Welcome to Anachronox, an abandoned alien artificial planet at the centre of the universe, now home to lowlifes, thieves, and scoundrels. Here we join Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli--a down on his luck PI--and a cast of 6 other unlikely heroes on their quest to discover who or what is trying to destr...
Welcome to Anachronox, an abandoned alien artificial planet at the centre of the universe, now home to lowlifes, thieves, and scoundrels. Here we join Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli--a down on his luck PI--and a cast of 6 other unlikely heroes on their quest to discover who or what is trying to destroy the universe. They are the only ones that believe it is happening, and the only ones that can do something about it.
This title is a very unique game in many ways. The combination of jRPG style turn-based combat, extraordinary characters with their own personalities, an epic and brilliantly told story, colorful graphics, and absolutely hilarious humor is something very rare. You will travel through galaxies, explore bizarre planets, and journey through space and time. There are no easy choices in this game, no obvious, predictable events, no black and white characters. This complexity made the game well reviewed--it has showed up on PC Gamer's Top 100 PC Games list three times!--and will keep you fascinated and amazed for many hours.
Great mix of Japanese and Western style RPG elements with great humor, a gripping story, and a very unique cast of characters.
Excellent storytelling via professional-quality cutscenes and dialogue will accompany you through the entire 50+ hour long adventure.
Huge world to explore with many secrets to discover and mysteries to solve. One playthrough is, by far, not enough to see it all.
Boxy graphics, repetitive combat that scales to match your level, and hopelessly unfinished, including a sudden ending and a centerpiece roller coaster that never actually made it into the game.
Doesn't matter. The sci-fi setting is creative and expansive, and there are lots of fun little minigames embedded throughout. Above all, the game is one of the funniest I've ever played. Think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Galaxy Quest humor with a little JRPG gameplay thrown in. Where else will you find a game that lets a planet join your party? If you can accept that it falls short of its goals, it's a great ride.
What is Anachronox? It is a 2001 sci-fi rpg with a comedic bent.
While the actual story of the game is perhaps nothing that surprising or groundbreaking, I felt that the actual characters and their interactions were rather fun. Maybe not in a “constant roaring laughter” kinda way, but I chuckled more than once when playing the game, and generally I’d say I was rather consistently... amused, at least at a basic level.
Because you do gather quite a team - a grumpy old man literally called Grumpos (whose superpower is yammering in annoyance!), a robot seravnt with a budding sense of independence, a literal comic book superhero, and even a shurnken down planet!
There’s a lot to do in Anachronox – it is a rather long game that could easily take you 30-40 hours if you want to talk to everyone and check everything.
That being said – a lot of that time is going to be spent in combat. And I didn’t really like combat in Anachronox. And the more I played, the less I liked it. It has really grinded me down.
The worst thing about Anachronox’s combat system is that the attack animations of both you and your enemies just take SO DAMN LONG, and you are going to see them over and over and over again, hundreds of times. Some attacks can take a dozen seconds. By halfpoint of the game I was really, really tired of it.
The characters are rather limited in their combat skill selection, so you tend to gravitate to using the same ones over and over again anyway.
That being said, I still had fun with Anachronox. It is a very light hearted adventure worth a chuckle or two, but it also has some pretty weird (but interesting!) dark undertones here and there.
If you want to see how it plays, or if you would enjoy seeing how someone discovers it for the first time, you can see my blind playthrough on my youtube channel, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLaXlByHU7w&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWW-RnvtkTqZ-ao-kooxUP3O
Okay you probably read some other reviewers here mentioned very correctly that the game just would not "click" initially. Somehow after the intro and a little bit of playing a very incompetent main character you probably feel that the game just joking around with shallow humor. Fortunately I remember when the game "clicks" for me, and I will share it with you. It is when your character is standing, doing nothing, and then suddenly there is this subtle vibration around you, a little bit of shake, a little bit of dust falling.... that is when the the city of Anachronox rearrangge itself like some massive and crazy Rubik's Cube, and you live on it (and somehow got bored of the awesome fact). And when you (at least me) stop playing and consider this and think,"what kind of game is this? why this setting?" then you realize the game is probably much more deeper than you previously think. If you decide to continue playing then you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. You will laugh, you will fight, and you will feel DRAMA, something that is very rare in a game of any kind in any history. Buy it. Play it.
I didn't think a game this old could be enjoyable. The graphics, story and characters were a joy. Kind of an homage to douglas adams. at times the gameplay did drag a bit but it was truly impressive. lets kickstart a sequel
I will admit, I enjoyed the characters. The individualism the devs gave each character is wonderful, and the interaction between the different characters is enjoyable. Unfortunately, almost none of the game is enjoyable for me. From the constant barrage of absurdly over-the-top "humor" (seriously, just how many bad puns can you stuff into a game?), the mind numbing dungeon crawls (find switch A to unlock door B and activate thing C, repeat), to the boringly repetitive combat (Attack, fireball, heal, use potion, repeat). Eventually, I just reached a point where I could not drum up enough interest to continue playing this game.
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