Anachronox

The Good
My original title for this one was going to be 'Not much of an RPG, but a great adventure game'. I guess I've grown up on the Black Isle RPGs and was a little put off by any game where leveling up didn't include adjusting your strength, wisdom and what-not. Luckily, Anachronox has taught me different.

I have not had such a good time playing a game in years. Everything about Anachronox has so much humor and style. The game has so many unique little incidents that aren't part of the main story, but manage to build on the atmosphere.

The writing is smart and funny. Humor is always an iffy thing in PC games. For the most part designers don't spend much time on the scripts for these things and the 'jokes' are usually groan-inducing or downright painful. Not so here. If you enjoy humorous sci-fi like Red Dwarf or The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, you owe it to yourself to try Anachronox.

The story turns out to be pretty serious but for the first third of the game or so you're really just running on the good vibes the writers are able to supply through character interaction. Even though I've heard the beginning of the game is slow, I was having such a good time playing that I never considered dropping the game for something else.

All of the characters are unique and will elicit different responses from the NPCs you talk to. (Make sure to have Rho talk to the artistic door man! It's a hoot!) Even the in-game cursor/quest log is a character with it's own personality.

The graphics are fairly blocky since they used the Quake II engine, but the art design is great. Every area has such a unique look. Once you've played, if you look at a screen shot you can tell not only what planet they are on, but what subsection of what planet. Any game that can make corridors look unique has accomplished something.

Combat and spell effects are impressive. Whenever you upgrade your weapon or find a new 'spell' you can't wait to find a bad guy to try it out on.

I was a little worried about the turn-based combat as I prefer real-time. The game describes combat as 'turn-based real-time' which really sounded like some sort of middle ground that wouldn't please anybody. Anachronox manages to walk a middle line between turn-based and real-time and for the most part succeeds. I haven't enjoyed a turn-based game this much since Fallout.

Voice acting is never bad and is usually very good. Weapon sounds and spaceships blasting off are all cool to listen to. Even the incidental music when you pick up an item is neat. The background music is always appropriate to the setting and very nice to listen to. It was nice to play a game where there wasn't one cheesy heavy metal track.

Level design is also great. For the most part, you will know where to go next and can run straight through if you like. But there are so many little nooks and crannies to explore and you will usually wind up with a new item or sub-quest for your troubles.

The story manages to be interesting all the way through and none of your characters will ever become useless as you add new ones to your party.

The Bad
Bugs! Bugs, bugs, bugs! Before you play, make sure to download the second 'unofficial' patch put together by the development team working with a bunch of fans.

Even afterwards, not everything will be smooth. Random freezes still occur every so often. There are a few sub-quests that involve taking pictures of, say, Red Biparti that are scattered across the planets you visit. Unfortunately, Boots' camera would periodically wipe out all the pics stored in memory. After a while, this caused me to just give up on that quest.

Speaking of sub-quests, while Fatima is great at storing your main quests, remembering sub-quests like which monk to speak to or who needs the miner's bracelet are up to you. This seems like such a basic thing to forget. In practice it leads to a lot more running around or you forgetting that quest all together even though you have everything you need to complete it.

Also, even after patching (and patching and patching) the load times still take a while. Since many quests require you to cross several load zones, each taking twenty seconds or so to load, what would be a little annoying became frustrating enough for me to quit playing for the day.

Lastly, towards the end of the game you go from one boss fight to a cinematic showing the characters resting and then straight into the final boss fight. This may not sound that bad, but it gives you no chance to reconfigure your items. When I was playing this part I actually had to go back to an old save game, equip my party then and fight the first boss all over again. How did such an obvious goof slip through quality control?

The Bottom Line
Overall, Anachronox is one of the best games I ever played. The bugs got on my nerves, but never enough for me to chuck the game.

It manages to make the ho-hum task of saving the universe fun again and it does it all with real panache.

That this game isn't already a collector's item is a crime. I would advise any PC gamer to pick this one up. You'll be glad you did.

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.

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.