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!