tokobot -- because it looked like it could have come up with some unique gameplay. And indeed, the puzzles in the game are interesting, and they are what redeems the game. But I kept getting distracted by how obnoxious the delays and slowdowns were and wishing it had been better executed. It gets better as you get further into the game, but that may just be because I both lowered my expectations and got used to what the game expected.
In the end I had to give this game a mediocre gameplay score because of the irritating slowdowns. But if you can deal with those, or learn to accept them, the gameplay is better than just a 5... without the slowdowns it might have gotten a 7.
Tokobot's not a bad concept. It's even fun at points. But if you get bothered by poor execution, give this one a miss. Who knows, maybe there will be a sequel that is actually fast-paced and fun.