YMMV / Robot Alchemic Drive

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The battle with Dantarion. A Godzilla Expy that shows up for all of one mission, and despite every character in the game stating repeatedly that organic beings can't survive space travel due to Nectar Radiance, no one comments on the fact that you're fighting a living creature from another planet nor speculates how it could have gotten there. And to top it off, it's the only one you fight, and the incident is never mentioned again.
• Cheese Strategy: Your avatar can be equipped with grenades so they have a viable attack against Volgara. Thus it's possible, if tedious, to just run around bombing an enemy robot's feet until it dies. It's almost required in a few levels, though, like the one where you're stuck using Gllang, and then it turns out something's broken and it can't transform out of tank mode. Meaning the grenades are the only weapon you have that won't set off the enemy's teleportation.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: Part of the difficulty of the game. The camera is fixed on your character at all times, so controlling the mech can be very easy or very difficult depending on where you are from it. Positioning your character on the mech's shoulders or head is the best perspective you can get for controlling it, but also the best way to get yourself killed. The camera also tends to follow any projectiles fired by your Meganite, which usually isn't too bad, but if Vavel's Rocket Punch misses or doesn't kill the enemy, you're SOL because the camera's going to follow that while the Volgara's pounding on your robot, and you can't see to stop it.
• Game-Breaker: Laguiole's speed and airborne Fortress Mode allow it to intercept Volgara long before they can cause much collateral damage, and it can punch fast enough to land an enemy flat on its back while they're still winding up. To top it off, it's the only Meganite with a ranged alt-weapon that draws from its energy reserves instead of ammo, and hits hard enough to topple anything hit by it. It can even jump high enough to vault over the enemy and land behind them.
• Les Yay: Nanao is a possible love interest for either of the male protagonists. Her dialogue changes very little if you're using the female character, Yui.
• Memetic Mutation: Chances are, you've heard of this game through clips like this. Those vegetables must have been real cheap.
• Narm: The English voice acting is (deliberately) laughable but Nanao's line "A robot killed grandma..." takes the cake. See for yourself.
• Never Live It Down: Nanao's shock and disgust at learning the Chairman is the controller of a Meganite, leading to the above line under Narm. Reading most comments on the game, you'd think she held that attitude for a large chunk of the game, but in truth she gets over it by the next mission she appears in. And despite her status as a Damsel Scrappy, she only needs to be saved twice out of the game's 53 missions.
• The Scrappy:
  • Nanao is generally not well-liked among the game's fans: the combination of her whiny attitude, constant need for saving (in only two missions, though), and God-awful voice acting has won her very few fans.
  • Likewise, Gllang is almost universally despised among the Meganite selection. Its gimmick is that it's a Mighty Glacier with tons of weapons and attack power and a transformation to compensate. Unfortunately, it doesn't match the game, because weapons are useless until the Volgara are nearly dead from melee attacks, and the transformation only really helps in completely straight lanes. It doesn't help that Vavel can do the same thing with its Gigantic Booster upgrade WITHOUT being slow as crap and having a Super Mode.
• Spiritual Licensee: This is probably the closest westerners will ever get to Giant Robo: The Video Game.
• That One Level:
  • For missions, "A Day At School" is an Escort Mission that requires you to defend a school from not one, but two Cyclone Harriers, one of the most annoying Volgara types in the game. And they spawn a long distance from the launch area, to boot.
  • For maps, Senjo New City Center is dense with large, expensive buildings that make navigation a pain, and you can forget about the special bonus once the robot fists start flying.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Laguiole's Aerial Corroder involves its long, hip-mounted fins swinging forward to form a Wave-Motion Tuning Fork...mounted below waist height. The end result is the sight of it firing a powerful wave of energy from its crotch.

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