Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jan 20, 2022

  This is one of the best adventure games ever written, period. Play it, you won't regret it. My only sorrow is that they never got around to making a sequel. If I'm ever a billionaire, I'll personally fund it. That's how freakin' good this game is.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 22, 2014

  I'm about 1/3 of the way through this game, and I can say with complete confidence that it's one of the most entertaining games I've ever played. The combat can be a little slow, but everything else completely makes up for that. One of the few games with truly effective humor, I've found myself actually laughing out loud (from a deep, healthy place) several times already. Easily one of my favorite types of games, now go get it!
• gamedeal user

  Aug 2, 2014

  They really knew what they were doing there. Despite the low-res graphics, the game looks pretty darn good. It's like they actually used everything they could from the engine to tone up the atmosphere and details. Heck, the game's even got modding support. Too bad not much is done with it. One downside is that the game's a little slow at the beginning. And for some odd reason the camera pans out extremely slow when changing locations or switching combat turns. But the story's really worth it. Crazy characters, good dose of humour, and interesting places to explore.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 20, 2014

  Anachronox is a cool console-style RPG, made with Quake 2 engine. Borrows heavily from classic JRPGs, such as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and 7, etc. It is very good, but hard to recommend. Here's why: Pros: Great story, lots of awesome cutscenes, weird, but loveable characters, decent voice acting, good writing and sense of humor. Cons: BUGS! I don't believe you could even finish it after the initial release. Even after several patches, official and fan-made, it is still riddled with bugs. When playing for the first time I got permanently stuck in scenery soon after watching intro animation. Had to restart and watch it again (it is unskippable). Hyperactive, nauseating camera can be very annoying. Battles are nearly broken - very awkward interface, long repetitive animations, camera so busy flying around, you can't see what you are going to do. Only hardest skill level is somewhat challenging. Lots of backtracking. Just to switch characters in your party you have to literally leave the planet, by running through empty locations, going through several elevator animations, many loading screens, and then go back. The game was obviously rushed, some locations still have crude, unfinished look, some animations don't work. The graphics did not age really well and frequently looks dated even for 2001. Music is average. Moody, atmosheric synth stuff. Some tunes are good, most are bland and repetitive. My advice for those who still plan to play: Launch the game through "Anachronox GCT setup" app(already present in installation folder), DO NOT launch through Steam, otherwise most animations will be broken. Basically, the game will be unplayable. Use fast-forward button, it is '\' by default, I think. Or you'll go mad. Rebind to more accessible key. Enable "save anywhere" option and use it. It is not game-breaking and can potentially save you some more time. Make notes. The game is not able to track side-quests, only the main ones. Remembering side quests, hints and secret locations is up to you.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 16, 2022

  Good Game But Need to remake it
• Chomsky

  Jan 23, 2023

  You know that feeling you get after completing a game, like that "what am I gonna do with my life now?" type of feeling? Anachronox hits that feeling hard. This is a beautiful, inspired RPG and one the most underrated games I've ever played. It's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets Chrono Trigger meets Ender's Game with a dash of noir. The game boasts a memorable cast of characters, subtle yet hilarious humor, and cutscenes that are composed with more imagination and creativity than most triple-A games today (mind you, this game was made on the Quake 2 engine)! Not to mention the impressive voice acting that adds so much charm to them. The biggest hurdle to get over is the combat system, which is an odd mix of turn-based JRPG styled combat and real time combat. But otherwise what you're in for is an enthralling adventure with lots of twists and turns. The development of this game is fascinating as well and definitely worth the deep dive of interviews and articles. The saddest part about Anachronox is that it was meant to be a trilogy; the ending of the game is narratively complete on it's own but it is only a fraction of what was left to explore. Two other games were planned but sadly never saw the light of day due to Ion Storms closure. It currently sits in Eidos' IP limbo. Which is a shame because there really is no other game like this one. This is an essential play for any PC gaming aficionado.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 25, 2023

  Anachronox is a western RPG game with some similarities to Final Fantasy games. -Combat is turned base combat -The game has dungeons but you can see the monsters/enemies unlike in old FF games. -It has city areas . In those areas you can talk to NPCs and even do some quests for them.(No quest log for side quests) One idea I like is some quests require you to take pictures with your camera. Each party member also has special abilities that you can use to find secrets. -The game also has some mini games similar to old final fantasy games. Story is kinda similar to guardians of galaxy with lots of humor. The only problem of this game is this that you have very few areas where you can change your active party members. Hint: you can use \ on your keyboard to speed up the game.(Very useful for elevator sections)
• gamedeal user

  Aug 6, 2015

  I love this game. It's a western made jrpg on the quake 2 engine. It's pretty much a spoof on the save the world plot most rpgs have. Ya, it's old as shit, the camera gets jerky, the combat anit too hot, and there's some bugs like falling through the world in this specific spot that was never fixed in patches, but everything else about the game is fantastic. Great world, great characters, and great ost. The written dialogue in this game is on another level though. Not many games have as much charm, attention to detail and self awareness in its dialogue like this game. Plus, it's dynamic. Talk to most npcs with each of your party members. Not only will you get a different response, but they are treated as a different character all together. Many lines had me laughing which is rare in an rpg. It's just the game really throws some curveballs at you with its delivery. You will run into some weird random dialogue, and it will come at the perfect time. It's just unpredictable, and it's refreshing because of it. How does the game play outside the combat? It honestly plays like an adventure game where you explore the world with your party members. You pick up items, interact with npcs, and use your party members to interact with certain world objects. Each party member has a world skill and can be only used when you have the member in your party. Most of the interactions are mainly minigames. Some of them are simple like picking a lock which becomes a game of hot and cold or opening a hidden lock by throwing a coin at it, and the mini game is lining up the coin with the switch x amount of times (not my personal favorite). There's some other ones that are goofy, but I won't spoil them or the other party members you get because that's one of the best parts! Here comes the biggest flaw this game has: Some times you'll come across a world interaction such as a computer screen or a terminal lock, and you'll not be able to interact with it unless you have that party member. While most aren't mandatory, you will always run into them one way or another. So what do you do? You have to go all the way back to your base of operations and pick up that party member and backtrack all the way back to the interaction. It's a common problem that the metroidvania genre faces, but it adds a lot of depth and replayability incase you miss them. The backtracking becomes tiresome. However, luckly one of the programmers for the game added a speed hack button to speed up running everywhere in one of the patches. It makes things less tedious. Oh, and you will miss stuff in this game. Completionist be damned, because there's no way you'll find all of it without a guide (especially the PAL items). Even certain cutscenes, and areas because one section of the game has three distinct branching paths. It doesn't hold your hand when it comes to side quests at all. Once you find out that there are two npcs that work together it becomes a little easier, but early on you will have no clue who the hell some of these named characters are. The names in this game are completely out there, and some of them you wouldn't dare try and pronounce. Thankfully the side quest directions that are given are pretty clear so it's not some cryptic bullshit you will bang your head on a desk over and over for. Also, there's items you can only get after certain parts of the game. So the game encourages you to retread ground and retalk to every npc hoping you get some new item or some new side quest. None of the optional stuff is required of you, but you will be get much more powerful battle skills, and other equipment if you do so. Last but not least there's one mechanic of the game I didn't quite get. The Elementor system. It's supposed to be a way to customize your MysTech to be more powerful, but it's very complicated. You need different color beetles, flower petals, cobalt crawlers, and function hosts. You insert beetles on grids while given it a flower petal to level your beetle up, and using different color beetles to offset opposing elementals. Or something like that... I don't know, I just don't know! I don't even know what cobalt crawlers or function hosts do, but you need them! I did some small reading on it, and it involved math, and some other explanations on other things like grid layouts that made me go "right....." I didn't quite comprehend any of it. I ultimately gave up on the mechanic simply because the game gave such a small explanation, and that's it. You can beat the game without ever using it. However, it's power for your party that you'll never be able to access. This game came out in 2001. Obviously overshadowed because that was the year where so many great games came out. This one was buried among them all. Which is ashame because it's somewhat forgotten, and only really discussed among rpg enthusiasts (which is how I learned about it). There isn't anything quite like this game to this date. I know some of the things I mention might sound pretty cumbersome, but they are minor issues at best, and never really hold the game back. It's both bizarre, strange, compelling, and a lot of fun. It's the second best Ion storm game, and if a sequel (which was planned at some point) was kickstarted, it would be quite the task to make a game quite as crazy as this one. Give it a shot. It's pretty great.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 10, 2015

  Anachronox. Think of Blade Runner mixed with KOTOR but without Lightsaber and religious nonsense. The game isn't very serious and most of the time leaning more towards comedic approach. And it works. Gameplay is separated into two categories, exploration and spelunking. 1. When in exploration parts of the game there is almost no battles involved. Mainly running around the cities looking for clues. It runs very similar with KOTOR but with more interactions. +Story is great. Interstellar detective in action? Count me in. +Bizzare and yet unique characters. (A PLANET!!) +Dialogue are witty but sadly most of them aren't voiced (except cutscenes). +There is some degree of customizations. Espescially around the middle of the game when you found a certain "magic." +Cutscenes are a bit lacking for an RPG, though all of them are very well made and satisfying. (some really made me laugh so hard) -Lots of missable stuff. Reading walkthrough is recommended. -Steam overlay not working. -Some areas are too dark. So you will be playing with full gamma setting most of the time. It's annoying. -The camera is bad. When interacting with stuffs most of the time there will be a short cutcsene with camera panning around giving a cinematic feels. Unfortunately, this coupled with how small the areas you explore (forcing you to move around the camera lots of time) can easily cause motion sickness to some people (like me). This can be remedied with playing in short session. 2. The spelunking part is your typical dungeon run in RPGs. Here you will be battling most of the time. +Enemies are placed on spesific parts on the map and you can see them so you can prepare yourself before battles. And they'll only respawn when you leaves the dungeon. The dev's are pretty generous with exp and item drops too. +Battle is your standard turn based JRPG style with ATB like in Final Fantasy titles. -Sadly the flow of battles are very slow thanks to the camera panning around whenever anyone doing something. And you'll have to wait until the camera slowly back to the default position before the game continue with the next set of commands. Oh and skill animations are pretty long too. Thankfully this version has the fast forward button implemented. It's like playing emulator with the throttle on. -The game is one hell of a BUGFEST. So save often in different save slots. Okay so overall this is a solid RPG. The only issues i have is the camera and the bugs. It's a bit sad actually that not much people knows about this game existence back in the day. It's even tops KOTOR in some aspect IMO. -------Score 8/10--------
• gamedeal user

  Mar 26, 2016

  Amazing west made JRPG. WRPG? WMJRPG? ZOMGFBBQWMJRPG? Whatever you wanna call it, this game is absolutely fantastic, it was made by ION Storm (the Deus Ex team, not the Daikatana team), the story is both depressing and incredibly funny and optimistic at the same time, you meet tons of whacky and unforgettable characters along your journey, for example, your mouse pointer is a small ship housing the AI of your sarcastic dead secretary, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Keep in mind though, mechanically speaking, it has quite a few problems that are more outdated stuff than anything. The graphics is the first thing that comes to mind, personally I don't mind a classic looking 3D game from the late 90's / early 2000's, especially if antialiasing is added through the drivers, but these might be a massive turn off for some, also there's no easy way to run this in widescreen aspect, so unless you look how to unlock widescreen resolutions [url=http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Anachronox]*cough*[/url], you're mostly stuck with 4:3 aspect resolutions. This being a JRPG style game, means that the battles are naturally turn based with your party of characters and that's great really, especially because there can be a surprising amount of strategy to kill certain enemies and bosses. The only thing that it could've improved over it's japanese counterparts, is the overly long animation sequences, those can get under your skin if you see the same long animations over and over for a long game like this. Outside the battes though, it's just a wonderful fully realized massive 3D sci-fi world(s) to explore, it kinda reminds me a lot of Mass Effect for the many friendly (and non-friendly) alien races you get to meet, it also reminds me of a traditional point n' click adventure games, there's a lot of stuff to see, tons of people to talk to, tons of places to explore, it's just good stuff. So yeah, in conclusion, this is quite a fun west made JRPG with a few problems, but overall, I highly recommend it.