Last Rant on Videogames: Slightly More Modern than Orthodox Steampunk [Steambot Chronicles]

I swear, people, I will, one hallowed day, write an entry less than five pages.  It might even be this one.

Also, I've retroactively come up with a title for these little essays.  They're officially part of a series I'm now calling my Last Rant on Videogames.  It's a play on the show's title.  It's a little obtuse, I know, but I'm told I have a knack for coming up with obtuse sayings.

One convenient segue later, you might recall in my last Last Rant that I espoused, not too briefly, the virtues of a game publisher that goes by the monicker of Atlus.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read about the first five paragraphs, or hit up the Wikipedia page.  I also briefly alluded to a game they published that fell short of the image I have of them.  I guess they can't all be winners.

The game to which I refer, which might be more obvious if you followed that last link, is Steambot Chronicles.  I'm going to spend a little bit here talking this game up; I only do so that I might tear it down when I've finished, so don't go getting your hopes up.  If you want to cut to the chase, you can skip to the summary of all this.   Steambot Chronicles is an action adventure style RPG, in a similar style, at least in navigation, to the Zelda games for the N64, except it's on the PS2.  In fact, it looks pretty nice.  If you're interested now, there's more.  The setting for this game is in a post steampunky universe similar to 1920s U.S.A. except the immediate improvement upon cars was to put them on modular locomotion systems, ranging from traditional wheels, to treads, and bipedal leg systems.  Additionally, the main chassis for each model was eventually designed to have slots for various appendages.  Essentially, you have a modifiable vehicular monstrosity, similar to a Mr. Transformer Head.  I wish that was a thing.

So far, this game sounds pretty cool, right?  It gets better.  Not only do you get to assemble your machine, you get to fight other similarly constructed machines in actual combat wherein you have complete control over the movements of your mechanized death dealer.  There is, in fact, an arena should you wish to pit your skills against opponents more threatening than highway bandits.  Had I mentioned the bandits?  Apparently, because the vehicles are so prevalent and parts are everywhere, lots of organized gangs have sprung up and use the Trotmobiles, as these modified motorized carriages are called, to enforce their will wherever the police do not have the forces to combat them.  Needless to say, part of the plot involves fighting them.

Or joining them.  As if customizable Trotmobile shenanigans weren't enough, this is also an open RPG where your decisions influence the course of events and you can choose to impose your will upon the weak.  In addition to all of this, this is also a dating sim of sorts.  A dating sim whose potential prospects are members of your band.  Did I mention that you're in a band?  You can choose to play basically any instrument you can lay your grubby Trotter mitts on, which is actually a wide variety of instruments.  If you're feeling short on cash, you can even set up a stage arm on your ride and give an impromptu concert from the side of the streets.  Also, there are a number of fairly large and mildly diverse cities to explore, countryside to see between them, which may be skipped by means of a train if you're bored of traversing the pastures, and a substantial number of side quests to engage in, such as trying to build a flying Trotmobile.  Also, you can buy and sell real estate (which you may also live in and acquire all sorts of goods for), and there's ostensibly a cooking minigame or something that I never found.  Additionally, for those of you who enjoy this kind of silliness, every main character in the game is named after some sort of spice or seasoning.  For the record, you play as a kid named Vanilla.   All of this, also framed by young Vanilla suffering from mysterious past syndrome for some potentially juicy plot hooks.

To quickly summarize this before moving on, Steambot Chronicles is an open world action RPG about being in a band, finding love, and fighting giant car robots.  Simply amazing.

Unfortunately, burdened by such a wonderful premise, this game was doomed to disappoint from inception.  Let's start tearing the gilded facade down, shall we?

First, this game suffers from a lot of lazy writing.  Things just happen to the character by chance, which while believable, gets old after the tenth time device is presented.  You, through Vanilla, never actively cause events, and simply drift like some sort of new age vagabond upon your metallic steed, sometimes aimlessly because the game refuses to tell you where to go to drive the plot forward.  The entirety of Vanilla's mystery background, which is resolved in a somewhat satisfactory manner, is caused by amnesia, rather than having some important character traits prevent Vanilla from disclosing his past in large doses.  I assume this is primarily to keep Vanilla as a blank slate so that the player might more easily assume the protagonist's role, but it's a pretty tired plot device.  Additionally, you're allowed to make a number of choices throughout the game, but it seems very few of them actually influence the world in any manner, despite the game's assertions to the contrary.  Admittedly, the game tells you some decisions do not matter, but this appears to apply to the vast majority of them.  The plot itself is pretty formulaic, and the big bad behind everything is either a huge plot twist, or so obvious you called it when you met him depending on your exposure to this sort of thing.  It seems that there are a few plot events which must always happen and that the only real thing your decisions influence is which side of the conflict you're on.  I don't mind this as much, as branched story telling is certainly no easy task, but it's played up as a big part of the game and never really bears fruit, at least not any so shriveled and sour that I don't even want to make a pie of them.

Well, if the story isn't so great, how about the interpersonal relationships?  Well, I'm sorry to say that there's not a whole lot going on there.  There are two, possibly three, girls you may court.  One is substantially older than you, and the other is your age, obviously infatuated, has an ailing mother and could use some help caring for her, and saved your life when you washed up in a shipwreck while she was picking flowers.  The plot seems to be nudging you in a certain direction, but I can't quite tell which.  Honestly, the advances of the older girl are a little creepy, considering how much older she acts than the rest of the band.  At any rate, wooing your chosen partner is more tedious than fulfilling, as it does not serve to further develop their characters.  Most of their respective personality traits and past events that inform the people they are come to you by following the main plot and a bit of city exploration rather than actually interacting with them.  As for the other members of the band, they're pretty useless, and don't develop much past the first couple hours of the game.  Alongside the promise of an open and malleable world, this flaunted aspect of the game falls quite short.

Being in the band doesn't offer much in the way of gratification either, though it is a pretty interesting mechanic.  There are only a small handful of songs.  My rather shadowy memory informs me that it's five, but they're all pretty similar and share a huge flaw; they're directly translated from Japanese.  While I don't normally have a problem with this, the composition was changed to help the flow, the backup vocals are pretty awful (played by the older love interest, Sage, methinks), and the lyrics range from nonsensical to mediocre.

How playing a song works, provided you're actually performing a concert, is fairly interesting.  First, you choose a song from the list your band has worked on.  This means you'll be hearing the first few of them A LOT.  Everyone in the band performs a couple of instruments, and will be automatically assigned one for the song.  If you wish to play one and their backup instrument is being played by another member, you may do so.  There are quite a few instruments to play, and they all handle at least somewhat differently.  What we're left with is basically a series of timing minigames while you listen to the voice actors wail away.  My personal favorite for comedic value is the accordion, which involves moving the two analog sticks left and right as if you were squeezing the box.  While not particularly poorly implemented, the monotonous musical menageries your must master may make you mildly miffed as you struggle to play to the best of your ability and find that some instruments do not reward your effort at all.  Also, I believe I mentioned you have to listen to the same poorly executed songs again and AGAIN and...  You may be seeing my point about this.

At least there's still robot battles.  Everyone loves a good robot battle.  Sadly, these are either impossible, or incredibly boring.  There's not much middle ground.  Controlling the robot, while a little tricky, is actually a neat concept.  The left analog stick controls the movements of the left half of your chosen locomotion system, while the right stick performs its appropriate complementary action.  This can be confusing for a while, but I found that I accustomed quickly.  The left and right triggers activate your left and right weapons.  You can perform a quick rush by pushing in the analog sticks, block with one back shoulder button, and lift things with the other.  There's a variety of tactics available, which seems like it would be a good thing.

Sadly, there is an optimal strategy for most situations.  It usually boils down to "strafe and then hit with something" or, for arena matches and duels, "pick up, lob, and hit with something."  The machines don't move quite quickly enough to perform more dextrous maneuvers, and most enemies either run away from you to bombard you from a range or immediately attempt to close with you.  The variation on the weapons is limited as well; you're stuck with melee weapons that all act extremely similarly, or ranged weapons that are nearly identical that differ only by their damage to monetary cost ratio.  Combat quickly degrades to the same boring fight repeated with slight differences in enemy appearances.  The exception to this is bosses.  I was considering a new paragraph for this, but it can be condensed to jumping upon the behemoth, which the boss always is, and hitting it until you're knocked off.  Repeat ad nauseam.  Possibly literally if you're easily sickened by motion.

I mentioned a variety of side quests, but the game didn't really hold my interest enough for me to want to finish most of them.  They largely involve carrying things between two points, usually using a specially designed body attachment for your trusty Trotter.  Sometimes it's carrying a fossil to the museum, sometimes it's delivering carpet, occasionally you can sell water to people.  I neglected to mention that the game also claimed you could become a merchant king by buying and selling goods between towns.  Apparently what they meant by that is giving water to people in the desert.  Fun times.  Travel through towns is mostly automated while you're on your vehicle, as you swim through traffic with light systems.  That's right, you wait at traffic lights.  Enthralling.  Sadly, if your destination is pretty far away, this is the fastest way to travel.  No GTA style irreverence for traffic laws.  You are obligated to follow the guy in front of you until he turns; you actually have no control of your movement while doing this.  You just pick a spot and wait.  Go make a sandwich.  Read a couple pages from a book.  Maybe listen to a podcast.  You can get a bicycle, mitigating this problem somewhat, but the town's are pretty large and you'll find yourself wandering across them quite a bit.  I feel this game would have benefited substantially from a quick travel system of the point and teleport nature, but that might have detracted from the feel of the world a bit.

One thing this game does well is setting.  While many of the buildings are useless and generally visually indistinct, the entirety of the game really does feel like a setting I want to be in.  I can't help but wonder whether a videogame with tighter focus or possibly a tabletop game could take this setting and make something more engaging out of it.

Speaking of tighter focus, that brings me to my overall criticism with this game.  Like ActRaiser, and quite a few other games, this particular attempt at entertainment tries too much and succeeds at none of it.  That said, despite what, for me, was a rather scathing review of this thing, it does not fail spectacularly.  This whole thing lands squarely in the realm of mediocre.  I feel that another year or two in development or a few more months in preproduction narrowing scope could have made this game truly great, but all we received was lost potential.  I really would like to see a sequel to this game that improved upon the lessons taught by it, but I don't think it will ever come from the software studio that made it.

That studio, by the way, is Irem, the company behind R-Type and a few other things.  Apparently they were making a sequel before the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan a while back.  Wikipedia tells me that they're no longer in the videogame business and are currently focusing on their first love: gambling machines.  Looking at their list of endeavors, I'm sad that a company so multifaceted as this is no longer producing, but I suppose future mediocrity in overly ambitious endeavors is a pitfall they will have avoided.

My conclusion is that if you think this game sounded awesome before I laid waste to the glittering appearances it presented, you might want to pick it up.  I found it at a used games store for $15, so I don't think it would be too hard to track down a copy if you're really interested.  For me, it was roughly a week's worth of evenings spent trying to find something more in a game that had already offered me everything it had to give.

Now, where's my Gundam action adventure RPG?