Anachronox

Moby ID: 4499
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Description official descriptions

Sly Boots is a private investigator who is in a bit of trouble - money trouble that is. So his first priority is to earn some money; when a mysterious rich man unexpectedly turns up with a tempting offer, Sly begins to think that his troubles are a thing of the past. Naturally, he couldn't have been more wrong, as he soon slides into something much, much bigger: he will discover a great mystery which may cause the destruction of the universe.

Anachronox is a sci-fi role-playing game that predominantly follows the Japanese template, though also incorporating elements from Western-style RPGs. Though its plot is serious in nature, the game features humorous dialogue and many bizarre situations.

The combat system has many similarities to the Final Fantasy series: it is turn-based in principle, but every character has an action bar. After every action it is depleted, and when it is filled again the next action can be started - no matter if the enemy has attacked or not. Important differences are the ability to move around on the battlefield in restricted ways and the non-random battles. Another similarity is the character development which automatically increases the character's stats.

However, the game is less combat-oriented than most Japanese-style RPGs. Most of the time is spent exploring the hub areas, solving (side) quests and conversing with people.

At first Sly is alone, save for his electronic secretary Fatima, but during the course of the game he recruits six party members to help him out, some of which are rather eccentric. Every party member has a special ability, played out in action-based mini-games, which are needed to solve quests, e.g. Sly can lockpick doors. There are also other mini-games to be found, partly needed to solve quests and partly optional. Sometimes there are traditional logic puzzles to solve.

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Credits (Windows version)

157 People (141 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 100 ratings with 13 reviews)

Anachronox rocks my socks.

The Good
This is a very funny, very interesting, and very fun console style RPG. It opens at a slow start on the planet Anachronox, but eventually rises in action very very much. The characters are loveable and funny all the way. A large part of the game plays like an old Lucasarts point-and-click adventure game, which is a VERY good thing. The battles are well done, with some rampantly awesome camera work (also seen in the well-worked-out in-game cutscenes), which is reminicent of such games as the recent Final Fantasy games and Chrono-Trigger.

The Bad
The first half's battles are very, very easy. There are some bugs, some very bad bugs, but nothing that can't be fixed by a small patch that is already released. The game looks a bit dated with the almost 4 year old Quake 2 engine. (But they did an incredibly good job with it, making it look very good.)

The Bottom Line
This is the real deal. A great console flavored RPG with lovely adventure elements and loads of clever humor for the PC. It is destined to be an under appreciated classic of our time. Give a good game a home, will ya?

Windows · by Yeah No (23) · 2001

Anachronistic

The Good
Anachronox is a peculiar experiment made with a rather strange design philosophy in mind: eschewing "serious" Western genres, it takes nostalgic, 16-bit-era Japanese RPG mechanics, and builds a constantly flowing, cinematic and humorous experience around it. Basically, it is a collection of varied, yet lightly treated gameplay elements peppered by excellent writing and well-directed cutscenes.

I won't talk here about the designers' unexpected choice of the main genre. In a way, Anachronox manages to be attractive in spite of that choice, thanks to all the other creative stuff it throws on top of it.

Conversations and quests have much more weight in Anachronox than in "real" Japanese-style RPGs. This is where the game takes the right cues from its Western brethren, resulting in a more flexible and refreshing experience than mostly heavily combat-oriented Japanese games. The quests are for the most part interesting, varied and amusing; they often require you to to think and use your special skills to solve them. For example, at one point you need to gain the trust of the High Council on one of the planets, so you'll have find out how they will vote on the elections. What's really good is that besides the main, story-advancing quests there are also optional assignments, collecting and other things that increase the game's life span.

Your companions are a great bunch of unusual and comically appealing characters. Ever had a planet in your party?.. More importantly (and this is where Anachronox beats its Japanese progenitors again): the various NPCs you meet while playing the game are not just item- or quest suppliers; each one has something to tell you, and the amount of different, original lines written for each NPC is really impressive. They will tell you about their religious or political views, complain about some silly stuff, or say a joke or two about your appearance. Although most NPCs are not important for advancing the story, talking to them and listening to what they have to say enriches the experience.

This is also where Anachronox displays its strongest trump card: the writing. It's a delight to read (and listen to) the dialogues in this game. What makes the humor great aren't even the jokes and hilarious situations (the scene where Sly talks "science language" almost made me roll on the floor), but the way they are incorporated into the narrative, contributing to the ironic attitude towards the characters and creating an unusual form of a "semi-parody", though not at all in the same way Japanese writers would do.

No review of Anachronox would be complete without mentioning its fantastic cutscenes, all made with in-game engine, with great camera work that would do an honor to a movie. The game is naturally cinematic, elegantly using cutscenes to advance the plot in a fashion that is often more spectacular than its Japanese "teachers".

The Bad
Some parts of the game may seem unpolished, underdeveloped. I've heard rumors about cut content, and judging from my experience with the game they ought to be true. Often interesting peripheral locations and well-written secondary characters seem superficial because they were probably supposed to be more important to the game.

There is some discrepancy in tone, mainly caused by clashes between the cheesy, "epic" Japanese-like story and the humor - which, when applied to supposedly emotional events, becomes condescending and unpleasant. Two scenes come to mind: the destruction of the planet where you meet Rho, and the end of the comic-book chapter. In both cases, the scenes of mass destruction and death should have been made in such a way that we would feel the tragedy, but instead they are treated with the irritatingly inappropriate ubiquitous sneer.

The main flaw of Anachronox, however, is the choice of genre. Now, I don't know whether there is a "politically correct" rule to consider all video genre games equally good - speaking strictly for myself, I feel that Japanese-style RPGs are most certainly inferior to Western ones. However, the problem is that Anachronox is not even a good Japanese RPG; in fact, it is good at everything else except that. In other words, it's a game that excels in every way - except at being a good game. Clearly, the choice of base game mechanics followed the careful creation of jokes, cutscenes, and minigames.

What kind of core gameplay do we have here? Battles are sporadic, primitive, and much too easy; the character growth system, while interesting on paper, becomes a pure luxury: no matter what you do, you will win. You'll gain stats and learn spells, but they won't make any difference. Why would you hunt for special magical abilities if you can win any battle with bare-bones moves anyway?

Worse is the game's aggravating linearity. The game's locations look impressive, but what you see are mostly decorations - you can't go anywhere unless you are "supposed" to go there, as dictated by the ultra-linear plot, and each individual location is, in fact, small and cramped. There is little sense of discovery, as your hand is being constantly held, with everything given to you just in the doses that the game's restrictive mechanics allow. The bulk of the game is spent running from one NPC to another, completing simple quests, and then proceeding through a tiny area with pre-set, primitively handled battles.

The Bottom Line
No amount of cinematic direction and witty dialogue can alter the fact that Anachronox is a watered-down Japanese-style RPG that feels very much like a talented fan tribute than a serious gaming experience. If you are looking for some laughs, check it out; but if role-playing is your poison, you should look elsewhere.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2017

Amazing, often overlooked adventure RPG...

The Good
Anachronox is one of my favorite games of all time. Built upon the Quake 2 engine most people were turned off by its somewhat dated graphics. I suppose I am one of the few people that can look past polygon count and see the game for what its worth. Most gamers cannot however and the graphics are the only reason this game was overlooked by so many. Despite its low polygon count, this game still has some beautiful areas. This game has the best level design of any Quake engine based game ever. The game is mostly a detective story, but it soon expands to many different planets and sub plots. You will have companions on your trip (7 to be exact), which you will meet a long the way. Each companion plays a pivotal role in the game and isn’t just sitting somewhere waiting to join your group. Companions? You might be saying, yes this game is a Final Fantasy RPG at heart. The battles are FF style, you encounter creatures in a battle area and can choose what each of your characters does. There is a magic system that is a big part of the story so I wont give it away. If you find hidden objects you can make some very powerful spells. There is one big difference from FF style battles though, you can actually see your opponents before fighting them. So instead of a surprise attack and the infamous swirl into a battle arena, you can see an enemy up ahead and possibly do any necessary healing. The battles only make up a small portion of the game unlike FF’s battles every few steps. This game just has a ton of content though, and there is lots to do.

The Bad
While most would say its dated graphics are the bad, I liked the graphics. I dont think most understood that the look of the game was supposed to be comic book or cartoon styling, and just accounted it to bad graphics. If i had to pick anything bad about this extremely fun game, I guess I would have to pick the music which wasn't great. Overall this game has an amazing atmosphere that will draw you in for hours and hours.

The Bottom Line
A funny, witty, well thought out, tight, exceptional title that any adventure fan should play.

If you have the time, read Sam's lengthy review, it really touches on all the points of the game, and I agree with everything he has said.

Windows · by john johansen (2) · 2002

[ View all 13 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Bipidri collectables reward Klaster_1 (57612) Jun 3, 2011

Trivia

Arcade

When you land on Hephaestus, try the arcade. You'll find Bugaboo, a Galaga clone. The artwork is even in the same green style of the original coin eaters.

You'll also find Pooper, a quasi Pac-Man clone. Both games were developed with the APE, built in to the game engine.

Credits

In the ending-credits, which are longer than the regular ones, there are some hilarious texts and greetings from the developers.

Development

In the development process of Anachronox, nearly half of the game had to be cut off to reduce production time. The half that was cut off was going to be put together as a sequel, but with Ion Storm shut down, and lukewarm sales, it never happened.

Development Tools

Ion Storm did a couple neat tricks for Anachronox. * APE stands for Anachronox Programing Environment. Its a programing language that was used to create all the interaction and gameplay. It was also used to create the minigames that you could play. * Magpie: Magpie was a program designed to process MP3s and create .lip files that the game engine could use to lip-sync dialogue. The lip files were simple text files that would load with the MP3s during cut scenes.

Engine

Ion Storm heavily modified the Quake II engine for this game. They added several features, including a refined particle effect, a mini game scripting language, and facial animation modification that allows lip syncing to dialogue.

The developers used the facial animation to good effect, letting the characters express their emotions with facial expressions.

Influence

Anachronox was influenced by the popular Japanese RPG Chrono Trigger, one of Tom Hall's favorite games. The game's title also alludes to that.

Machinima

Jake Hughes, the cutscene director of the fabulous Anachronox cutscenes, published a very special goody on Machinima.com.

It's a 1 Gigabyte collection of all cutscenes, edited to a 2 1/2 hour Anachronox movie.

References: Dopefish

id software's famed Dopefish makes a cameo in Anachronox. You can find him in ones of the water tanks in the lair of the Orange Roughies, located on Rictus's ship. Just follow the burping noise. The Dopefish can also be seen in a tank in Rho's lab and (allegedly) at the Moon Burger restaurant on Hephaestus.

References: Games

  • In the Red Lights District of the Sender Station, you can order a special treatment called "Deus Sex"... The object of this pun is, of course, Deus Ex, also developed by Ion Storm.

  • Many references to Tom Hall's past games can be found throughout the game. One of the more obvious ones is in the Tenement Area; if you look at the other names for the directory, you can see "B. Blaze" in a room, a clear reference to Commander Keen games.

References

  • Located in Sender Station is Jawnn, Pawl, Jorj and Ree'ngo, who form the teen rock sensation, The Meatles! Talk to them and they'll recite lyrics from popular Beatles songs.

  • One of the customers in the bar at the beginning of the game is Dim Jose. Swap the front letters and you'll get Jim Dose. Jim Dose used to work on the sound engine on previous Apogee games along with Tom Hall.

  • Two guys you can talk to on Democrates are discussing an opera written by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928).

Secrets

If you wait and press nothing at the start screen the Anachronox symbol will eventually fall down and two repair bots will appear to put it back in it's place. Wait a little more and PAL-18 will also appear and start looking at you through the monitor. This rotating logo can also be viewed as another Deus Ex reference/parody.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2002 (Issue #213) – Best Use of Humor of the Year

Information also contributed by hydra9, Karthik KANE, kbmb, Scott Monster, tarion, Unicorn Lynx, xofdre and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

Additional contributors: xroox, Yeah No, Jeanne, Chentzilla, AdminBB, Patrick Bregger.

Game added July 27, 2001. Last modified March 16, 2024.