Elm Knight: Won

Loading up this session, I get a conversation with Nero talking about how he has a bad premonition...wait...that's a bad feeling about this, isn't it? Then again, I have a bad feeling about this. Nero is floating in the game world. That means either he helps me or this is an escort mission...nevermind he's just floating there. Time to go to my next destination.

I spot a floating robot in the distance, so I line up to take a screenshot and another sneaks up from behind and teleports me...back to the start. Is this seriously going to be a mechanic in this game? It was clever the first time, now it's just tedious. Once I finally spot one, it turns out that they're the same robot as Nero, only evil. You can tell because their eyes are different. The funny thing is, this is entirely annoying, not difficult. You don't even take damage, it's just a question of shooting them before they can reach you and you get unlimited tries. Basically no consequences.

The mech is that ancient? Wait, does that mean the mech's name is Randomuba? I get it, this is a joke I wasn't getting because I'm having trouble figuring out what the game's made-up terms are supposed to be referring to. Anyway, the mech Rick was piloting was the Elm Knight of the title. Elf is explaining this, I'm guessing it is just translating something rather than deliberately withholding information. I chose to believe that. There's something about someone carrying unhappiness, unsure if that's Elf or the Elm Knight.

I'm back in the desert now. Kiruno is talking to...Roy? I'm playing as Roy now? Yeah, this game is going to have character reunion without making a big production of it. Kiruno's mocking Roy, probably because he hasn't driven a mech in a while, but Roy's taking it in stride. Something I do find amusing, Serena wants to talk to Roy, but they're sure to have a bit of a conversation before letting Serena in. Apparently even in-game people find her annoying. Time to find Rick. Judging by later conversation, Roy is in Rick's mech, having repaired it.

The desert stage was never very good to begin with, but having to navigate through a stage where you're required to use the map to navigate with looking at the actual viewport being secondary is wearing on me. And...I went to the place this area starts instead of trying to find Rick. Whelp. Perhaps it's just that the game isn't tracking the actual locations of things for once.

Back with Rick, there's more talking over the stone mech relief. Something (Probably the mech) was born from a particular dimension, in which it had a form of energy, but here it had a body...once it did so, it could believe and think. Elf seems to be saying that Randomaba is the Elm Knight which is the mech that Rick was using and now Roy probably is.

And now Rick is in another mech. One which has a much less helpful GUI if this screen is any indication. Elf says something about this being born and moving. I'm not clear on what that exactly means since the words are very strange the way they're put together. It gets very beyond me. Something about protection and the power to be born again. Something strange approaches.

Now Roy is talking to Rondo. Roy apparently knows that there's going to be a surprise attack tomorrow. Apparently, Rick memorized them before disappearing. I thought this sounded like a fake answer, and so does Rondo. Roy has had correspondence with Rick. Yeah, sure. Roy then says that only a spy in the imperial army would be suspicious of this information.

Outside in the desert. It's Rick, guess his fancy new mech is real. He's looking for something. Whatever it is, he's in a hurry. Apparently he's concerned about getting it before the rebel army arrives. Back to Roy, he's conversing with Sofia. Sofia thinks the end is near and Rick agrees. I hope so. I hope so. They're headed towards some kind of meeting point and...oh, Rondo is in a mech (?) and he's wishing Roy good luck. Rondo's gonna die soon, I can feel it. (This is wrong, this is his last major contribution to the story, apparently he was legit)

It's another forest stage, and I have to say, this is INCREDIBLY easy. There are barely any enemies and they're the kind that goes down quickly. I don't have any regular machine gun ammo, but that's hardly a problem. The level is bizarrely designed but that's it. This section ends when Roy reaches the target point, but there's no enemy there immediately. A cutscene starts with a strange eye and we see Rondo back at base.

Oh, no, the enemy is out in force now. Rondo says...he'll go out to try to fight them as escape is impossible. Wait...was him being a spy a red herring? If so, that's pretty clever for this game. Except, Serena already went out. We see a mysterious and crazy goblin-looking man named Data before we see Serena get on her bike again.

OH CRAP. Now I get to play as my least liked member of the cast...on a hoverbike. Yes, it is a rail shooter section and yes it is terrible, but at least it's easy. The next cutscene is Serena in the hand of the mecha controlled by Data. That sounds about right. Data does the usual villain monologuing, nothing worth translating. And then a mysterious thing crashes onto his mech, destroying his arm but keeping Serena safe. If you guessed it's Rick in the super mech, you'd be right.

Now I get to use the super mech. If you thought it would be more powerful, you would be wrong. Maybe. This is like the fight against the mech you couldn't outright, except I'm just fast enough to do so. Only I have one attack, weird sword slash. It's slow and it doesn't seem powerful since you need to hit him a lot, my final count was 53 ammo left from 100. The real boon this mech has is that it regenerates. But it's a slow regeneration, not a good regeneration.

Cutscene, everyone is shocked that Rick is in the weird super mech. Their surprise is ruined by what seems to be some giant city. Rick and Serena stare at each other, before Rick has her join him on his mech. Okay. Now we're treated to a in-game view of the mech going up to the sky...and then flying forward. It's not another rail shooter section, it's just a cutscene. They talk, Serena seems to be thinking that Rick isn't quite who he was. Perhaps she's right.

There's another pterodactyl. I guess I'm glad the game isn't trying to build up these villains anymore, because this would have been really annoying with warning. Oh, wait, it's the same one, I guess it didn't die. They talk and he eventually goes off. I guess he's on our side now.

Now we're inside the floating city. Looks a lot like Corridor 7. Despite the fact that I'm not exactly a fan of this game, kudos for realizing this look isn't going to be very good for long, that game looked hideous. At first, this section is fun, enemies go down in a few hits, I can now actually enjoy the regeneration of the mech, and despite the door shooting at you, they're not too troublesome. Then this level turns into a complete maze. Oh, running out of ammo doesn't prevent you from attacking, you just don't shoot a sword slash.

Two area transitions later and I'm in a red hallway. I have ammo again. This must be a boss arena. Funny, the area doesn't look any different as far as the map is concerned. Long hallway to start or not. Then there's another mech. This must be the boss, because the game is trying to tell me this guy is big trouble by having a non-verbal introduce to him. That or the design is supposed to be familiar to me. (This game's mech designs all blend together) It's...Neku Sapento, the Sarian's Emperor's aide. So this is a very big deal.

The dialog implies that Neku is the leader of the imperial forces in this sector and that Elf has been protecting Rick from something Neku can do. Then Katsu reappears because why not? Now, we fight. Wait, I can't attack? I can't say that's too surprising, whatever, more dialog. I don't know what the details of this is, because I don't really care, but the cutscene shows Katsu getting teleported to some woman named Riru who looks like Sofia and I don't care either way.

This fight is, frankly, absolutely terrible. This guy only ever gets off you if you move around the columns in such a way that prevents him from hitting you, in a straight line he's way faster than you. 50 shots is no where near enough ammo to take him out, which means more dodging him waiting for the power of friendship to grant you the super gun.

This goes extremely poorly the first time. In a shocking bit of poor game design, constantly stopping the player to have paragraphs of dialog is a bad idea in a fight, it ruins my momentum and I didn't have much momentum the first time. I die. I have to do the whole thing over again, including the cutscenes. This is extremely annoying because it wasn't fun the first time around. The super gun is just a case of holding down the Z button to unleash a more powerful attack.

The second time is even worse than the first time. In the past the game was generous enough to bypass cutscenes, but because they're important to the flow of the battle, we gotta have them. So I do what any rational human being would do and cheat, because the game isn't being difficult, it's being a pain to control. Remember, you can't really turn and move at the same time very well. And this fight is awful anyway. Because it's doing what a 2000s game would do, but as a stopped text cutscene instead of having it be voiced in the middle of battle.

I take a video when I think I have invulnerability, but it turns out I didn't I manage to protect myself, but I manage to survive the encounter somehow. I get a new cutscene, and it seems like I won...only for me to get hit by more missiles. Is it the base exploding? No, he's invisible now. It's a two-phase boss and the second phase is invisible. This game is rapidly turning from a decent idea that didn't have the technology to execute it properly, to sheer WTF is wrong with you. (Side note, in the first video I took, there was about 3-4 minutes of gameplay in an 11 and a half minute video, it's worse in the second, this is about the gameplay ratio the whole game has)

Rather than talk about the end to the story, I'll just show you the video I took. (This cutscene is way to long for me to want to summarize, seriously) You can get the gist of it even if you don't speak the language. It's not that complex a story. I'll note my issues. I wasn't paying that much attention, but I think that the emperor's aide was implying that Elf lied to Rick, but the rest of it shows that's not true. Secondly, holy crap that final boss is cruel. Outside of bosses enemies in this game are a joke, and even the previous bosses don't prepare you for this one. It would have been bad if the game tried to prepare you for it, but out of nowhere it's just awful design.

Still, I'm the first English speaker I know of who has said he beat Elm Knight. I'm sure others have, especially Japanese players, but I'm the first one who seems to have documented it. I really wouldn't wish this upon someone else, this was a terrible experience.

This Session: 2 hours 55 minutes

Final Time: 11 hours

Elm Knight: Around and Around

Last time, Rick and Serena were in a mysterious village, asleep, but a strange noise woke them up. Uh...what am I looking at here? This is a cave? Eh? Serena says something about a light as I get the dialog on reloading. This, I note, is the first ground combat section I can actually use my weapons.

So my first foes are...floating black Buddhists? Eh? Why? Why is this game suddenly turning into one of those games with a weird enemy selection? We had shades of it last time with the giant frogs, but at least those were presumably the local wildlife. Are these the giant men? They don't take a lot of shots, but they shoot off homing shots themselves, which is just lovely. So another section of just running past things.
 

At the end of a semi-decent level is this altar. That random flippant remark wasn't too far off I see. I either missed taking some screenshots or that really is all they say and now I have to go back. Sigh. On their way out Serena wonders what that was all about, which is the first time I've felt like Serena as a character has had a reason to exist.

Outside, and more dialog, they talk about going back and then of enemies approaching. Then my mecha automatically moves and enemies appear. This isn't a rail shooting section, is it? Thankfully, no, instead I just can't turn, so I move sideways dodging enemy fire while shooting at two random mechs which popped up.

Rodia shows up, same mech as the last boss fight. She says that they won't be happy to see her...until it Serena makes her upset by wondering why they're still using an auntie like her as a pilot. Because Rodia is a vain character whose only character traits are evil and vain, this offends offends her worse than some political stances on social media. By internet rules of argument, she is as some might say, extremely butthurt. I die once, but I note after respawning that the game doesn't make me go through the dialog again. Blessed relief.

They go back in the caves again for some reason. Maybe I did miss some dialog at the end of the first time. The second time is exactly the same as the first time, except I didn't miss any dialog and they just said it's the same. My radar hasn't changed, either I need to shoot this or just walk around and hope something happens. My character seems to fall into a hole only for a cutscene to start.

They found something strange in the ground, they tripped over it. Rick wakes his foot over it and a strange sound that doesn't sound that strange to me happens.

It's a flying robot. Why this is in the weird Buddhist caves is probably not worth thinking about. Rick thinks that it didn't belong to the imperial army. Considering the cutesy design the thing has, I bet that's likely. It doesn't talk, which is good, so they just wonder about it before taking it back with them.

Teleporting back to the mech, we get a black screen and more dialog. I assume some glitch happened while taking screenshots, but it turns out this is how it's supposed to look. The conversation is Rick telling Sami that the machine they found will be riding with them as they head back to Roy and the others.

Now we get a pure black screen with nothing...and Roy sneezes. Roy and Sofia are wondering about Rick and Serena. The point it seems, is to make a joke about Roy and Rick sneezing at the same time, before switching over to the leader of the subjugation force. This leads to a scene where the evil leader is getting annoyed by a cute cat. I get the joke, but since you have to fight against the story to play the game, it's not funny enough to have to spend the time on.

Rick is in a desert now, and Sofia calls them up. You know, checking that they're still alive and all that, before informing them that there are more enemies. This area has some nice music, but it's just a big open area where it's not even clear that you can go past it for a moment. When it is, it's by far the easiest area yet.

This leads into an area that appears to be a boss arena at first, until it turns out to be a village. The village we're looking for or another one? Then three new mechs pop up. They're lead by someone named Kiruno, and because we can have violence without a conversation, he asks what Rick is doing here. Rick gives him the short version of the rebel army's history, which I hope is a joke. Kiruno is more concerned that Rick is in an imperial mech. Didn't realize that was important, but fair enough. Rick is knocked unconscious somehow.

Apparently Kiruno is debating over which of the two forces to support, as they seem to have already been working with the imperials. Because he was woken up to discuss this, with more dialog involving the whole thing, then sent back to sleep. Only for Sami to wake him up because a girl is in front of him. This seems to have ticked off Kiruno, who gets on Rick and Sami's case. Before the conversation ends, Rick notices that the girl, whose name is Mina, I guess, might have some kind of powers that would result in her getting killed by the empire.

Boss fight, the imperial guy who is at this base. There's a joke about them staring each other down, and him being dead silent. Then he was just dead. My comment about this battle is that it takes place in an open arena and so long as I sidestep and shoot bullets at him, he won't survive.

Kiruno is in front, Mina on the right, no idea who is on the left and in back.

As I approach the way out, Sami helpfully informs me that there's something interesting to the south. It's the same name that keeps popping up in this game. Rando Maba. I say name, but I've been ignoring it on the simple grounds that it seems like it's some mechanical thing I don't understand. Better go down there.

After changing a few areas, Sami helpfully informs me that my radar is useless down here. I advance a little bit further and suddenly Rick says they should use silent mode. I'm guessing this is supposed to work, but I guess there are mines so the whole thing seems completely pointless. You walk a few steps, get hurt, Sami screams, I walk again, repeat until I finally make it through to a town. Which still has a mine there.

This is the leader of the subjugation force, whose name is Katsu apparently. He does the usual villain talk, I'll kill you and similar sentiments. Only, he has a flying platform, which is what the "town" I saw earlier was. Why this was needed is beyond me.

This fight is boring, he just charges at you and stabs you. I don't even know if I won it or not, but you just run backwards and shoot at him. He's so fast there's not that much point to running away, and turning at the moment is garbage, it isn't registering half my turn commands, which is just great. Eventually, explosions happen and I'm not sure who died.

The story indicates this might not mean much. Because Rick's mech is pretty badly damaged and Katsu's isn't. (I guess Serena got off the mech, not that I care what happens to her one way or another) Suddenly, something explodes on Rick's mech, and the reaction both have mean this wasn't supposed to happen. Sami is apparently going to activate the self-destruct to destroy Katsu's mech too now that he's disabled it, and the platform is going back down to the ground.

I'm wondering how this will advance. Elf says something about a magic user in the valley...and then suddenly the little droid they picked up earlier activates. It calls itself Nero. It's a very cheerful robot, responding with blissful ignorance to all of Rick's confusion and seeming distaste for the machine. I get this is supposed to add in comic relief, but it's just annoying me. It offers to fly Rick there, which isn't shown, but it is implied it's scary.

Another cave. This one is filled with baby ghosts. They aren't hurting me. Rather than reading into this, since I highly doubt a Japanese game would have this kind of symbolism, I'm just going to take advantage of this niceness. Oh, they have me trapped. Oh, crap. I guess I'll have to knife...and I'm dead.

Now I'm in another forest. Sami is still alive? What is going on here? They're all the same as Katsu, and they don't seem to die. So this is just what the game is going with? Fair enough, it's not like the game ever cared about being a game and I wasn't expecting it.

The screen has a weird effect going on, showing the console like when you point a camera at the screen it's recording to. Then a hand pops in...and it resets to the start of the cave. Okay, don't fight the baby ghosts. I feel like if this were supposed to be anti-abortion imagery it wouldn't be like this. Anyway, just avoid them, hardly unusual for this game.

And now things shift to Sofia, Serena and Roy. Kiruno has told them that Rick saved them and is now dead/missing thanks to Katsu's trap. At least in this area, it seems that the imperial power is failing. So, they're going to go after Rick since he's missing. The game makes a big deal about how Serena wants to go, as if there was ever any doubt of that.

After a longer time than I would have liked, I reach the other side, a forest in the valley. Basically the same as previous levels, only this time the enemy are trees. Some which have no leaves and can be killed, and others with leaves that can't be killed, but you have to knife to get to move. It's really lame. Eventually, I reach a building and another cutscene starts.

It's a really old building according to the cutscene, I think there's a joke I don't get, which is true of the entire game, really, but it seems more obvious here. The cutscene continues with Roy and Kiruno finding Rick's damaged mech. They wonder what could do such a thing until Sami speaks. Yes, Sami isn't dead, in as much as robots can be dead. Also, he introduces himself as still being alive by saying "excuse me", which I find hilarious. Sami sort of explains where Rick went, and the three are going to go after him, but not before telling Serena that Rick is alive.

Will next time be the end? I hope so. Parts of this were actually clever, but I wouldn't read too much into that. Gameplay is getting quite predictable. In the rare event I need to fight, it just involves sidestepping and holding the fire button down. Story is less predictable, but not worth going into depth on. How this has been just 8 hours is beyond me.

This Session: 2 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours 05 minutes

Elm Knight: Nightmare Street

Upon loading up this session I get this message. Just this message, nothing before or after. It doesn't tell me where to go, it just tells me to go somewhere for his older brother's interview. I forget if there was anything at the end of the last session, though where I have to go is probably to Sofia. It's nice that they included a recap mechanic, but shouldn't said recap mechanic tell you what it is you're doing rather than just hoping you can infer it?

Is this game kidding me? Roy and Sofia are having a fiery argument...and the game is playing the goofy music. They're arguing about the goal of the rebel army. Sofia says something about Roy being her father's enemy and that's about as far as I got before the walls of text I don't feel like translating started up. What happened to Rondo? Nothing, he's still there, and Rick even knows he's a spy. Right, who else should I check?

Cook? Nothing. Serena? She threatens Rick with a shotgun and they have a conversation. Nothing terribly interesting, she just questions if Rick is truly part of the rebels, as if he wasn't. Playing around with the game's movement is more interesting. It isn't truly free as I thought, but movement is done in half-steps, which comes off as a nice compromise to me. More talking and a realization as Rick talks to Cam over some strange.

The more you look at this, the worse it gets, probably why it only appears on-screen for 15 seconds or so.

These slice of life sections, in addition to feeling odd to the game in general, feel like they're so completely alien to everything I understand about mecha media that this has to be an intentional artistic choice. If you take live-action, anime or manga, the limiting factor with mecha is money and man hours. You want to have as much action as you can, but you're limited in that, since animating or drawing mecha requires more time than people. So you draw more talking to save the budget for the nicer scenes.

But games have no such restriction. In fact, it's easier to have more combat than it is to make a dialog scene. In fact, the reverse is true, once a mecha is drawn or animated, that's it, you can have one or a trillion, it doesn't matter. Every time you add in a new talking sequence, however, you need to code in a new one, and while you can reuse old sprites, I'm not seeing that at all here. A lot of characters have new animations in their dialog scenes. They are literally spending effort doing the opposite of what most other medias would do as a last ditch effort to save money.

I go around to talking to people a second time, noting that this will possibly result in a completely random conversation in a completely random location. Serena has something interesting to say, apparently the rebels dislike magic users, in context of Roy being a magic user. But the usual conversation continues. I don't care about this at all. Even in the game context that exposing the real spy might be a bad idea, or even with the possibility of Rick actually being a spy, it's not like I care what happens one way or another. Third time, nothing. Fourth time. Oh, good, something's wrong. And I'm not just talking about getting trapped by three NPCs, nothing is happening.

Once again the cook turns out to be the answer. Why must I continually return to this chef despite no indication of anything of value coming from her? Is it just because she's likely the last place anyone would go, thus ensuring they aren't missing anything? Immediately after exiting the cook's place am I greeted by a cutscene. I'm going to point out again that I'm only reading what's happening in this long dialog after the fact.

Another briefing. It's a mission for Rick. Rick is surprised. Cam wants to go to his village and the rebel army will accompany him there. Rick doesn't like this plan, he thinks they'll be eaten. Sofia basically ignores this and explains how Rando intends to get us there. (Probably through the deepest and largest concentration of enemies on the planet) Rick is anxious about something and Sofia's continued attempts at dismissing them are annoying him. He even tries to bring in his brother in his favor. Roy understands, but thinks the risks are worth the potential reward.

This doesn't convince Rick, and he's even trying to get Doug on his side, but he doesn't care that much. Sofia implies that this is an act on Doug's part, he's a bit scared too. This seems to convince Rick. He does ask to speak to Roy after the breathing. Apparently on the subject of Rondo. I guess I understand why they aren't trying to expose him right away, but I doubt there's ever going to be a good time to do so. It's just more pondering of things. Now, the battlefield, but first more talking, to Sofia on a car with Cam in the back. I can see now this is basically explaining the troubles up ahead, but man, this game overplays it's hand when it comes to building up enemies.

Now, to play things again. I don't know what the contents of the cutscene were exactly, but judging by what I picked up quickly glancing over it, something is wrong with Cam. (Which is technically right, I guess) The enemy here is a floating blimp mine, get next to them then run away and they harmlessly explode. A few rounds also works well. Tricky, but interesting. I like the autumnal vibe this area has.

Next area, and...giant frog men? They're slow and only ever really a threat if they get close, which is becoming a problem thanks to me running low on ammo. At least I'm saving up the missiles for the serious foes. It's all entertaining, but I can't help but wonder if that's just because it's in comparison to how much story there is that anything feels great.

I reach a river and a cutscene starts. Lots of more talking. Then they decide that this place is safe and to just sit down. More talking, between Rick and Sofia. I'm not putting in that much effort, but they say it's an unbelievable place a lot. Then Sofia suddenly spots something.

It's a strange giant amoeba attacks. Boss fight? It's something of a lame PvP battle, both of us are strafing and just spamming attacks at the other. Or it would be if the first time I get attacked I don't get another wall of text. Seriously? After killing it, I've had my fun, time for fifty more minutes of dialog.

Back to regular mechas. I found something of an exploit, use afterburner mode, jump around a lot and wow, they can't hit you that much. It feels like something I shouldn't be able to do. Yet it is. This leads to another long and tedious conversation. Or a warning about an enemy, a pterodactyl named Maunto. A talking pterodactyl or "dragon" as the game keeps insisting. Apparently he hates humans because they use him as a machine, so he'll fight against them. Trying isn't worth it anymore, Rick is introducing himself to a talking pterodactyl who introduces himself back.

Now I'm fighting him. Ooookay. This guy's tough because he has the simple trick of jumping up and down, so you can't hit him all the time and you have to shoot missiles in such a way that they hit him without tracking. I'm getting a nasty feeling about this. Anyway, more dialog, from the talking pterodactyl. The dying talking pterodactyl. There seems to be something about a promise to the pterodactyl to do something once they reach the giant village.

Another fighting section? I'm glad the game remembered it was supposed to be a game. Oh, that thing I thought was an exploit? Required to survive this section. I think it was Sofia here, and Serena. I skipped getting any pictures of the fighting here, I was mostly just bored with it all. Now there's a cutscene of a woman showering? WHY!? The game is kind enough to introduce us to her, Rodia Bahamu. She's the second in command of the subjugation force. Also, really vain apparently.

Okay, so Rodia is talking to Katsu, the leader of the subjugation force. He basically tells her where they were detected and to go after them. Their relationship is not a happy one, the two of them are at odds for reasons I don't know about.

That was random. I can explore again...and more dialog. More or less just saying the empire has shown up. So they'll be splitting up, but I guess Serena got lost or something, because we're worried about Serena. Yippee. No enemies or anything in this area. Just a long walk. I eventually reach another area, this time filled with snow. Incidentally, ammo is recharging between stages for some reason. More dialog.

Serena is just here. I'm just walking around to advance the plot, not even fighting. Serena's butthurt because other people think she's a weak girl. Rick comforts her and she more or less recovers from it. I'm glad we had this conversation.

Back to my control. I've just now realized I'm going to be staring at snow. Yippee. I can barely see the target on the mini-map. Why am I not surprised? Bullets, even missiles bounce off the walls and the enemies are what I wanna call VTOLs, but are probably just helicopters with the rotors in the back. The whole respawning mechanic isn't as generous as a first assumed, but between that and the brilliant strategy of running away, I'm still coming out ahead easily.

At the end, they arrive at what I assume is a boss fight, because my view turns to fire, but is instead a village. Okay. Guess this is the giant village. Rick zooms in on a cave, but I'm not sure if that's something they'll be dealing with tomorrow or not, because the next scene is in a building, asleep in their own beds.

I'm stopping here. It's not logical, but it's where I'm stopping. I don't know how much more of this I'm willing to take. The gameplay is losing its luster, while the story is so bland that it's continued importance is bordering on the offensive. Though I note at least, according to the in-game save system, since I started this I've jumped from 6 to 13, which should be good. (It's not a indicator of how many saves I've made, I'm primarily using save states)

This Session: 2 hours 15 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours 05 minutes

Ancipital (1984)

Name:Ancipital
Number:211
Year:1984
Publisher:Llamasoft
Developer:Llamasoft
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes
Won:No (85W/68L)

I can't believe I haven't actually covered a Llamasoft game before, but I guess there just hasn't been much for me to talk about. Back when I did the one Intellivision Star Wars game I did, I'm sure I mentioned Attack of the Mutant Camels as a counterpoint for the utterly awful design of that game. Llamasoft is Jeff Minter, unsung hero of the early years of gaming, he made the best home computer knock-offs of arcade games, something we don't appreciate all that much today.

Ancipital is a weird game. If there's a story to it, it doesn't matter. You're a goat man controlled by the joystick. You move along a wall as you wish, and if you press the "up" direction on the joystick, you change the orientation of gravity. Hold down the fire button and then "left" or "right" and you switch to those walls. This changes depending on where you are on the screen. In theory, you can be on any side of the screen you wish. In practice, if you land "sideways" the wrong way you die. The fire button shoots "up" as well, but if you move left or right it goes at an angle. Each screen is on a time limit, if it runs out, you die, but so long as you have lives you continue on.

From this simple but weird concept, you'd imagine the game would be quite mundane and boring. It isn't, at least at first. It's another one of those games where the gimmick is there's always a gimmick on one screen. To start off with, you get a room filled with fruit. There are green apples you're probably not supposed to touch and eaten apples you definitely shouldn't touch. The objective seems to be to take a jumping diamond, then shoot all the green apples into eaten ones. Finishing an objective, which you at least know, causes one of the walls to turn into a caution tape wall, crash into it and change rooms. Hope you change rooms, anyway.

No, this isn't some strange anti-piracy measure...I think, it's another screen. Now you shoot cassettes out at floppy disks shot out by floating skulls. I think you're supposed to grab the floppies after shooting them once, but I can't be too sure. This isn't a game you understand, it's a game where you're along for the ride and hope you got it right.

Every single room changes, including down to how many shots you can get off at once. Though this seems tied into how many objects are on-screen. Sometimes you avoid certain enemies and shoot others, sometimes it's pure luck where you have to shoot. Then I get stuck in a room involving bombs. As in I manage to fulfill the conditions to move rooms, but not to open another room. How unfortunate that this is a thing. As a result it's easy to accidentally screw yourself over by allowing yourself to move to another room before you activate any exit out of the room.

I reach another room after restarting. Good. Floating heads shoot out jeans you have to burn with giant lighters. This one's difficult to deal with, because there are a ton of enemy objects on-screen. It's at this point that the game loses a bit of its magic, because the tricks become somewhat obvious. You shoot the enemy shots, which causes one of the two objects to shift into something you need, or you wait for the enemy shot to turn into something you need. Repeat a couple of different ways to unlock all the doors you need.

Okay, I'm not winning this even in the sense that it's possible to win this. Time to cheat. This isn't necessarily the boon you think it is. The true difficulty lies in making it through all the stages. Since being able to leave a stage is more common than opening up a new pathway, and the second you leave a stage you can't open any more pathways there.

But as I go through further areas, I can't help but feel like I understand what I'm doing any better. Nor does looking at a video reveal anything more to me. Every time I advance or see someone else advancing, I don't understand it more, it just seems like it was something that happened. There's certainly something there, but it's far too esoteric and strange for even me to comprehend.

One particular stage sticks out at this point. Inca 1. You shoot llamas into nothing. What you're supposed to do, as far as I can tell, is shoot a couple out, wait for this to turn into a weird ball. Then wait for it to turn into a purple ball and then shoot it, which should activate a passageway on the other side. At least that worked for the one passageway I opened, I'll never know if that's true of the others.

I can't imagine how a walkthrough of this would work, because to get anywhere you'd need to make yourself a walkthrough. You'd get stuff like "Shoot left wall" with "Shoot green enemy (Maybe?)" and you'd never know after multiple attempts if that's right or just a bizarre coincidence. And by the point you have to do it this way it's just not that fun to me.

Weapons:
Technically impressive, considering on some stages you have instead of a regular weird weapon, you get an exploding weird weapon. But this is just part of the every stage is a puzzle bit. 1/10

Enemies:
What amounts to infinitely respawning enemies which shoot other enemies infinitely...I think. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None?

Levels:
Basically 100 variations of shooting at infinitely respawning enemies. Interesting, but I found it long in the tooth. 4/10

Player Agency:
Mostly fine for what it's trying to do, shooting up from the ground is something I dislike on principle to begin with. I do dislike how touching the "walls", that is "left" or "right" from where you're standing on kills you, when you can leave a stage this makes getting on a wall that can be left annoying, especially since you almost always can leave the room before the fourth or third exit is unlocked. 4/10

Interactivity:
It kind of does and kind of doesn't have any. 1/10

Atmosphere:
It's weird, bordering on non-sensical. Weird should invoke a place that doesn't seem right, not someone throwing things at a wall until they stick. 2/10

Graphics:
A selection of simple objects and walls. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Simple sound effects and a basic background drumming track. 1/10

And that's 16.

This was never really going to rate highly, considering this is a weird piece of psychedelia masquerading as a game. To a certain degree this is playing the card of "lol, random", but enough of this seems competent that this is merely a consequence of having to fill 100 rooms. Whether anyone is willing to see those 100 rooms is another question entirely.