Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

Pros *Interesting game world with shades of grey *Cute anime girls Cons *Battle system is boring with needlessly high difficulty *Awful battle animations (Click to skip. Repeat.) *Most characters are one-dimensional *It still says beta even though it's been out nine years and has three sequels This game is heavily inspired by the original Gundam. What Gundam calls mobile suits have been renamed ryders, and there's an antagonist called Fontana who is practically a clone of Gundam's Char. Like the original Gundam, the good guys aren't necessarily all that good and the bad guys have some legitimate complaints that brought about the war. The baddies (PACT) destroyed the Sunrider's home world, so the Sunrider joins the goodies (Alliance) for revenge. Only the Alliance have a tendency to mercilessly exploit workers and murder children for political gain, and PACT kind-of want to stop that, but also want to pretty much destroy everything. The gameplay is split between a visual novel romance with a plethora of girls to choose from and a sad attempt at a tactical RPG. The VN relationships never reach any kind of conclusion; you're just surrounded by a bunch of girls vying for your attention. There's one random nude scene with one of the girls in the shower and some gory scenes, especially near the end. The battle sequences are aggravating until you turn the difficulty down to the lowest level. Even then, the gameplay is awful - the enemy always has you hugely outnumbered and gets lots of reinforcements. There are virtually no tactics involved - just blast away until the battle's finally over. I think I only finished the game because I needed something I could turn to for a few minutes distraction here and there and drop in an instant. Sunrider satisfied that need. There are worse games out there, but also many that are far, far better. Perhaps the sequels are better, but I have no intention of buying them.

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius is a game that blew me away from my expectations based upon the price and artwork. Call it a case of "Don't judge a book by it's cover", but this is an impressive game that could of come from a "Triple A Gaming Studio". From the moment you start up the game until you see the end credits, you will be hooked if you have any interest in Sci-Fi or animes. The story and characters feel very grounded and human for taking place in such a world. The artwork isn't the best, sure, but it grows on you the longer you play and by the time you make it to the sequel, you will actually miss the old style a little bit, as the new looks like a lot of other things you may have seen. The player assumes the role of Kayto Shields, a newly enstated captain of a vessel, the eponymous Sunrider. Throughout his journey you experience a roller coaster of drama and decide how many events in the story wil play out. Kayto is joined by a colorful cast of seemingly tropish beautiful women who like him because he's a hero. Don't dismiss them right away as the women have solid character development later on, especially in the sequel. The turn based battles you play are instantly familar to anybody who has played Fire Emblem and to a lesser extent X-COM. The difficulty varies largely on the setting you play on and I highly recommend new players start on "Lieutenant" because "Captain" gets very difficult if the player doesn't pick the ideal upgrades for your ships. You can undo upgrades, but it will cost you a 20% money loss each time, so it's best you save before you allocate your R&D funds. I could go on much longer, but I fear that would be spoiling this hidden gem of a game. Play it! Tell your friends about it and get this series some more visibility so we get a proper part 3 one day.

The game is very promissing. I has a great length, and the story is very interesting. This game is also the first visual novel that I saw that made me want an option that wasn't there, the option "Ava, take command, I will do it myself" near the end of the game. But outside that, everything in the story part worked very nice to me. Gameplay-wise it is weak and hard, very hard, or I did the wrong build, it also have some difficulty spikes on the 4 stage, and when that robot that shut your systems down appear, destroying all your strategy. I must be really bad on this game, that even on easy I couldn't beat it. The game just send waves after waves against you with too many units. Fortunately this was corrected on the next game of the franchise, but I do suggest you take care on this one. The thing I liked the most is how this game can make things epic with its kickass soundtrack, one of the best I ever see for a visual novel. Well, even taking aside the thing I didn't liked the game is good and I recommend it.

So I got this game for free and didn't really expect anything. I was surprised how deep and rewarding the tactical combat really is. In fact it's putting most big budget titels to shame in that regard. It's also tough as nails, meaning you'll have to try battles three, five or ten times until you succeed and without choosing the proper upgrades first, some scenarios might be outright unwinnable. My suggestion is to lower the difficulty below default for the first playthrough - and this is coming from someone who usually eats these kind of games for breakfast. The 'visual novel part' of this visual novel sadly doesn't quite hold up to the combat. The story is hit and miss. At times it's an embarrassing schoolboy's fantasy featuring adolescent jokes about boobies. At other times it's actually an epic space opera that isn't afraid to pick up controversial sociological and political topics and puts the player into quite formidable ethical dilemmata. Those different writing styles don't really complement each other well and overall the story requires very little player interaction. It's still inetresting enough to keep on playing though, even if I found myself just skimming over some parts. Technically this game is in need of bugfixing and polishment. It will ocassionally crash to desktop, loading a savegame will sometimes put you in the main menu instead (the savegame is not corrupted, you just have to try again) and there are countless weird bugs related to the interface. Some essential buttons are mysteriously missing (for example to restart a battle or to end a training session in the simulator), giving this title a certain beta-vibe. For a free game such things are acceptable, I guess, but it certainly makes you second guess your descision to buy the successor. On the plus side the voice acting is well done and the soundtrack is awesome. I'd probaly buy it seperately from the game if it was available.