Anachronox

The Good
This game is utterly amazing. IonStorm took the Quake II engine and modified so much that it looks nothing like its predecessor. The particle system, the plasma effects, the increased palette of colors. Its all so cool!

The designers took great care to design elaborate levels, with deft architecture and remarkable detail. The twisted levels on Anachronox alone were a tribute to Escher. I especially liked the interiors of several buildings such as the hotel on Sender One.

Sound and dialogue were well done and perfectly fit the loopy attitude of the game. The music was slightly repetitive but otherwise effectively contributed to the game play by setting the mood.

Game play took a little to get use to. Ananchronox isn't a FPS, its an adventure game with upgradable weapons. Main quests are either fairly easy to complete or have an alternate methods if one way is too difficult. The side quests aren't required, but completing them enhances your party by providing skills, supplies or upgrades. You can easily play this game a couple times and not complete all the quests.

Combat involves a little puzzle solving and strategy. Encounters are done in turns, with each character having a cycle of time between each action. You can set up a que of actions in your party so you can watch it unfold. The variety of moves add a measure of challenge. You can move, heal yourself or another party member, invoke a defensive tactic, chose a special attack, or stick with a standard attack.

One of the major aspects of the game is the weapons and attacks. Arms can be swapped, sold, upgraded or replaced. The attacks can be based on the Mystech thats collected. Each character has an affinity for certain Mystech and the effects of the attack generated by the rocks. During fight encounters, mystech plays a major part in fighting off adversaries as they engage in more powerful attacks in return.

The story is the heart of the game. There is a compelling mixture of loopiness and drama, adding the sense of moving forward in the game. You're not just wandering around another dungeon, fighting off generic monsters. You're accomplishing goals and unlocking chapters that make you want to play for just "10 more minutes." Interaction with NPCs is always interesting and quite funny. NPC interaction is also necessary for accomplishing most main quests and all sub quests.

The quality of the body models vary. The IonStorm team took great pains to include textures that bring 'character' the the models. Some models are overly repeated, but once in a while you'll catch an elaborate alien model that was carefully constructed.


The Bad
Even with the unofficial 1.02 patch, the game is slightly buggy. There are movement issues, especially when you gather a party. Stuttering game play, having to move your players around to position them to solve puzzles.

There are a couple arcade games built in to the game that can't be avoided, and are somewhat difficult.

Since the game wasn't totally completed by Ionstorm before they shut down, there are some broken aspects of the game. So saving often is required to complete it.

The Bottom Line
If you are a PC gamer only, this will prove to be a very new experience for you. Try it out and be converted.

The Good
Final Fantasy fans will be right at home when playing Anachronox. The game has an interesting, involving storyline, great character development and is overall a lot of fun to play. You team up with seven quirky characters each with their own past (A couple of them are old friends of the main character Sly Boots, and you'll learn his past as you play the game as well), you get to know the characters well and there's great character development despite the shortness of the game. The game's humor is great and pretty refreshing to see in an RPG. You'll find yourself feeding a puss stained sock to a guy in exchange for information, teaming up with a retired superhero, getting bossed around by your mouse pointer (Who is actually a character in the game) and doing many other strange but amusing things.
There are only a few worlds to explore but they jam-packed with mini-games and sub-quests which keep the game interesting. I've read many complaints about the graphics and I must admit they were a tad dated, but the cartoonyness and vibrant colors really added to the atmosphere and humor of the game. I really liked them.

The Bad
The music in this game was a little too cheesy for me. On some worlds it was too techno-ish and and others it was slow and boring. The battle music was the worst, slow and just plain annoying. The game world was originally supposed to be much bigger, but was slashed down to rush the game out into stores after an already long production delay. That's too bad. The game is quite good, but with a few more worlds thrown in and a longer playing time, it could have been even better. In fact the short length of the game was a bit of a letdown. Anachronox isn't supposed to be one of those long open ended RPGs that has over 100 hours of gameplay but I would have liked to see at least 40 or 50. If you plan on playing the game, expect to experience a few bugs along the way. This was a major problem when Anachronox was released, there's a patch out now, but there is still some minor problems. The game wasn't designed to run on any OS newer than windows 98, so XP users may experience even more problems.

The Bottom Line
As you can see from other reviews, Anachronox has quite a fan following. For good reason to, it's a lot of fun. While I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, it's a great game for any RPG fan who's looking for something a little different but that's still a lot of fun.

The Good
'Tis one of the finest role-playing games I've ever had pleasure to encounter. It doesn't require utterly-silly long period of time for upgrades, and you can follow the story without having to do some extra tasks if you will. The setting of this game is quite imaginative and gives you fine character backgrounds to explore and their stories to unfold. The entire Anachronox place is very likable and gives a constant thought "How cool would be to be there with Sly as he solves the cases, side by side." and all the levels are incredibly interesting and intriguing to explore. Dialogues are smartly written and overly humorous on occasion which boost up your spirit and don't let you get bored even for a second. Game runs very fast and has one of the finest mouse+keyboard combination for gameplay. The background music is relaxing and could loop infinitely without bothering you, yet creating a unique experience and compensates for all those vast dialogues you may take on for whatever side-quests you may be interested in.

The Bad
Nothing much unless you go to extreme technicalities and start comparing its graphic to nowadays levels. You may have a slight loss on graphic quality, but rest assured speed is heavily gained.

The Bottom Line
A detective game with sci-fi and mystery elements made into helluva combination of light adventure and role-playing without troubling the player with some complicated learning curve.

The game features: