Anachronox

Would have been a nice game with a little more interactivity and less cut-scenes. The visual environment is perfect, unfortunately the characters are a little bit too satirical and the story isn't that engaging to keep back after having often backtracked and having the same cut-scenes showed in your face again and again. Worth playing a little, but don't bother persisting if you encounter serious trouble. Well, I played it for 3 days, out of which a lot have been just loading, backtracking and cutscenes. If someone wants this game as a gift - ok to buy, but avoid it unless you are a big fan of JRPG and their stilted narration and combat system. OMG this never ends does it? I'll use yammer then - Why do they need a minimum review length now? Do they seriously think it will deter people from leaving negative reviews for the games people don't really like, of course it won't.

The setting and presentation of the world completely reminds me why Eidos was such a powerhouse during this time period. I was instantly hooked on the story, despite the gameplay being a bit wonky. Ultimately, after about 3 hours of playing, re-treading old ground countless times, and fighting minimal, repetitive grunt battles, I had to uninstall. I found that all the cutscenes and such are on YouTube and, combined, it only takes a couple of hours to watch. To me, that is the efficient and ideal way to experience this story - without the boring and bland gameplay.

I love the theme and style of the game, but actually playing it is a chore. Dont be misled by all the 5 star reviews. The god damn combat is sooooooooooooo bad that i just couldnt get through it. Theres stuff to like here, but the gameplay is a joke. Trust me, it aged really REALLY badly.

Anachronox is the kind of game that you can play, enjoy, and then set down and never think about again. It's not bad. It's not even bland. It just doesn't stand out against the better entries in the genre, nor does it make any attempt at solving the problems inherent in the genre. If you absolutely love 3D science-fantasy jrpgs, then you might as well play this one too, after playing all of the better entries in the genre. If you're not a fan of that particular subgenre, then this game is certainly not going to change your mind.

I did not play this game when it originally came out, so I came to the experience with a clean palette not knowing what to expect. TL;DR The game is broken on so many levels, not just because of age. So I was thinking what could be so wrong with a game made in the golden age of 3d games of the early 2000s and made by eidos? apparently a lot. The acting for starters, so bad, not resident evil bad, but so bad. add to that the dialog cuts and pauses caused by the engine and you get the worst storytelling experience ever. And that is accompanied by the biggest flaw in the game, the pace. everything and I do mean everything is slow. painfully slow, as in get up to the bathroom come back and then continue without missing a thing slow. This is not a technical bug, it's how the game was designed. battles are slow, walking is slow and spoken text is also slow. to the point, you feel tired after a session of the game and not in a good way. I will touch on combat lastly, yes, it was relatively a new genre in the west, doing RPGs that are not based on d&d, but they could have looked at any RPG from japan to avoid all the pitfalls of the combat. I'll list a few areas where the combat is broken, compared to my vast RPG experience from all over the world. 1. Buttons placed in weird unintuitive places, and the icons not clear enough to understand what they do. 2. Filling the ATB takes ages, and when you do finally attack the animations are slow and convoluted. 3. Missing happens way too much, and stats and levels do nothing. 4. Skills and magic and items are mostly unused to the point you forget they exist. And I'll end on one final thought, this game tried to be a lot of things, and succeded in none. Stay away and keep your money for something good.