A.G.E: Won

I'm really sure what taking the back route from the church is going to actually accomplish as far as breaking this Saar guy out of prison, but I start off doing it anyway. I kill some wildlife, shoot another target blocking my path, and find another kind of enemy. Humanoid, some kind of mercenary. He drops a grenade.

Then I end up here, in this spinning Myst device in which I have to do...something. Oh, I just shoot four "drawbridges" to get down. Every time you want to pass it. Past this is another humanoid, but before I determine if it's friendly or hostile, I just randomly die. I guess he shot me. He's a touch little bugger, or maybe attack power determines a heck of a lot more than I'd thought. I kill him, walk past him...and die again. I guess I'm not going this way yet. Fine, frontal assault works for me.

I think to talk to the priest outside the church again. He upgrades my laser to either Laser B or A, the font in this game isn't clear. I'm going to wager B, but man, this game is going a heck of a lot faster than the original. When I walk back and see I have no path back, so I need to figure out what the problem is. A mine? An invisible laser field? This is tricky, because I don't see anything, but it pretty clearly happens at a set point. Ah, don't tell me I needed something I dropped back in town to clear up space.

I figure out that it's not something invisible, the things on the side are really faster crushers. So fast I couldn't get a shot of them moving. It's not a question of moving faster or of having a higher powered shield. Shooting it is also out of the question, as I'm operating on the assumption that anything in this game I can't destroy with two grenades simply cannot be destroyed. Which means...I have to reload. Nuts! I have one more idea before replaying an entire game session, what if I have to trick the enemy into the trap? YES!

A couple more enemies, and another type of dispenser, this one gives a medikit, basically just a portable full service. Then I find a strange item, and try to pick it up. Uh-oh, my inventory is full, so I have to drop it. Uh-oh, the game is screeching at me when I try to drop it and says my inventory is full. I know that, that's why I'm dropping it! Eventually I manage to drop it, and then walk past it so I can drop something else, only to find out it was a mine...and I just set it...and it dealt 19000 damage. Which, no matter how you slice it, kills me.

That building, oddly enough, is just decoration, most buildings in this game are.

Second time, I use up some grenades, since between a grenade and a mine, I suspect the mine is more powerful. I can afford to drag guys back towards mine. I also discover that the moving mines can be stopped, simply by hitting them with the stunner. I wonder if I'm actually going to need the Laser A at any point? My wondering stops when I encounter another inflatable barrier. There's no getting past it this time, I have to do the last session again. Sigh...That's basically the entire game outside of the tutorial. Damn it.

While on my way through the Teknos factory again, I realize that I wasn't going through the guards properly. I should have been using the Teknos pass on them. Oh, well. The Teknos factory is actually somewhat buggy, it's not clear what the hotspot to enter it is, and you can actually go through the walls. The last game gave me a deathly fear of touching anything, since that drains health, but here you can touch things without trouble. Just don't get shot. I also realize the monk on the island tells me he can't help me find my fiancee. Did the translator forget to mention my character is some kind of Valerian-style agent or am I not a secret agent at all and they just goofed?

The area past the inflatable barrier is full of enemies, five, which is a lot for this game. Meaning a trip back to a service station. I really hope that other formec isn't a straight upgrade, because I'll be a bit annoyed if that's true. After that group of enemies is another, larger group of enemies. If it sounds like I'm glossing over combat, well, there isn't much to gloss over. Moreso than other games, Galactic Empire is a lot of backing up and shooting, with added trips to a healing station because you technically can't carry that much ammo.

The mouth movements of a calm and rational governor.

I just break my way past a group of gremlins, it would take too long to fight them directly...and it's the governor's mansion. Try not to think of the geography of what I've described here and the poor relations between the church and the governor. Yeah, he confirms that Saar is in his prison. He's not on my side anymore, because I'm plotting with Massadeh to get him a bomb, I guess that's the guy who asked for the Gravtik Bomb. He tries to gas me, and then offers me a proposition I cannot refuse. He'll free Saar and give me the bomb, but he wants me to blow up Massadeh's bunker with it. Since this doesn't give him any leverage over me, he tells me his police have found my friend/fiancee. If I'm given a choice, I'm definitely not going with Konrad.

Yeah, but it feels like I had to make a deal with the devil to do it, which I suspect you wouldn't appreciate.

This takes me to inside the prison. Because I was low on supplies, I reloaded, and found out that there's a service station off the path. Since most of the area off the path is impassible, I think it's water, I didn't realize. I didn't actually need to worry about this, since after the conversation confirming that Saar is out, the both of us are sent directly to the church. It's still a good thing I recharged, because I'm sent back to the desert to get the DARC. Oh, and it's right next to the monk and his pet crabs, who are alive again and attack me. Sigh...He tells me not to trust Konrad, yeah, I know.

This doesn't mean I'm sent back, instead, the Technosector is east of the monk. Okay. It's basically the same area I was in when I first came to the island, only there's a central tower I can enter now. This is different than the usual gameplay, instead of shooting your way through, you're forced to sneak past enemies, then once you're at the obvious end, using the DARC, which is an item not a weapon, to deactivate the head robot. Now, back to Shade, where I converse with the Teknopopess, I give her the DARC, she gives me the Gravtik Bomb, off to Massadeh.

This is straight-up the coolest shot of the game.

There's a fancy animation to go along with it, and now I'm at the fortress. NPCs aren't shooting me, which is a good sign. I did only have one pass, which is used up after one passageway. Luckily, another NPC was willing to give me a pass in exchange for an air compressor. There are tents, which are traps, activate one, and an enemy pops out. I don't have a way of healing, or more importantly, recharging ammo, so I'll let them live.

Then there's a quicksand arena full of monsters which are hard to hit, so the trick here isn't to have attack at max, but shield at max. They trick you into thinking you can fight by dropping two grenades. Past a robot and another passageway, I find a service station. Whew. Now what? Toxic gas, finally, a use for the anti-gas screen; Another, faster spinning room where you shoot pillars, and then two robots, one kind of friendly, the other berzerk. The friendly one warns me about a distributor which has a questionaire, and a weapon thief.

That weapon thief? Not optional, it's some sort of machine. He takes all your weapons. Rather than work through this, I try to just make it past him. This isn't totally unworkable, with shields at maximum, I can tank most hits without any damage, the big problem is a tricky little puzzle, which only gives you optional items, which drains health on the wrong choice. It was green, I think there was supposed to be some trouble, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what the way to figure it out was. Not much point, I think. Until I reach another passageway, I don't have a third key, and the guard talks about how he isn't going to let me through until I give him a medikit, which I used back in the factory. I reload, hoping I can trick my way past the weapon thief, no dice.

Probably because the building is on fire!

Instead, I just missed a lot of stuff. There's another weapon, a spherogel, kind of crap, but I don't have anything right now, another medikit, and in an animal enclosure, the third key. I didn't even notice that, since I was just rushing on by. I also notice the creatures I'm moving past are called aliens. That's a bit non-descriptive, don't you think? Aha, the final building...and I shouldn't have entered that, it's set me on fire. The one freaking time they play with internal temperature, it's to set me on fire.

The answer is, either you keep the earlier medikit, or you just kill the guy who demands one. Next, Saar astrally projects to tell us there are mines in the next area. Mines in this game would be a lot harder if I couldn't disable them easily. There's another pass in the maze, and after is a service station. Finally. This leads to a section which wouldn't be notable, except I get to use the mine on a robot guard, and I pick up a "teleport magnet", whatever that is.

This is by far the most annoying puzzle in the game.

This leads into something tricky. Two crushers, one after another. It takes many attempts, many views of the game over messages which do not particularly help the view that the French are cowards, but eventually I figure out that you're probably supposed to be walking behind the crushers with the teleport magnet activated. Probably. Saying this game still has issues with collision is understating things. Eventually, what I actually figure out is that you're supposed to bait out the crushers, back up, then shoot them with the spherogel. That's...better. You can't do it while it's stationary, because that would be too easy. I'm not really sure this is the answer either, the game still feels like it's breaking.

More robots, another pillar thing, which is slowly but surely draining my ammo reserves. The spherogel is not a weapon which conserves ammo. At this point, the game tries to trick me by throwing a monster disguised as my friend/fiancee at me. Fortunately, there are plenty of mines around to make up for the ones I've used. Over some water, where something is shooting at me...

...and now for a stretch before a spaceship. Other spaceships are shooting at me. Bizarre. This is the final stretch. The big problem aren't the ships, they attack once and fly away, instead, the guards have some kind of super cannon which shreds my shields. Some clever placement of mines, and a few tries, and I'm through. Next, I have to activate the Gravitik Bomb on the ship. This takes me a while to figure out, you drop it under the center section.

So here's a nice picture and five lines of text.

The game ends, and you get a series of text crawls saying that Dale is back on the ship, Konrad will remain governor, and I've been promoted to Major. I would have expected if I had a choice that Konrad would have been the worse option, but the choice is out of my hands. It's a bit disappointing, frankly, getting just an ending about the inevitability of corruption.

This Session: 4 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 8 hours 10 minutes