Let me get one thing clear, before we begin: I hate 99% of Japanese RPGs.
Let me say that again, once more with feeling.
I fucking hate 99% of Japanese RPGs.
The stories are tired, the fantasy setting is stereotypical to the point where it's not even funny anymore, the combat is tedious, the grinding is enough to make me want to set fire to the disc or cartridge (or just delete the ROM where applicable... by formatting my HD), the lead character tends to be some effeminate male, so on and so forth. It's the same god damn drudgery over and over and over again. There's maybe 6 jRPGs out of what's probably thousands that I like, 4 of which I've ever actually finished. Fuck this shit.
That said, Anachronox is a fine God Damn game. But wait, you ask, wasn't Anachronox developed by Ion Storm Dallas, the long-delayed brainchild of former id Software visionary Tom Hall? Why yes. Yes it is.
This game is fairly obscure, so let me bring you console heathens up to speed. Anachronox was released for the PC in 2001 and was an immediate commercial failure, which directly led to Ion Storm Dallas being shut down after the failure of Daikatana, which was the gaming equivalent of a 3-hour erection resulting in a depressing ejaculation over donkey porn, after which the industry cried itself to sleep.
In spite of the problems Daikatana (and Ion Storm at large) had, in no small part due to the overly big, unweildy dreams of Ion Storm founders Tom Hall and John "I still think I'm 17" Romero, Anachronox turned out to be quite a good game. Or rather half of a game, but we'll get to that in a moment. The game was particularly notable in that it was the first example of the Quake 2 engine not looking ugly as shit. It was also notable in that it drew a lot of concepts from jRPGs, some good and some bad.
There's a heavy emphasis on character development and plot. The writing is top-notch and had me laughing my ass off frequently just through the dialogue, and not just in the cutscenes. There's one part early on where you come upon a seeming madman dressed in ratty clothings and a cape carrying a walking stick, and he's shouting to the crowd of people around him that we are all doomed to repeat the same moment over and over again, to say the same words, so on and so forth. After you click on him enough times he starts to repeat himself. But self-aware irony is but a small part of the comedy found in the game. At one point there's an entire sequence where cutscenes are done in comic book style with white borders and visual sound effects, and dialogue windows resemble classic comic book balloons. The overarching plot is a bit of a roller-coaster ride, with plenty of unexpected turns. It starts off simple enough but explodes into another "save the universe" type deal, which seems to be about par for the course but whatever. The settings are quite varied. The game begins on the city-planet of the same name that provides a somewhat alien cyberpunk backdrop to the opening hours of the game. Eventually you move on to a space station, complete with its own red light district hidden away in the maintenance tunnels, and from there are a number of other planets, not in the least among them Democratus, a large, Earthlike planet with a huge ring-shaped superstructure around it housing the most annoying society ever, one centered entirely around a form of pure democracy which in turn centers around pure bureaucracy. This planet is important because at some point the inhabitants of the ring actually SHRINK THE PLANET DOWN TO FOUR FEET IN DIAMETER TO JOIN YOU ON YOUR QUEST.
Let me say that again. DEMOCRATUS SHRINKS DOWN TO 4 FEET IN DIAMETER TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE CAST OF PLAYABLE CHARACTERS.
Do you see how oddly hilarious this game is? It's to sci-fi RPGs what Snow Crash is to cyberpunk. Some of the sheer silliness of it makes me think of good old Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker trilogy.
Speaking of characters, there's quite a few of them, as well, and you get to control 7 of them. First and foremost is Sylvester Bucceli, aka Sly Boots, a down and out private detective looking for work who lands the case of his life. He is joined by Grumpos Matavastros, a cranky old man who has dedicated his life to the study of Mystech, mysterious stone slags scattered around the galaxy that seem to serve no purpouse whatsoever. Also in the party are a foul-mouthed robot, a scientist with hilariously bad taste in clothing, the aforementioned planet, an assassin, and a down-and-out alcoholic superhero.
Now for the bad part.
The combat sucks. I repeat: the combat SUCKS. Once more: THE COMBAT SUCKS. I'll be honest: much like Marmite, you're either a fan of jRPG combat or you're not. However, nobody is going to be a fan of the combat in Anachronox because it is incredibly fucking tedious. The simplest of actions- attacking the enemy- will often result in a 10-second long animation where they fire their weapon, it travels for a few feet, then maybe (or maybe not) it will hit. Thankfully, the (recommended) 2nd patch, done by a former dev in his spare time, gives you a "fast forward" button that you can and will abuse throughout the game. Don't want to spend 5 minutes walking from one area to another? Just use the fast forward button to zoom down those long stretches! Sick of combat taking forever? Zoom. Seen this cutscene before? Zoom. There are some other smaller problems such as combat very rarely getting frozen if you abuse fast-forward too much and Boots' animation being screwed to hell in the final cutscene, or the game crashing on occasion when you try to attack an enemy that's already dead and the game lets you.
Here's the other bad part: this is only half of a game! The game was delayed for 3 and a half years, in part due to a switch from Quake 1 to Quake 2 as the in-game engine. By the time Ion Storm Dallas' wheels were coming off there was no way the team could finish the entire script, so the other half was going to be written for a sequel, but the game flopped and ISD imploded and no sequel is forthcoming, unless someone wants to give Tom Hall a couple million dollars. This wouldn't be so bad, if the game didn't end on a giant fucking cliffhanger. That said, it doesn't quite FEEL like only half of a game- the final sequences of the game feel quite conclusive and decisive in themselves. Let me explain it to you like this: imagine if you were playing FF7 and as soon as Sephiroth comes down and gives Aeris the ol' what-for, the credits roll. Anachronox isn't like that. There's definitely room for a sequel, but the story in itself is self-contained.
One thing this game has going for it, which i really appreciate, is the complete lack of need for grinding. Some people complained about this, but if any of your characters get too far behind they eventually automatically gain a few levels after they've been back in combat once or twice. This is fairly obvious proof that the game puts much more emphasis on story and not combat. Which is a pity, because if combat had been less unbelievably shit the game would be that much more enjoyable.
Conclusion: Daikatana changed the industry. Duke Nukem Forever went into a media blackout for years thanks to Daikatana not living up to the huge amount of hype Romero had fostered. Devs learned (for the most part) not to put more emphasis on hype and arguing with assholes on the internet and installing showers and snack machines in the offices of your employees who think you don't hear them making lewd jokes about your gamer girlfriend and to put more emphasis on MAKING THE DAMN GAME. Ion Storm Dallas, which in its own way was simply trying to be something the unimaginative John Carmack would never let id Software be, would have been one big joke if not for Anachronox. But even in spite of the dozens of bugs (what Western RPG in the last 10 years or so isn't bug-riddled, though?) and crappy, underdeveloped combat, this is still an unpolished gem of a game that might just keep you going all the way to the end, even when you start the game knowing it doesn't really end.
