Robot Arena III

ITS SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD

This game seemed like it was going to follow up on a great classic, but arrived in a terrible state and was abandoned pretty quickly. Go back and play RA2, this game has no place in anyone's library.

The game is nowhere near finished but the devs long since abandoned it. Don't waste your money. hitboxes are terrible, all weight classes thrown together.

Bad game is bad. Lack of parts, what parts there are feel weak, and under powered. The career mode is a joke, the opponents aren't organized into teams, they don't have any set weight classes, there isn't a repair period between fights. The arena announcer isn't that great, when the matches end, it's suddenly. The bots seem to easily get stuck on things or other bots. Way to much that could have been better, that makes this not worth getting.

The bad: This game is completely unsupported, the devs lied about their intent to fix it.

...but what can we do? There's literally no other bot combat game like this. What I am supposed to do, go back to Robot Arena 1 or 2? Do those even work on Windows XP, let alone Windows 7 like I'm on now?

Like a battlebot that wins because the opponent didn't show up, Robot Arena 3 wins by default. Despite being buggy, we have no other option. I wish there was a better bot combat game, but one does not exist at this time... please someone make a better one so I don't have to keep working with this buggy mess that is still the best thing we've got.

Seems devs just gave up on this one, the game is so dead they didn't bother keeping their domain name up (at http://www.robotarena.com/ ).

As a former RA2 player and fan of combat robotics in general, I was excited to hear that a sequal to the preivous title was finally being released. (Their timing also probably took advantage of the return of Battlebots to TV, but that's aside the point.) So I hastily bought it, eager to see it for myself.

It's been a while, so I apologize if I don't recall some details correctly.

The bot builder section was okay. It was a little hard to grasp at first, but I eventually figured it out, and it definately was more powerful than RA2 in many key areas. The crashes and subsequent glitching up of the designs were harder to manage, but fortunately a patch managed to fix it. This isn't to say that it is perfect, of course. The weight would sometimes change abruptly when you exited the build screen, and some things were stille a little... finicky. Tolerable, though, because surely the developer would iron these quibbles out.

Bot in hand, I started expedition mode. I was a little disappointed by the UI used to select the arena and opponents. It lacked a lot of the trimming RA2 had... you know, like the opponent's weight class. Guess they wanted to leave that for us to figure out. Nonethless, I started my match in the warehouse. After bearing through the surprisingly un-exciting announcer - even compared to RA2 - speaking, the match began. Bots slammed into each other. Parts flew. I pummeled my opponent apart, and prepared to land the killing blow, expecting the game to release sparks or even an explosion to come with my victory.

Instead, a pop-up instantaneously appeared over my bot, informing me that I had won. That was it. I couldn't even admire my handiwork thanks to it. As I later found out, this also occurred with immobalization, as well as being hit by a subway or falling into lava. Kinda anticlimactic.

So, I finally started the tournaments part. I liked these in RA2. I selected my bot, picked a tournament, hit continue, and....

nothing. Nothing happened when I clicked. To top it off, since I was technically entered in the event, it also locked my bot on the build section.

I hoped that the designer would fix these issues. Instead, they disappeared into thin air later the year.

I hope this was an informative cautionary tale.

I bought this game hoping for an improvement on RA2. I like being able to place cameras for custom viewpoints. Unfortunately, nothing else seems to be working properly. It looks like the Devs have given up on the game rather than attempt to fix it, so I'm going to stick with RA2.

Went back to try this again. Wasn't worth it. Game still broken and unplayable. Was a staff member for the RA2 community for years, so believe me, please don't waste your money on this broken game that the devs refuse to fix. Should be removed from Steam.

You had one job, guys. One fucking job and half the time you havent even been seen about.

The Dev's are AWOL as far as i'm concerned and have been for ages, the game still needs a hell of a lot of work and yet there hasnt been an update in a long time. Because of this, i highly recommend you do NOT buy this.

Will update if they ever show their faces again. Quite a shame because there are some nice ideas here but Robot Arena 2 just... it just works and you can get it for free if you do some digging.

and no update in about a month.... devs it was every week.... lets do something with this.. Either make it free to play or open it to the workshop and let people make the game what it should be...

The optimization on this game seems to be terrible thus far, I'm getting dreadful framerates during gameplay despite my computers resources barely being used up (bearing in mind I'm using a laptop), peaking at around 25% RAM usage and 40% cpu usage. (I also had the graphics quality set to 'fastest' and the lowest possible resolution)

The resolution on this game doesn't fit the window screen when reduced I've also noticed, and framerates during menus/botlab can be clunky. Components also have a nack for rotating when selected without being prompted to do so.

One last gripe, when I click 'continue' when attempting to enter career mode nothing happens.

Now for the positive, I do like the seemingly endless possibilities in bot creation and not having to start all over if my chassis is too big/small. It's also good that you can rotate components (even with components connected to them) after placing and not having to remove other components and so on.

I think the game has the potential to be a very enjoyable robot sim providing it's gameplay issue are dealt with accordingly.

It is with great regret that I post a No Review.

Robot Arena III is not finished yet. For a "released game" it is on par with Sword of the Stars II. There are some great ideas and vast improvements on the orriginal, but it is not a complete game yet. This game never should have left early access in its current state.

Good:
-Excellent improvements on the RA2 designing system
-Complete chassis customizability
-Loads of parts and weapons to make truely unique machines of death!
-Freaking ROBOT AREANA 3 !!!!!

Bad:
-Not pollished at all
-Bugs in the bot editor
-Very buggy physics
-Sometimes your bot just implodes when you load it into the arena
-No LAN multiplayer ?!?!
-No editor undo button

!!! DO NOT BUY THIS GAME !!!!


Feb 2017, more than half a year has gone by without any updates or news at all.

Dont buy the game, its clearly abandoned by the devs which is just a pity for those of us who payed for it already.

They changed it to "Final release" just before a sale, in order to coax ppl into buying it, while the game was actually not changed, they simply labeled the beta version "Final Release".

As the game is now, its not even playable and I wonder how it can actually remain for sale here on Steam, when it doesnt work and no one is working to finish it.

I made a review before this a few days into early access, and if you want a TL;DR I'll paraphrase one of my previous lines - buy into it if you're fine with being an alpha tester. I am. It's flawed, but fun.

So as Robot Arena III rolls into a full release, it must be considered that the devs themselves say that it's more of a tactical move to bring it out of early access, what with the Steam summer sale approaching fast. But I'm not here to knock their sales strategy.

Having a binary recommendation option is tough for some games; this is one of them. To recommend it right this moment as a full release title would be to grossly overrate it's current quality and depth of content. The physics aren't all there as a simulation game, with bad collision physics in certain circumstances and with certain components. Components can still be placed anywhere without any boundaries. The career mode does not reset when all of the tournaments have been finished. There's a bug where the camera won't stop moving up or down in the bot lab after battling some AI opponents that should have been swatted by now.

But to not recommend it would be to downplay the monumental effort the devs have been undertaking in the last 4 weeks to improve the game. The first day of early access the game was considered 'full', and it was a mess. You couldn't even build a wedge shaped robot because every robot had box collisions. Now you can. The biggest drive motors would make your robot flip on the spot like one of those toy backflipping dogs unless it weighed as much as a star. Now they don't. Weight classes are back. Should all of these things been in the game on day 1? Absolutely. But they also could have just dumped the game there and then and moved on. They haven't. I respect that.

They have good ideas. The 5 layer chassis system is great for rounded shapes or crafting detail. Being able to move components after placing them is one of the best quality of life improvements they could have made after RA2. Someone on Gametechmods figured out how to mod the game, even if it's crude at the moment, so a modding community is imminent. Robot Arena III will be great. It's just not 'great' this second.

Needs lots of work as the game is early access, but you can build some pretty funky stuff then drive it around.

Was a huge fan of RA2, and so far have been a huge fan of RA3.

Lots of freedom to build to your heart's content. You can build some completely unrealistic abominations that make absolutely no sense, then blame it on the game developers, or you can build some really neat stuff. The freedom may allow cheating, per se, but it can also allow you to make some complicated contraptions, art, replicas, or things that were only possible through exploits or cheat components in RA2.

You can build totally IRL, or you can freely build completely unrealistic without the use of exploits.

I am a huge fan of Robot Arena 2. when i saw for the first time RA3 on Steam, I wasn\'t scared by the negative reviews. I was sure that, yes, the game needed some work, but i was also convinced that the game was really fun.

...I was incredibly wrong.

I know, I know, the game is still in early access, but there are a lot of basics problems that not only need to be solved, but changed.

Starting to the bot lab. Ok, now you really have the complete possibility to create any, ANY shape for the robots, but the price to pay is too high. The way you modify the chassis is really too difficult. I had trouble even with simple robot desings, the multiple layers scheme is far from being clear. But there is more...
Mounting the parts can be really frustrating. The process is really slow, I don\'t get why the parts must to be mounted in a \"standard\" position UNDER the chassis, and then, repositioned where we want. But i like the idea of moving mounted parts, this really is an useful thing.

I do not like the way you wire the motors/pistons in RA3. it works in the opposite way of RA2, I found it too messy. But maybe it\'s just me.

Ok, time to try our new, fresh built robot, right?

....Right?

No.

For no reason, the physics of the game decided to punch herself with all of his might, resulting in a complete DISASTER.
Without touching any key, my robot started to bounce illogically all along the arena. Any attempt to stop it was useless.
I\'ve tried to add weight, add more wheels, everything. But no, nothing changed. The only thing i could do was delete the bot and build a new one.
In the nex time i\'ve tried different things. I\'ve tried to save space putting motors and wheels outside the chassis (mounted properly with extenders), but for no reason the back of the bot started to bounce. Another scrap. I\'ve also found that you can overlap parts. I was able to put 5 batteries in the same place. You can\'t see a thing like that in a 2016 game.
Then i\'ve tried to build a robot in the style of \"Chaos 2\": 2 big motors at the FRONT (ztech HP) to avoid wheelies, light and with a short wheelbase: a functional design in RA2 and in the real life. But what happened next got me mad.

Not only there is an exaggerated, insane amount of centrifugal force generated by the motors (that also spin at ridiculous low speed, considering that\'s the most powerful motor of the game) but the centrifugal force does not change even when the motors are spinning at max speed.

The result?

Trying to go forward, my robot started to continuosly roll over backward. I was crying inside me.

Without hope, i built the last robot. Big, heavy, slow, but functional.
Then i\'ve tried to battle.

Sad. Really sad.

A lot of sounds are missing, visual effects like fire and sparks are exaggerated and badly done. When you hit your opponent, you don\'t fell like you are hitting it, but you fell like you are pushing, or bouncing on it. You don\'t feel that you are damaging it, you don\'t see the deformations on the chassis, you don\'t see and feel nothing.

The only thing that remains is a slow, sad, frustrating game.

I hope that this can help the developers. In those contitions, i can\'t play the game without getting mad.

BUT.

I see potential. I think this could be a really funny game in the future, but things need to be changed. I wish good work to the developers. Maybe in a few months i will be back, to see if something changed. Like me, a lot of people care about this game.

I don't know how I feel... Alright, I'll be honest, I'm in denial that this game is like biting into a big, meaty, tasty looking juicy burger only to find out it's made of wax. I'm sorry devs, but... This was not ready to show the public yet. I've waited literally half my life for this sequal, and I could have waited another 6 months.

In building my bot, it's almost impossible to line up parts. I would rather the rotation snap 5 degrees per click (AND ONLY ON A CLICK... This "tap the mouse button as quickly as possible because a split second longer and it rotates 30 degrees" sucks). Additionally, lining up parts without at LEAST some sort of a 3D grid is all but impossible. In RA2 I could build the bot I just built in 10min. It just took me 2 hours to get things lined up.

The interface is... well, not pretty, that's for sure. I don't really mind that, as it's kinda like going back in time to my 13 year old self playing RA2 on my old Windows XP cheap rig. But I can see where others would think "Was this game developed in VB6?"

Devs... I WANT to trust you all will fix these issues. I WANT to believe that this will fill my inner child with glee. But... The fact that you let others see this game, or even pay for it, in this state... Guys, pay your bills with my money and get on this, ok? For me? It honestly reminds me of my first projects in Unity but with a better UI and more overall polish... That's not a compliment... I'm no god of programming...

My advice? Guys, wait a few months if you want a polished game. If this is your dream as much as it was mine, buy it now, show the devs we want it to be better, but realize that if you expect it to live up to RA2 with modern graphics in this state, it will feel like getting a Fatboy Tire shoved up your arse.

Things that have happened while playing the game:
- The menu cursor became stuck going down
- My robot randomly flipped over due to wonky physics
- My robot fell through the floor
- My robot broke immediately at the start of a match
- I moved a robot part under the table in the bot lab and could not click on it anymore
- My opponent's robot cloned itself in multiplayer twice in the same match
- An extra blank robot appeared in multiplayer
- I attempted to join a server that no longer existed, thus softlocking the game because there is no option to close the message
- I pressed the ready button in a server and nothing happened
- The game crashed every other time I tried to play a multiplayer match
- The game crashed my opponent's entire computer
- I contemplated what went wrong in my life that led me to playing this game

This is the Big Rigs of robot building simulators. Don't buy it unless you're a masochist.

In its current early access state, I can't recommend the game, simply because it's no better, and probably worse than its predecessor, which, due to it being abandonware is totally free. This sounds like a very harsh thing to say, but unfortunately with steam early access, you never really know if the game will ever come out of it.

Everything about the game is worse really. The physics on the robots are inconsistent, despite the newer engine. It makes fighting the robots feel a bit off. You might hit a guy with a spinning disc and have him not move, then he might drive into a wall and that'll be a much larger 'impact.' I didn't use a wedge, but I'm told the chassis of the robot actually makes no difference, ie, if you make a wedge you can't get under people. I can't confirm that.
The building has been 'simplified' to the point where it trades ease of use for clunkiness. For instance, if you try to add a 'peg board' to the edge of a disc, there's about 15 attach points on one side, and 3 on the other. You have to click change attach point about 15 times, as opposed to just clicking the attach point you want, then on the motor. It's just not streamlined at all, and I can put everything inside eachother.
Next, huge lack of parts. The variety dropped pretty hard in general. There isn't enough weapon motors and the best one isn't strong enough. Moving on, lack of part clarity, none of the motors say how much electricity they draw, as far as I can tell. The armor doesn't necessarilly say how effective it is. Is fibreglass going to give me more or less health than carbon fibre? Something about fire resistance?
On a side note, the music is annoying, the sound effects are low quality and just sound weird, and some are ripped from the old game. The graphics, while not that important, are pretty awful. Somehow even though the textures are higher quality, they are just worse looking than the old game. It's hard to explain. They just look like typical stock unity textures, it looks odd and cartoony. I'm sure you'll get the same feeling when you look at the screenshots. I think it's to do with the lighting.

For me, a robot building/fighting game where the building isn't great and the fighting is plagued by weird physics isn't worth the buy. Wait until full release, then look at the reviews again.

First time I ever disliked something that bad that im refunding,

The game is really really early and not finished to even be considered early alpha.

I would recommened all fans of the previous games to stay away from it until all the basics are finished.

Everything just feels so bad. no options outside of the launcher.

Some of the noise and models are from Robot arena 2, controls to create the robots are horribly designed for consoles in mind rathar than Pc.

Graphicly feels like a really old game. but i can say the game preforms nicely.

For now i would say to AVOID it, wait it out and see if it fixes most of the problems any Early access game has.