Spiders is a company of lofty ambitions, still holding on to the faded glory of cinematic RPGs from the Bioware era but unable to meet its demands. This was true when they released Mars: War Logs too though it's almost endearing to see how rough their initial attempts were. Despite still not having reached the bar set by old Bioware, they have continued to make incremental improvements with every game and for that they have my respect.
Anyway coming to the game itself, I find it a bit odd that it markets itself as a cyberpunk game. Setting wise if you squint your eyes it might be true on a technicality however it carries neither the themes or the visual motif of traditional cyberpunk media. Here the "corporations" are in change but that didn't happen because of the rot of capitalism but rather them just having the most resources after the countries collapsed so now they act as pseudo countries themselves. There are no themes of profit chasing, humanity sacrificed for progress because these corporations are barely holding on and going to war for the limited resources present on the planet Mars. It would be more apt to call it post apocalyptic. Having said that, I find the setting the most compelling part of this game for its uniqueness alone even if its a low bar.

I could rag on about how dull and lifeless the characters and the story is, how repetitively and clunky the gameplay is along with its maddening backtracking for quests and it would deserve it. It is not a game I would recommend to most, even a RPG fan but I want to take the time to highlight why I even bothered to finish it. There's a surprising feeling of authenticity to this fictional Mars that Spiders had crafted. The grimey dusty brown shithole of a world sells an almost Fallout meets Midgar like dystopia where water is so scarce that you use sand to wash yourself. There are no heroes in this world and everyone is doing the best they can to survive for the little resource there is but that doesn't stop the usual bigotry, power struggle between classes that humanity always has dealt with. People use "serum" as currency which is probably just water or some sort of fluid and given how rare it is, you have the option to kill enemies you defeat to extract it from their body. The equipment you find all fit scavenged and jury rigged aesthetic everything has and Technomacers add the added fantasy spice to make it more compelling.
All considered it's an interesting setting and if the writing and gameplay problems are fixed I could see it becoming a cool franchise someday.

Reviewed on Jun 09, 2023


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