GB Feature: Anachronox Review

If you’ve been looking for something a little different to sink your teeth into, then you may want to check out our retrospective review of Ion Storm’s 2001 cyberpunk RPG.

When diplomacy fails, or you’re just exploring hostile areas, you’ll be whisked into combat, which is real-time: your characters will spend varying amounts of time getting ready for their next action, which could be moving, using an item or a special ability, or just plain attacking an opponent. The combat arena is based on a grid, and characters can block ranged attacks against those behind them, which brings some depth to the system. Additionally, as the game progresses, you will gain access to magic (in the form of MysTech artifacts), which will further broaden the number of options available. Unfortunately, while you’re choosing who to attack or where to move, time will still be flowing, which makes the combat somewhat hectic – the game really could use a pause function, or pseudo-realtime based combat, because as it stands currently, it requires a surprising amount of agility to do everything in time – on the other hand, the game is easy enough that only perfectionists will be bothered by this.

Character development is very streamlined, which is a bit disappointing. While there are a number of different stats, you can’t choose which to improve – in addition, the stats themselves are only explained in a tutorial at the start, which you’re bound to forget, so you’ll spend some time wondering what each does. There’s also very little loot management – the characters only have five equipable slots each, and weapons aren’t interchangeable among them – though you will gather consumables and various miscellaneous objects as you progress. Characters’ special attacks (the three not available at first) are gained by talking to the right people, as is the single world skill upgrade.