Welcome to Anachronox, an abandoned alien artificial planet at the centre of the universe, now home to lowlifes, thieves, and scoundrels. Here we join Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli--a down on his luck PI--and a cast of 6 other unlikely heroes on their quest to discover who or what is trying to destroy the universe. They are the only ones that believe it is happening, and the only ones that can do something about it.
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[14 horas]
Existiu um mundo vasto e super explorador dentro desse game, algumas mecânicas que contem sobre a tecnologia da época, uns serviços que se assemelham a mercenários (ou pau mandados?) me deixou com pulga atrás da orelha, diferente de muitos jogos da época, não achei a camera problema, porém a forma como devemos interpretar o posicionamento da missão no GPS/mapa do jogo é horrível, a história vou confessar que é legal, mas não passa disso. Side-quests são meio blér da vida, mas a campanha e composição desse RPG te fazem esquecer que o jogo tem seus problemas.
Existiu um mundo vasto e super explorador dentro desse game, algumas mecânicas que contem sobre a tecnologia da época, uns serviços que se assemelham a mercenários (ou pau mandados?) me deixou com pulga atrás da orelha, diferente de muitos jogos da época, não achei a camera problema, porém a forma como devemos interpretar o posicionamento da missão no GPS/mapa do jogo é horrível, a história vou confessar que é legal, mas não passa disso. Side-quests são meio blér da vida, mas a campanha e composição desse RPG te fazem esquecer que o jogo tem seus problemas.
SOMEONE REMAKE THIS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
This review contains spoilers
Between the roaring success of Warren Spector's Deus Ex and the embarrassing downfall of John Romero's Daikatana, the third pillar of Ion Storm, Tom Hall, managed to find a different fate altogether for his game, that being obscurity.
There's something poetic about these three pieces and how wildly different the history of each one is, but while people talk to no end about Anachronox's older brothers, no one seems to remember this RPG epic.
Cards on the table, I went into it expressely with the intent of finding something to love about it, an approach I've been trying to apply more and more as my understanding of game development deepens over time. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by how, in the end, it didn't really make me dig for that something. There is plenty of good in Anachronox.
Admittedly it's not an amazing game, it radiates the energy of a project spawned from Tom Hall going on a massive Final Fantasy 7 bender in '97 and deciding to make something comparable.
As far as inspirations go, FF7 is sure a great one, but Anachronox doesn't quite stick the landing as elegantly.
Still, if anything, it manages to be extremely unique despite wearing its JRPG influence on its sleeve, being the one true Western JRPG as I like to call it.
Sylvester "Sly" Boots is a washed up private detective living on the alien planet of Anachronox, which is surrounded by a sort of spiked ball that has wormholes at each tip for various destinations across the galaxy.
Being a sort of huge trade center, Anachronox is naturally a pretty shitty place to live, a cyberpunk dystopia of smoke and dark skies where the rich live on an elevated layer from the poor.
While that is almost Final Fantasy 7 verbatim, the tone of the writing here is markedly more sarcastic and adult.
Adult in the "Isn't it fucked old Bertha had to amputate and sell her legs to cover the fees of her nephew's tuition?" kind of way, the way that's hyperbolic yet not far off from what we see here on Earth.
It manages to be genuinely funny in multiple occasions, with some scenes getting the odd belly laugh out of me while sitting alone in my room. Great stuff.
The story kicks in like 10 hours in, in proper JRPG fashion, after leaving Anachronox and witnessing a whole planet get inexplicably rended in half and deleted, our party being the sole survivors of this disaster, destined to become the universe's saviors.
Mechanically, I can make it sound interesting through words, I can tell you that the overworld exploration and progression is handled similarly to a 3D point-and-click adventure game, where reading dialogue and figuring out what to do through logical steps is key and the puzzles make sense, with collectibles scattered around the map.
I can tell you that the combat is FF7 inspired ATB, complete with unlockable limit breaks and a materia-lite system, and that encounters are scripted around the map like Chrono Trigger and not random.
But saying this honestly makes the game you might be picturing in your head sound better than what the reality of Anachronox is, and that's that 3D environments aren't really that fun to explore when all you can do is walk everywhere kind of slowly and regularly take multiple elevators to run errands around the map, and the MysTech magic system is heavily railroaded by characters only really being good at using one specific type, with the combat being very much a formality and incredibly simple.
Despite the game ending up less than the sum of its parts, there is a surprising amount of worldbuilding, and you can tell the people behind it really cared about the universe of Anachronox.
From Democratus, home to a bickering parody of council politics, to Haephestus, inhabited by religious monks who hastily build a theme park after the disaster awakens all the MysTech in the universe and makes it a hot tourist location, the narrative arcs marked by each planet are incredibly strong at making this feel like a truly varied and outlandish universe.
My absolute favorite bit in this whole game was saving Democratus from an invading alien wasp asteroid, leaving it behind as every person in charge of running that planet was evidently an insane democracy fetishist, and then witnessing this feverish scene of the WHOLE ASS PLANET pulling up into the bar you crashed at as a miniaturized version of itself (democratically shrunken down to follow our heroes) and joining your party as a playable character.
This shit just doesn't happen in other games man.
You probably get to know Democratus better than any other party member too, as later on in the story the planet is forced to return to its original size, and your party gets scattered on different zones of the surface, each going through their own solo mini-adventure in the varied locations of Democratus, and I mean truly varied. Some characters get stuck in a desert where soldiers are stationed, others in a forest reminiscent of Star Wars' Endor, or an icy, snow-swept town in the middle of a string of murders. Every party member has a possible substory here (well, except Democratus of course), and you only get to pick 3, so you'll never see them all by design, which is sort of neat.
It's common in videogames that use space travel to generalize a single planet as a sort of monolith, like "this is the fire planet" or "this is the science planet", but Democratus truly escapes this stereotyping, presenting various coexisting facets of the same world, extremely different but all part of the same démos.
I also ended up really liking what the antagonist really is, which, in a development I can't tell if it's giving nod to the original Final Fantasy or not, ends up being Chaos.
The Limbus part of the game lets us confront the forces of Chaos directly, before heading back to Anachronox for the grand finale against Detta, the crimelord turned billionaire that ruined Sly's life years ago, who we need to steal from in order to seal the portal that allows the forces of Chaos to attack the universe.
The saddest part is that, right as the game ends on a massive plot twist regarding one of your party members, and as the battle against Chaos is beginning in full, it ends.
Anachronox was meant to be developed across multiple games, but the collapse of Ion Storm and the failure on the part of Tom Hall to acquire the rights to it leave us with just the beginning of this space opera and the unfulfilled promise of much more.
Not too long ago I asked if Hall himself had any plans to return to Anachronox, and it seems like hope may yet remain.
So let us see if the forgotten third wheel of Ion Storm may one day finally earn the recognition it deserves for its uniqueness and inventiveness, this one-of-a-kind world sprung from the collision of JRPGs and WRPGs. I know it deserves it.
There's something poetic about these three pieces and how wildly different the history of each one is, but while people talk to no end about Anachronox's older brothers, no one seems to remember this RPG epic.
Cards on the table, I went into it expressely with the intent of finding something to love about it, an approach I've been trying to apply more and more as my understanding of game development deepens over time. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by how, in the end, it didn't really make me dig for that something. There is plenty of good in Anachronox.
Admittedly it's not an amazing game, it radiates the energy of a project spawned from Tom Hall going on a massive Final Fantasy 7 bender in '97 and deciding to make something comparable.
As far as inspirations go, FF7 is sure a great one, but Anachronox doesn't quite stick the landing as elegantly.
Still, if anything, it manages to be extremely unique despite wearing its JRPG influence on its sleeve, being the one true Western JRPG as I like to call it.
Sylvester "Sly" Boots is a washed up private detective living on the alien planet of Anachronox, which is surrounded by a sort of spiked ball that has wormholes at each tip for various destinations across the galaxy.
Being a sort of huge trade center, Anachronox is naturally a pretty shitty place to live, a cyberpunk dystopia of smoke and dark skies where the rich live on an elevated layer from the poor.
While that is almost Final Fantasy 7 verbatim, the tone of the writing here is markedly more sarcastic and adult.
Adult in the "Isn't it fucked old Bertha had to amputate and sell her legs to cover the fees of her nephew's tuition?" kind of way, the way that's hyperbolic yet not far off from what we see here on Earth.
It manages to be genuinely funny in multiple occasions, with some scenes getting the odd belly laugh out of me while sitting alone in my room. Great stuff.
The story kicks in like 10 hours in, in proper JRPG fashion, after leaving Anachronox and witnessing a whole planet get inexplicably rended in half and deleted, our party being the sole survivors of this disaster, destined to become the universe's saviors.
Mechanically, I can make it sound interesting through words, I can tell you that the overworld exploration and progression is handled similarly to a 3D point-and-click adventure game, where reading dialogue and figuring out what to do through logical steps is key and the puzzles make sense, with collectibles scattered around the map.
I can tell you that the combat is FF7 inspired ATB, complete with unlockable limit breaks and a materia-lite system, and that encounters are scripted around the map like Chrono Trigger and not random.
But saying this honestly makes the game you might be picturing in your head sound better than what the reality of Anachronox is, and that's that 3D environments aren't really that fun to explore when all you can do is walk everywhere kind of slowly and regularly take multiple elevators to run errands around the map, and the MysTech magic system is heavily railroaded by characters only really being good at using one specific type, with the combat being very much a formality and incredibly simple.
Despite the game ending up less than the sum of its parts, there is a surprising amount of worldbuilding, and you can tell the people behind it really cared about the universe of Anachronox.
From Democratus, home to a bickering parody of council politics, to Haephestus, inhabited by religious monks who hastily build a theme park after the disaster awakens all the MysTech in the universe and makes it a hot tourist location, the narrative arcs marked by each planet are incredibly strong at making this feel like a truly varied and outlandish universe.
My absolute favorite bit in this whole game was saving Democratus from an invading alien wasp asteroid, leaving it behind as every person in charge of running that planet was evidently an insane democracy fetishist, and then witnessing this feverish scene of the WHOLE ASS PLANET pulling up into the bar you crashed at as a miniaturized version of itself (democratically shrunken down to follow our heroes) and joining your party as a playable character.
This shit just doesn't happen in other games man.
You probably get to know Democratus better than any other party member too, as later on in the story the planet is forced to return to its original size, and your party gets scattered on different zones of the surface, each going through their own solo mini-adventure in the varied locations of Democratus, and I mean truly varied. Some characters get stuck in a desert where soldiers are stationed, others in a forest reminiscent of Star Wars' Endor, or an icy, snow-swept town in the middle of a string of murders. Every party member has a possible substory here (well, except Democratus of course), and you only get to pick 3, so you'll never see them all by design, which is sort of neat.
It's common in videogames that use space travel to generalize a single planet as a sort of monolith, like "this is the fire planet" or "this is the science planet", but Democratus truly escapes this stereotyping, presenting various coexisting facets of the same world, extremely different but all part of the same démos.
I also ended up really liking what the antagonist really is, which, in a development I can't tell if it's giving nod to the original Final Fantasy or not, ends up being Chaos.
The Limbus part of the game lets us confront the forces of Chaos directly, before heading back to Anachronox for the grand finale against Detta, the crimelord turned billionaire that ruined Sly's life years ago, who we need to steal from in order to seal the portal that allows the forces of Chaos to attack the universe.
The saddest part is that, right as the game ends on a massive plot twist regarding one of your party members, and as the battle against Chaos is beginning in full, it ends.
Anachronox was meant to be developed across multiple games, but the collapse of Ion Storm and the failure on the part of Tom Hall to acquire the rights to it leave us with just the beginning of this space opera and the unfulfilled promise of much more.
Not too long ago I asked if Hall himself had any plans to return to Anachronox, and it seems like hope may yet remain.
So let us see if the forgotten third wheel of Ion Storm may one day finally earn the recognition it deserves for its uniqueness and inventiveness, this one-of-a-kind world sprung from the collision of JRPGs and WRPGs. I know it deserves it.
When I started playing this game I had no idea what to expect. I was initially struggling to get two other games set up and ready to stream (Jade Empire and Thief Gold) and so I was looking for a back-up game to stream instead and saw the name, remembered I got it years ago (most likely during a sale) and I gave the store a quick look just to get the genre correct for my organisation with how I name/organise my streams by game genre, ect. That said, what came next I was not prepared for!
My first stream of the game and my legitimate first-hand experience of this game
First off, this game is a sci-fi themed RPG where you start out playing a Sylvester "Sly" Boots, a private investigator who is down on his luck and owes money to a crime-boss named Detta, whose thug throws you out of the window for not paying him on time. Sly needs to get a job or two so that he can pay off Detta, his bar tab and maybe even have a comfortable life.
However, what starts as a simple task to get money, Sly is thrown into a variety of situations that put him and his new companions in the situation to save the universe! As good as that all is...will he be able to pay off that tab?
My thoughts:
I didn't know what to expect from this game as I went in blind but I soon found that not only was it a fun sci-fi RPG, but ones of those hidden/forgotten gems! The game is filled with fun minigames that every character has as their unique ability to unlock something or obtain it (Sly having lockpicking, but later characters have different abilities), hilarious dialog from the kinds of NPCs you generally ignore in games (my favourite ones being the fling-bot and Krapto the Super Dog) and a epic storyline with many moments of drama and comedy throughout it! Including one section that was just a massive Star Wars piss-take!
I am so glad I decided to stream this in place of the other two games I was unable to run and it was quite the experience! It was one of those games that I found myself wanting to play, even on days I wasn't streaming! Not because the combat was amazing (it was pretty standard, kinda like classic FF7, but with the added ability of positioning yourself tactically) but just because I wanted to speak to random NPCs or find out what crazy thing would happen next! When we got the 5th companion I couldn't stop laughing on stream and had to tell people about it! Scratch that, I had to tell EVERYONE about it! Even people who weren't ever going to play it! Not only were these things, nutty, but they also fit in the context of the universe and the absolute amount of things to do in this game will see that you never get bored! Apart from perhaps Planet Burger where, for extra items, you're expected to stand around for hours.
A list of issues however, do exist. No perfect game exists and despite how much I love this game, I'm certainly not going to ignore the issues that are involved here.
1. Too damn Dark! Basically, you'll need to find a patch to update the gamma ratings because the in-game menu for that stuff doesn't work. Plus, that mod should be better than mine as my one ended up breaking a space-ship section where it didn't record where the curser was aiming correctly... Something fairly common with old games, but something that has to be brought up if you're considering buying this game.
2. Prone to crashes. Now, I played the Steam version and I've heard that the GOG version is better and more stable, however, it doesn't crash THAT often and considering how many brand new AAA titles I've played where the game crashes every five minutes I'm more than willing to forgive this forgotten game for having a few crashing moments. Here are some points to avoid crashing:
-If you resurrect someone as the battle ends it can crash the game
-There is a extremely rare case of crashing randomly, however in my over 50 hours of playing this happened...twice I think.
-A optional boss at the end of the game, inside the mystech caves on Anachronox, crashes the game whenever he uses a certain special move and due to the amount of HP even if you have everything maxed out and do max damage to him, you can't kill him before he pulls it off so it's best to just leave him there. After all, he's a purely optional boss and I doubt he's holding anything that important.
These issues can of course be solves with patches, but I'm just letting you all know what to expect so you don't think I'm being overly kind to this game or simply ignoring it's flaws.
3. Journal only records main quests. Your journal entry covers all kinds of things and can give you all kinds of great lore on the world, history of the world and so on, however, it seems to only record the main quest, giving you suggestions as to what to do next like who you spoke to, who you may want to talk to and what your current goal is. Sadly this doesn't follow many of the fun side-missions like assisting the resistance who are trying to take down Detta or the old friend of Sly's who is still a part of the peace-keeping forces and is investigating a series of murders. Fatima doesn't appear to really take any note of this so you need to make sure you remember to check out certain things since she won't remind you and these side-missions can give you great items, like a upgrade to your lockpicks.
4. Combat stats can be a bit intimidating. When I first opened up the menu to look at the character stats I saw a huge-wall of different kinds of stats with names that doesn't full make sense: Beefiness, Bouge, ect and it can be pretty intimidating, but thankfully there is a fighting instructor who teaches you stuff and in all honestly, the only things I found that were important were your equipment, mystech mastery (not a real spoiler as that slot is there from the beginning and mentioned in the tutorial) and your shield belt/power belt and how much is put into shield and how much is left over to use for other things.
5. Shield belt bug. This is a very minor bug, but at times your shield readout will reset to 0 as if you haven't dedicated any power to it. It's a very minor bug and it's fixed by simply re-equipping the item again and you're all good to go until the next cinematic and/or boss battle. It only happens after major events like this which, again, is why it's a very minor bug but worth mentioning.
Nothing else comes to mind, but despite these above issues the amount of fun I got from the game way exceeded any inconvenience that the bugs caused me and considering how cheap this game comes on sale then I highly recommend people buy it and help others discover this game!
My first stream of the game and my legitimate first-hand experience of this game
First off, this game is a sci-fi themed RPG where you start out playing a Sylvester "Sly" Boots, a private investigator who is down on his luck and owes money to a crime-boss named Detta, whose thug throws you out of the window for not paying him on time. Sly needs to get a job or two so that he can pay off Detta, his bar tab and maybe even have a comfortable life.
However, what starts as a simple task to get money, Sly is thrown into a variety of situations that put him and his new companions in the situation to save the universe! As good as that all is...will he be able to pay off that tab?
My thoughts:
I didn't know what to expect from this game as I went in blind but I soon found that not only was it a fun sci-fi RPG, but ones of those hidden/forgotten gems! The game is filled with fun minigames that every character has as their unique ability to unlock something or obtain it (Sly having lockpicking, but later characters have different abilities), hilarious dialog from the kinds of NPCs you generally ignore in games (my favourite ones being the fling-bot and Krapto the Super Dog) and a epic storyline with many moments of drama and comedy throughout it! Including one section that was just a massive Star Wars piss-take!
I am so glad I decided to stream this in place of the other two games I was unable to run and it was quite the experience! It was one of those games that I found myself wanting to play, even on days I wasn't streaming! Not because the combat was amazing (it was pretty standard, kinda like classic FF7, but with the added ability of positioning yourself tactically) but just because I wanted to speak to random NPCs or find out what crazy thing would happen next! When we got the 5th companion I couldn't stop laughing on stream and had to tell people about it! Scratch that, I had to tell EVERYONE about it! Even people who weren't ever going to play it! Not only were these things, nutty, but they also fit in the context of the universe and the absolute amount of things to do in this game will see that you never get bored! Apart from perhaps Planet Burger where, for extra items, you're expected to stand around for hours.
A list of issues however, do exist. No perfect game exists and despite how much I love this game, I'm certainly not going to ignore the issues that are involved here.
1. Too damn Dark! Basically, you'll need to find a patch to update the gamma ratings because the in-game menu for that stuff doesn't work. Plus, that mod should be better than mine as my one ended up breaking a space-ship section where it didn't record where the curser was aiming correctly... Something fairly common with old games, but something that has to be brought up if you're considering buying this game.
2. Prone to crashes. Now, I played the Steam version and I've heard that the GOG version is better and more stable, however, it doesn't crash THAT often and considering how many brand new AAA titles I've played where the game crashes every five minutes I'm more than willing to forgive this forgotten game for having a few crashing moments. Here are some points to avoid crashing:
-If you resurrect someone as the battle ends it can crash the game
-There is a extremely rare case of crashing randomly, however in my over 50 hours of playing this happened...twice I think.
-A optional boss at the end of the game, inside the mystech caves on Anachronox, crashes the game whenever he uses a certain special move and due to the amount of HP even if you have everything maxed out and do max damage to him, you can't kill him before he pulls it off so it's best to just leave him there. After all, he's a purely optional boss and I doubt he's holding anything that important.
These issues can of course be solves with patches, but I'm just letting you all know what to expect so you don't think I'm being overly kind to this game or simply ignoring it's flaws.
3. Journal only records main quests. Your journal entry covers all kinds of things and can give you all kinds of great lore on the world, history of the world and so on, however, it seems to only record the main quest, giving you suggestions as to what to do next like who you spoke to, who you may want to talk to and what your current goal is. Sadly this doesn't follow many of the fun side-missions like assisting the resistance who are trying to take down Detta or the old friend of Sly's who is still a part of the peace-keeping forces and is investigating a series of murders. Fatima doesn't appear to really take any note of this so you need to make sure you remember to check out certain things since she won't remind you and these side-missions can give you great items, like a upgrade to your lockpicks.
4. Combat stats can be a bit intimidating. When I first opened up the menu to look at the character stats I saw a huge-wall of different kinds of stats with names that doesn't full make sense: Beefiness, Bouge, ect and it can be pretty intimidating, but thankfully there is a fighting instructor who teaches you stuff and in all honestly, the only things I found that were important were your equipment, mystech mastery (not a real spoiler as that slot is there from the beginning and mentioned in the tutorial) and your shield belt/power belt and how much is put into shield and how much is left over to use for other things.
5. Shield belt bug. This is a very minor bug, but at times your shield readout will reset to 0 as if you haven't dedicated any power to it. It's a very minor bug and it's fixed by simply re-equipping the item again and you're all good to go until the next cinematic and/or boss battle. It only happens after major events like this which, again, is why it's a very minor bug but worth mentioning.
Nothing else comes to mind, but despite these above issues the amount of fun I got from the game way exceeded any inconvenience that the bugs caused me and considering how cheap this game comes on sale then I highly recommend people buy it and help others discover this game!
Don't tell my scientist friends. They would call me a "whore."
This review contains spoilers
A real diamond in the rough. The parts of this game that I love the most are when you're just walking around and talking to people, exploring the incredibly creative environments and learning more about the world. That probably takes up about 50% of this game. The other half consists of turn-based combat in the style of JRPGs and the obtuse puzzles of classic point-and-click adventure games. The combat isn't too bad, and can be pretty satisfying at times (especially the area-of-effect attacks that can damage whole groups of enemies at once). It really is the puzzles that absolutely bring down the game for me. They are designed in such a confusing and frustrating way, often requiring you to navigate from one side of the map to the other and picking up items that are barely visible. And the worst thing is that the puzzle solutions are usually pretty dry and don't incorporate any of the charm or humor of the main story (something done much
better in Telltale's Sam and Max games). I eventually had to give up and use a guide to finish parts of the game, but even then it was still difficult to follow. The puzzles ruin the pacing of an otherwise intriguing and epic story.
I ended up giving up very close to the end of the game because I got to a point where some of my characters couldn't progress due to being under-equipped, and I did not want to re-do a puzzle section that had proved extremely frustrating. I watched the ending cutscene on YouTube instead, which was well-done but since the game ends on a cliffhanger there isn't really any feeling of resolution.
So it's a testament to the world-building, characters and overall writing that I'm still glad that I played this game, even if parts of it made me want to tear my hair out. I've simply never played a game that had so much variety, that could contain so many creative and interesting ideas inside one package. I can only imagine what plans they had for the sequel, but this definitely could have been the start of something special. We definitely got a spiritual successor to this game in the Mass Effect trilogy, which I definitely vastly prefer to this game, but I definitely can imagine an alternate universe where Anachronox got its own trilogy and was able to continue the story of Sly Boots and his friends but with more streamlined gameplay and creative puzzles.
better in Telltale's Sam and Max games). I eventually had to give up and use a guide to finish parts of the game, but even then it was still difficult to follow. The puzzles ruin the pacing of an otherwise intriguing and epic story.
I ended up giving up very close to the end of the game because I got to a point where some of my characters couldn't progress due to being under-equipped, and I did not want to re-do a puzzle section that had proved extremely frustrating. I watched the ending cutscene on YouTube instead, which was well-done but since the game ends on a cliffhanger there isn't really any feeling of resolution.
So it's a testament to the world-building, characters and overall writing that I'm still glad that I played this game, even if parts of it made me want to tear my hair out. I've simply never played a game that had so much variety, that could contain so many creative and interesting ideas inside one package. I can only imagine what plans they had for the sequel, but this definitely could have been the start of something special. We definitely got a spiritual successor to this game in the Mass Effect trilogy, which I definitely vastly prefer to this game, but I definitely can imagine an alternate universe where Anachronox got its own trilogy and was able to continue the story of Sly Boots and his friends but with more streamlined gameplay and creative puzzles.