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I've seen a lot of reviews of this game which basically say "If you like Penny Arcade, you'll like this game." I'm going to disagree with that statement. If you like Penny Arcade, and you like certain aspects of Japanese-style role-playing games, you'll like this game.

PAA:OtR-SPoD takes place in 1922 in "New Arcadia", a world like ours, but sillier and more magical. The fact that there's magic in the world is a fact... other than that there's a sort of steampunk ethos to it. You play, well, you set up however you'd like, standing outside your house on Desperation Street and being told by some narrator that you need to rake up the leaves in front of your house. As you do so, a giant robot foot comes down and smashes your home flat.

That foot belongs to a giant robot whose name I can't really mention in a family friendly site like this one. Upset about this (the foot, not the name), you notice two people chasing the giant robot, and soon join them, armed with your trusty rake. As you look into the mystery of the giant robot you'll find many other mysteries abound, from H. P. Lovecraft-esque Cthulhuan mythos to robots that attempt to mate with fruit to evil, evil mimes.

Probably the best part about the game is the writing. If you read Penny Arcade and find the humor in it funny, well, you're going to like the humor and dialogue in this game. If you don't, or if you don't like a number of curse words strewn liberally throughout the narrative, you're not going to enjoy the game (it is an "M" rated game for the imMature - this is NOT a game for kids).

It's a very stylized game in a lot of ways, too. The only character who speaks is the narrator, which lets the player put his own voice in for all the character as well as allows the game to keep the player's character as the narrative focus. Your character is entwined in this whole mystery, and this includes talking to the NPCs and such. When you reach the edge of an area while roaming the world, it offers to take you to the next "panel" of the cartoon.

Combat features an interesting real-time system that served mostly to frustrate me. You control up to three characters at once, plus "support characters" that can come in from the side and help. Your main character has a rake, while Gabe goes bare-knuckle brawling and Tycho is armed with a Tommy gun.

Combat starts with a d20 roll to determine initiative. As it's real-time, the dice are rolled and immediately it starts leaving no chance to prepare any strategy other than what you could glean from the opponents in the couple of seconds before combat.

Each character has three different actions that he can make. A timer fills up each one in order. The more powerful actions therefore take more time to be able to get off than the basic attacks.

The first typically available (assuming you didn't roll a 20) is to use an item. For instance, items will improve your defense, lower an opponent's defense, heal you, or cause damage. You can't seem to change the inventory method of the items and thus have to memorize what is where. Second is your basic attack which you select and then choose an enemy as the target. Last is your special attack, which turns into a game-paused "mini-game" to see how much damage you do.

At the same time your enemies may be attacking you. When they do so you have a chance to block, but it's poorly shown in the tutorial part of the game and can be annoyingly hard to learn how to time properly. In fact, what it boils down to is that as the game goes on, it gets easier, because you get better at blocking the attacks.

You also have some support characters. Tycho's niece can join in with a flamethrower occasionally, and the cat can also do minor damage (or, very rarely, HUGE damage).

The actual moving around the game world is a bit annoying, too. Characters get hung up all the time on the scenery. It can be difficult to line up exactly right to interact with the object you wish to interact with and sometimes speech balloons cover up what you want to see. There's no shop or any way to "buy" bandages and other useful bits of gear, so you need to go through areas over and over again to smash trash cans, crates, etc., to find more.

All in all, it's an entertaining game, if not without its flaws. If you're a fan of Penny Arcade AND you're a fan of roleplaying games it's almost definitely worth your time and money; if you're not a fan of Penny Arcade, I wouldn't bother, and if you're not a fan of roleplaying games than you should take serious consideration whether or not you want to support Tycho and Gabe enough to give them your 1600 Microsoft points (if on XBLA) in case you don't care for the game play.