Anachronox is an RPG that can stand its ground, and does so with serious individuality.
Full Review
Anachronox Review
You want adventure? This game has it in spades. You want characters? This game’s characters could support a raft of sequels. You want story? Anachronox tells a story worthy of a rich, complex science fiction novel. You want humor? This game has a galaxy of funny. You want pretty pictures? Don’t even get me started.
It’s hard to know where to begin to talk about this wonderful game.
Let me first tell you that this game was supposed to be a disaster. It was developed by Ion Storm, the Eidos-owned subsidiary of Eidos. And before you say, Hey! Didn’t Ion Storm create the spectacular Deus Ex? Yes it did, but that was that was the Austin-based, Warren Spector-led Ion Storm group that is now basically doing the work that Lookinglass Studios left off (they’re currently cooking up Thief III and Deus Ex II. . . . at least they were until Ion Storm’s continued existence came into jeopardy recently . . . but that’s a different article) No, Anachronox was made by the Dallas-based Ion Storm team. Yeah, the same guys who made the now-legendary-disaster Daikana, the Heaven’s Gate of recent games.
Add to this the buzz I kept hearing at E3 last year. I kept scouring the huge Eidos area for signs of the game – nada. The scuttlebutt was that the game was a train wreck and they weren’t going to let it stink up the showroom floor.
It turned out the joke was on the naysayers. This is one honey of a game.
What kind of game is it? The designers attempted to adapt the structure of a Japanese anime-style RPG (Final Fantasy being perhaps the most famous example) and give it a decidedly American flair.
The game’s main protagonist is that mainstay of B-movies everywhere, the down-on-his luck detective. This particular detective is named Sly Boots, and he lives on the very strange world of Anachronox, which is a hollow sphere constructed by a long-vanished alien civilization. Some time before humans (and others) discovered this and a whole network of abandoned worlds and promptly moved into them.
As the story begins, Sly owes the local political boss money, and this gets the story rolling. I can’t even begin to describe the gigantic plot that unfolds in this game, but it includes the reawakening of a long-dormant amagical substance called “mystech,” and how this development literally threatens the very existence of our universe.
But don’t get the wrong idea. Anachronox is a very good-spirited and light-hearted game, and this is evident from the very beginning. The Japanese-style RPG format may well be unfamiliar to many players, but this problem is taken care of by the fact that the very game cursor itself is a person, albeit a dead one. She’s Fatima, Sly’s deceased secretary, who he had digitized after her death. She’s your guide in the game, and she takes you by the hand and teaches you how to play the game. The learning curve is gentle and very user-friendly.
The character-development in the game is nothing like that of D&D-based RPGs. Through the course of the game you develop a team of seven characters, though only three can be active at any one time. These characters are already set, and while you can develop them by gaining experience and better equipment, you’re working along a pre-ordained track. The abilities and skills each character can acquire are pretty much set in stone.
This doesn’t matter a bit, though, as it’s a delightful septet. In addition to Sly, there’s a grumpy old Grumpos, a mysterious sort of archaeologist; Rho Bowman, a feisty and iconoclastic scientist who thinks she’s on the verge of a major breakthrough regarding Mystech; PAL-18, a robot valet; Stiletto Anyway, a buxom and very dangerous woman from Sly’s past; and two very strange characters I’ll mention a little later.
There is a lot of combat in the game, but nothing that should scare adventure game players. The combat system is a bit strange – it’s not actually real-time and it’s not actually turn-based. But as it does in all areas, the game provides a seamless way for you to learn the techniques of fighting. And the battles are so easy I probably only had to play two or three of them more than once in the entire game (and that was on the Normal, not the Easy, setting).
What distinguishes Anachronox is the fact that the entire game feels utterly drenched with an infectious sense of fun and good gameplay. Every corner of the game has fun things to discover. Even the Options Menu, for example: When you pick the “Easy” setting, you see a graphic of Sly facing down a fearsome bunny rabbit. The game if full of hilarious dialog, frequently from completely unimportant characters. Example: in a shuttle station there’s a character sitting on the science-fiction equivalent of one of those luggage dispensers at the airport. When you talk to him, he simply says, gleefully, “I love the way this thing vibrates my butt.”
The storyline is consistently innovative as well. In addition to the vast underbelly of Anachronox itself, you get to visit several other planets, space stations, and space ships. Every one of these environments is teeming with with life, and the populations and environments are wildly diverse.
In a game full of highly imaginative twists, two truly stand out. First there’s the fact that one of your party members is a . . . planet. Yep, you heard right. A planet. Second, during one ill-fated jump through hyperspace, Sly and his team gets pulled in by a huge Villain starship. This starship is from a famous “superhero planet,” and for this sequence the entire format of the game changes to that of a comic book. You also end up with a party member who’s a superhero (albeit a washed-up alcoholic superhero). It’s an inspired bit of silliness, and it’s just an example of the various ways the game remains fresh through the very end. There are dozens of minor examples, such as the fact that you can gain experience points by properly voting in a local election, and you can make money by dancing in a gay bar!
Graphically, the game is just plain gorgeous. From the very first areas of the game, which introduce Sly’s neighborhood in Anachronox in all its eye-boggling, Escher-esque challenging glory. The colors are lush and the characters themselves are truly convincing.
The characters are so vivid, however, that the game has occasional moments that transcend what a game should really be able to do. There’s an interesting non-player character, a flying alien who’s a wry, amoral informer. The character is so beautiful visually, and performed by the voice actor so convincingly, that it gives his part of the story unusual weight. At one point Sly asks him how he comes by so much sensitive information, and at which point the alien answers by languidly flying out of site and saying, “You’d be amazed, Detective, how seldom people look up.” It’s a lovely, bittersweet scene, and it’s one of my all-time favorite moments in a game.
In short, this game has everything that adventure gamers are supposed to like: A fantastic story, great characters, beautiful worlds to explore, fascinating puzzles to solve, and lots of great humor.
After thinking real hard I can only come up with one criticism of the game: Limited save slots. This is a pet peeve of mine in any game. What’s so hard about giving me unlimited save slots, damn it? Even that much hated feature so common to console-type games – the limited ability to save – is a feature that can be turned on or off in the Options menu. Yep, there’s just not much to complain about.
Eidos, Ion’s Storm’s parent company, did an even worse job of promoting Anachronox than UbiSoft’s unforgivable fumble with Myst III: Exile. Despite the fact that it’s been winning all sorts of awards (including Best Story – from any genre – from GameSpot), it didn’t sell well at all. Which means you can probably pick it up cheap, sports fans. So what are you still reading this for? Get thee to a software store. Trust me, you’ll thank me. Play this game. Right now.
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
Final Verdict: 80%
