Danball Senki BOOST

A really interesting mecha titles in PSP.


I have intended to write an article for Danball Senki for a while already but as usual i always procrastinate things.  Danball Senki or literally "War in the Cardboard" is a 3d mecha action game made by Level 5 which pit customized robot figures called LBX against each other. I played both Danball Senki and the Boost version which i clocked over 40 hours on the latter one and i recommend to get boost instantly as this game has all the contents of the Regular Danball Senki had along with plenty of extra stuffs especially Dual Wielding Guns and Sword. This series is quite popular in Japan but overlooked on the west due to the language barrier. However if you are familiar with Japanese Kana, i think you can pick up this game without significant difficulty.

 

The series takes place in near future setting where kids got new toys called LBX aka Little Battler eXperience which is a smaller version of medabots with less sentience but still very deadly for a toy. The story of the series is your typical kids toy commercial series where the main character aim to be the very best with his toy with some over the top stuffs which is typical from Level 5. Don't expect anything good from the story though because it is rather crap due to being a stuffs for kids. There are over 12 chapter in the story which may take 10 to 20 hours to complete.

However the gameplay is the most solid aspect of the series with great customization along with plethora of LBX to choose from and frankenstein with. For a mecha action game, Danball Senki is really fun and challenging enough and boost even provide much much more challenges which can be insane sometimes.

Customization along with the gameplay is the strongest part of Danball Senki. You are given LBX which you can mix and match its parts which doesn't look good due to no color modification. You also can pick 2 weapons from 7 available weapon class, 4 melee and 3 ranged weapon which you either buy from shop or get from ranking battle. Other than the body parts you are able to modify the internal circuit of your LBX which provide you base stats like Battery power or Weapon proficiency which are quite important as well as picking your finisher attacks called ATTACK FUNCTION which are flashy and really cool. some unique LBX like Odin or Lucifer have their own exclusive attack functions.

In Danball Senki, there are 3 grades of the LBX Parts; NG, HG and MG with the latter is the best one. You can finish the game with NG LBXs but in order to play the post game stuff, you need to have MG level LBXs at least in order to survive. You can gain access to higher quality parts from Ranking battle and Card Battle. both of them gets harder as you get to the higher level where the enemy can easily wipe you out due to unfair advantage. Card Battle is better to get better parts as this is the only way to get alternate color LBX or the secret ones. You get cards throughout the game which you can use in the Arcade Center on the shopping strip to fight the LBX data from the card. If you beat the set of stages in card battle you will win random parts from LBX you fought as well as more LBX card. You can also double up which yields 2 cards instead of one and get more parts though keep in mind that Double up makes you fight the enemy twice of the card's base level.

Danball Senki is one of the better PSP title when it comes to gameplay, if you really want to play the game but discouraged due to the language barrier perhaps you should wait for a while. Because i heard some /m/ anon is attempting translation project on Danball Senki Boost which is probably partial one but good enough to make it playable. You can also check the anime series which got pretty good animation and the animes pretty much cover the plots from the game. On the side note, i have just finished my LBX Odin and it will be ready for review in few weeks.