UFO Robot Grendizer – The Feast of the Wolves review

Although faithful to its source material, UFO Robot Grendizer grows monotonous far too soon.

If you grew up in North America, there’s a narrow chance you might be familiar with UFO Robot Grendizer. Across the 1980s, an episodic anthology of different anime series was broadcast in Toronto, New England, and San Francisco, compiled under the Force Five moniker. One of the prominent entries was Go Nagai’s Grendizer, which centered around Duke Fleed.

After his planet is attacked by the malicious King Vega, the crown prince escapes with an awe-inspiring piece of military technology- a hulking, guardian robot that can attach to a flying saucer. Following his arrival on Earth, the hardware plays a decisive role in repelling an alien attack, which is all depicted in the first twenty minutes of UFO Robot Grendizer – The Feast of the Wolves.

Taking down the…Vegans?

Like most games about giant robots, there’s a moment of exhilaration when you first step into Grendizer’s cockpit. For better or worse, Feast of the Wolves provides players with an opportunity to harness all the beloved machine’s signature moves.

With abilities mapped to different buttons, it’s easy to unleash your Haken, where shoulder mounted blades strike and stun opponents in either melee or ranged fashion. Or you can summon Grendizer’s Anti-Gravity Storm, which lifts foes skyward before slamming them into the ground and putting them into a stun state, where they face further abuse.

Familiar Fodder for the Feast

But like the anime adaptation of the PlayStation 1 and 2 eras, UFO Robot Grendizer’s action is lifted from better games. In this case, the dominance of your arsenal recalls God of War as you dish out attacks that devastate most groups of foes. Difference is found in the various protective states that enemies use.

These defensive conditions mean that you’ll have to use a specific type of attack before you can damage opponents, typically right after you dodge one of their strikes.  But given the game’s limited number of adversaries, its unruly camera, frequent performance hiccups, and an energy meter that refills slowly, fighting becomes dull quickly. Seemingly, Nantes-based developer Enroad is aware of this and attempted to mix things up with first-person flying segments, a two-dimensional shooter sections, hallway navigation that’s decidedly RPGish, as well as visual novel scenes that deliver exposition.

Dizer, Spazer, and TFO Modes

Unfortunately, Feast of the Wolves’ favors variety over sophistication or polish. The game’s semi-open world play, where Grendizer goes from one mission marker to the next, is the highlight. The approach provides players with a bit of autonomy as they tackle missions that have them defending trucks and towns, extinguishing fires, or tackling waves of enemies.

But the action descends into tedium within the first few hours, as you find yourself confronting the same enemy sets or collecting resources to unlock additional abilities. This kind of undertaking might have been acceptable for a bargain priced title in the early 2000s. But today, Grendizer fans have likely enjoyed far better instances of mechanized combat.

Conclusion

Even on robust rigs, UFO Robot Grendizer falters with an Anti-Gravity Storm causing the framerate to sputter on an RTX 4070 at 1080p. Even with visual settings turned down, the game moves in fits and bursts on a Steam Deck, making the uninspired gameplay even less bearable. Regardless of hardware, you can expect to see a lot of environmental pop-up and get the great Grendizer caught on pieces of the landscape, which undermines an attempt to recreate the look of the series. If you can peer past the lackluster execution, there’s aspiration of a better experience, with the occasional colossal spaceship or a music track that mimics the 70s charm of the source material.

UFO Robot Grendizer – The Feast of the Wolves was played
on PC with review code provided by the publisher.