Wow, if there were ever a game that makes me hate being a reviewer, Anachronox would be it. Two weeks ago, I would have written this review and told you that this was one of the most boring games I have ever played. I would have went on and on about a boring story line, a bad combat system, and rather bland character development. Being one of the few committed reviewers out there, however, I trudged on and finished the game. Now my impressions have totally changed.

Anachronox, in case you have never heard of it, is a sci-fi role-playing game, that plays more like a console RPG than a PC RPG. That doesn’t bother me as much as it does a lot of the die-hard RPG fans, as two of my top five favorite RPGs of all time are console style. What this means is that the game is more character-driven than statistics-driven. The game focuses more on characters like a secretary brought back to life as a floating cursor, than it focuses on you having to select ability scores every time you go up in level.

There is no other way to review the game than to split it into two halves. The game takes about 30 to 40 hours to complete, and the first 15 hours are really hard to play through. When I say hard, I really mean boring. The stat system in the first half is virtually nonexistent, there is no way you can alter your character as your character goes up in level. You can minimally affect your characters' abilities with some bracelets that they wear; I know, contain the excitement. The combat in the first half the game is sparse, and normally involves taking turns shooting each other and healing. The story in the first half revolves around walking from place to place on trivial errands. Sometimes the walks are long, through several loading zones. Sometimes the errands are extremely tedious, such as talking to 25 different people to find out how they will vote in elections. The characters are a grumpy dwarf, a detective, a little robot, and a scientist.

About halfway through the game, the central characters discover how to use an item called mystec. After discovering the substance, you are joined by an acrobat/assassin, an entire planet shrunk down to a globe size and comic book superhero. The characters become alive and interesting, and the story becomes a detailed one about fighting to save multiple universes. The mystec is formed into weapons, and you can customize it for each of your characters. Suddenly, you have options in combats, and you are making strategic weapons for your party. You find yourself wanting to play the game, and wanting to see how the story ends.

I don’t believe in giving away plot lines in RPG games, but I will say that Anachronox has one of the strongest ones I have ever seen, once it picks up. The plot is well thought out, and the cut scenes in this game are perfect. The cut scenes are often humorous, and they are without a doubt the best feature of this title. If you play your games for good stories, then definitely have the patience to play this title.

If you play games for the graphics, however, it may be time to find another game. Anachronox uses the dated Quake 2 engine. Although dated, I don’t think they were bad. I have never been one to think graphics were too important to an RPG, but after playing The Summoning and other recent games, I know they could be much better. The graphics never interfere with the game, but they won’t make your eyes pop out.

The sound ranges from good during the game and in battles, to excellent voice-overs during the cut scenes. The music is largely forgettable.

Gameplay starts out terrible, ends up pretty fun. There never seemed to be enough combat in the game, and there seemed to be a lot of pointless walking. At one point late in the game, I had to walk from one end of Anachronox, go to another planet to tell my party to meet me at a third planet, then I had to go back to Anachronox and get a ticket so that I could walk to the meeting point on the third planet. Apparently you can’t call your friends in the future and have them meet you somewhere.

Gameplay is rather linear; there are not a lot of subquests after the first part of the game. Not only is gameplay linear, but also, as many 3D games are these days, the levels make you feel you are on a rail. One-way through the level so you can’t get lost and don’t need a map. You sometimes feel forced through the story. There is one part where the story branches; you have a choice of characters to take to an alien world. If you don’t take the rogue/assassin, however, you will miss out on a very funny sequence parodying the Return of the Jedi where the Ewoks are the evil race, and you must save the Stormtrooper village.

Combat is never too hard; as a matter of fact, I think I lost one battle all game long. Combat will remind you of Final Fantasy 8, where each player takes a turn at shooting at the other team, followed by flashy animations of the hit or miss. There is not enough combat in the game for the effects to get old. Your character gets special attacks after waiting so long in combat, and some of them look pretty neat. Most of the time, they are out of balance, and you can use one special attack in the later parts of the game to kill all the enemies at once.

In the end, after playing it all the way through, I am glad I finished Anachronox. Although far from being an RPG classic, it has some of the most memorable characters in an RPG and I will never forget the stranded in space cut scene. The combat is easy, and although I never really needed the ultrapowerful weapons I created with mystec, it was still a blast to use them. Tom Hall, lead designer, and the crew of Ion Storm have all been fired, so it is unlikely that we will ever see a sequel to the game. That is a shame; if a game picked up where this one left off, had a nice new shiny engine, and followed the plot through other universes, I would believe we have a classic RPG.