Robot Alchemic Drive (RAD) is a love letter to giant robot fights, tokusatsu movies, and kaiju films. The voice acting is hilariously bad. The control scheme is atrocious. The plot line is nonsensical. In spite of all this, the game is one of my favorite games on the Playstation 2. I'd even go so far as to call it a hidden gem. The game is very self aware of how ridiculous it is and leans into that. The result is a game that will make you laugh and smile while you play it. It's not difficult, but it is fairly long at 15-20 hours. It's developed by Sandlot and published by Enix (prior to the Square-Enix merger), and this game's engine went on to power the Earth Defense Force games. Give this game a chance and it will work its way into your heart.

There's no other game operating at the spectacle RAD provides. It's not mechasexual like Armored core or a fast moving stylish action game like ZoE, but in terms of putting you in the shoes of the characters and really feeling like you're an insignificant dot caught between two giants at war, this shit is unparalleled, giving you a little dude to run around with so you have to constantly be adjusting for sightlines and perspective was just a genius move on Sandlot's part. This game is known mainly for its control scheme, which is fairly intimidating, but frankly the game is very easy and as long as you can wildly swing in the enemy's direction you'll generally come out on top, it's a very approachable game. RAD is also surprisingly human in its storytelling, you spend a lot of time just talking to friends and seeing the on foot impact of the war, and there are a number of optional cutscenes you can trigger during fights by destroying certain landmarks that help keep you grounded in what you're really doing. Very impressive game