Ah, for fives and friends I do confess. Let's Play Anachronox!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Ah, for fives and friends I do confess. Let's Play Anachronox!

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Bugs aside this is still the best JRPG ever made. I mean, this genre, gameplay will suck no matter what so it's all about the writing and the whole noir meets Douglas Adams style works fantastically.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 24, 2017

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 23:41

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:11

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

davidspackage posted:

I never had much of a problem with this, but I'm also the type of player who exhausts all possible sidepaths before trying to make progress. So I can see how it would turn off other players.

Speaking of, how are you going to handle the different scenarios at the party split? That is a bit of a dick move by the game given the poor pacing and lack of replayability.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2017 09:08

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Awesome. I admit that despite having finished this multiple times, I never really found the will to do PAL18's path.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2017 19:37

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Ion Storm basically had a "celebrity" dev producing each of their releases (probably with the exception of that godawful RTS they bought unfinished) - Romero did Daikatana, Warren Spector did Deus Ex and Tom Hall did Anachronox.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2017 11:47

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

The "scaling back" is one of the things that come from the inspiration by Japanese games - JRPGs have been doing this for ages.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2017 21:44

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Loxbourne posted:

I can see why the designers felt they should have cut back on the opening. This draaaaaaaaaaags and we have no real objectives right now beyond wandering around.

This is kind of interesting to me since I think it shows they didn't really know what to do with their game mechanics. In a western RPG, you'd be happy to wander around, grab sidequests and use every opportunity to tune up your character a bit; but in JRPGs you can't do that so you want to get into the story as soon as possible. Bit of conflicting mentalities there.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 08:19

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Grumpos is the best character and I'm prepared to unleash his special ability on those who dare dispute this claim.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2017 22:51

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Sadly, not much thought went into the actual gameplay here. Typical for a JRPGbut still... I'd love to see a proper sequel with modern mechanics; the world and writing are fantastic but combat drags it down so much.
I think I remember a couple fairly clever boss fights though.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2017 12:42

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

There is one on the LP archive. Now that was a game with nothing to redeem the atrocious dungeoneering.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2017 22:03

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

So this is where the game actually rears its ugly head and starts clobbering you with gameplay. Two dungeons back to back, nothing interesting in either of them.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2017 23:03

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I'm honestly not sure the button was there when I played this; it was years and years ago.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2017 10:47

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

If you're not convinced to pause and read Grumpos' walls'o'text: seriously. Do it. They are a thing of beauty and I really wish they were voice-acted. Sadly it does not start with one of his better ones but just the rhythm and cadence of the entire thing are absolutely spot-on.

Anyhow, I have very vivid if somewhat disjointed memories of the next area simply because it crashed more than the rest of the game put together for me.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Apr 25, 2017

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 20:40

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I think that's exactly it.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2017 11:05

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I like how the floating hotel manager references Hotel California.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 10:19

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Preach the word. Yammer is a fantastic idea and they managed to pull it off perfectly.

# ¿ May 13, 2017 21:12

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Whybird posted:

One thing that struck me as intriguing was Grumpos being an adherent of the Church of Order (whatever that is). He doesn't strike me as the religious sort at all.

I think it's School of Order, so maybe it's more of a philosophy thing. I can definitely imagine him whacking his subordinates at the MysTech museum with his staff whenever they misplace labels or socks or whatever they put on display there, or obsessively cleaning.
Still a very interesting notion and maybe something to keep in mind for later.

# ¿ May 14, 2017 16:36

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Those guards are great.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

The spider guy could still be a reference to Spider-Man since his origin story is pretty well known even before they started making movies. Still, if it is a reference, it's a pretty weak one.

I think it was more that his name is the same as the actor who played Spider-man in the movies. So it's a reference AND time travel.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 12:58

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Rho always felt like the least interesting character to me. I'm not sure why, they could've done a fair bit with the mad scientist archetype.
I love the fact her shuttle has a pair of pink fuzzy dice.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 21:47

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

It isn't fun to play - hell, Anachronox isn't fun to play. But it's interesting because of when it showed up - Bioware wasn't putting minigames into their stuff yet so it was pretty innovative.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 23:01

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:11

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Ah, Anachronox, always ahead of its time.
I think this has my favorite Grumpos rant of them all, actually. So inevitable, so cruel, so sad. So Grumpos.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 23:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Ah, for fives and friends I do confess. Let's Play Anachronox!