Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius isn't normally my style of game. Anime girls aren't particularly titillating to me, and giant mechas made absolutely no sense in any setting, much less wandering through space. Still, the core of what could be a decent strategy game is here. Unfortunately, it's hampered by a number of poor choices in design and poor writing. First, every single attack, by both your fleet and the enemy, is accompanied by a static animation for firing, then the shot landing/missing. This seriously impedes the flow of battle, making each one a chore to get through. The 5,000th exploding PACT Cruiser is not very interesting to look at. Combat is poorly balanced, with a weak AI compensated by throwing huge numbers of broken ships at the player. You're not helped by one of your pilots managing to miss 100% of the time, even when she's at point blank range. It's also incredibly linear, with few choices outside of dialog which has only superficial impact. There's no random battles or exploration, just a scarce few side missions to gather cash for incredibly weak upgrades to your ship and ryders (mechs). The story is a weak, generic Lone Hero vs Evil Empire, with the scarce npcs (mostly your pilots, all of whom are female) being cardboard cutouts with little depth and no development. It's just there to justify you having a harem on board your warship. Despite the limited animations (most everything is predrawn scenes with anime sprites overlaying them), the game runs sluggishly. Mechanically, it's simpler than many single disk Commodre 64 games. However, it is free. You get what you pay for I suppose, but if the goal was to convince me to buy the other Sunrider games, this failed. More focus on making the combats smooth and enjoyable, and it might make the story worth ignoring for the sake of that. Otherwise, stick to FTL.

I've played Visual Novel games before, but I never would've tried this one f it wasn't free. I'm glad that I did. Played it all through in one sitting. Mood was good. Music fit in perfectly, and was very well executed. Story was surprisingly compelling, with touching themes and a few really great lines. I wish Triple A developers could bring out even half the emotion, which's why we play games to begin with. GUI stuck a little bit, but was workable. Fights were straightforward, but enjoyable. Need more Claude. Now I have to buy the sequel to see what happens. xD

Nothing revolutionary but I enjoyed to combat, the characters where interesting and the story where simple but did its job.

game keeps crashing. says out of memory error, but plenty of memory on my pc. Otherwise, I'm enjoying it.

better than most cheap visual novels i've played on steam, but this one is free