Steambot Chronicles is quite the game. If you can manage to make it past the title screen (yes, it's THAT bad) then you're in for a real gem of a game. And considering you can pick it up used for $7.99 and new for $9.99, you really can't go wrong, can you?
So, Steambot Chornicles. It seems to me, considering the names of all the characters, that the developers who made this game must have been on the brink of starvation while working on it. Vanilla, Coriander, Basil, Marjoram, Savory, Fennel, Mallow...all the character's names are food-related in some form or another. The game is pretty typical RPG fare (wake up on a beach, amnesia, pretty girl finds you, etc.) and I was convinced it would stay typical the whole way through the game based off of the first five minutes. God, was I ever wrong. From the very first Mech Battle you fight, it's pretty obvious this game is anything but typical.
Utilizing what is quite possibly the most intuitive control scheme I have ever seen, Steambot Chronicles manages to make up for its weak story by having brilliant game mechanics everywhere else. Remember those big, yellow battery-powered trucks we all thought were the shit when we were four, and they had the one stick on each side you pushed forward to go forward, or put one forward and the other back to turn? That's precisely how SBC works, using the two analog sticks. It's quite frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes natural. By far, though, my favorite part of the game was customizing my mech with all the different weapons and parts scattered throughout the game, even though there are a couple of combinations of parts that are absolutely broken. One frustrating thing when on the field is that your mech has a fuel tank that slowly gets drained as you move around, although I never saw what happened if it completely emptied because I obsessively filled it every chance I got (which costs money). There are also a couple of situations early on where the enemies take what feel like cheap shots to win, and for the first few hours I saw the Game Over screen a few more times than I'm accustomed to in an RPG, and most of it was because I was still getting used to the controls.
There's also a dating sim side to the game, where you can flirt with, date, and eventually fuck (no joke!) one of three girls in the game. It starts out pretty innocently with selecting the right choices in conversations and giving them presents, then gets a little more interesting once you buy your own place and invite the girl over, then becomes hot and heavy when you ask her to clean your ears and if she wants some “hot cocoa.” Ok, so it seems like no big deal, but believe me, when you play it you'll see just how heavily implied the sex is. And considering how sexy one of the three characters is (me and Remy disagree on which one), this is completely ok with me. How many games rated T actually let you get laid?
This game claims to be a “sandbox” game. Don't let it fool you. The “sandbox” part translates to “oh, after this one part you can pretty much do what you want but there's really not much TO do, so just go and finish the story.” The cities simply feel too small to be a sandbox, there's too many loading screens inside the cities to make them worth exploring, the game is very limiting in what you can do so there's not as much freedom like there is in other sandbox games, and there's absolutely no incentive to abandon the main quest except for maybe one or two side quests that give you ridiculously overpowered weapons for your mech. As for being able to be good or evil, it really just comes down to one choice when a bad guy asks you “Will you join us?” and you say yes or no. Your previous choices have absolutely no bearing over it, because I had been playing the Good Samaritan up until that point and I still had the option to join the bad guys! I would have liked to see this side of the game expanded upon more. Games like Knights of the Old Republic really gave us the freedom to be good or evil, and actually gave us moral choices that affected the outcome of the game, and this game tried really hard to emulate that but simply didn't execute it properly. Which is a shame, really, because of what it could have been.
Oh, I forgot to mention that in the story, you join a band and play instruments via a very simple rhythm game mechanic. However, most of the songs suck with the exception of the last one, and outside of the required concerts in the story there's no reason to do it because you can make better money doing more productive and more enjoyable things. A neat idea, however it feels like it was used more as a gimmick. This is one of the things I'd like to see improved on the most if they make a SBC 2.
All in all, SBC was a highly enjoyable game at a more than reasonable price. You have absolutely no reason to not go and buy it right now. What are you waiting for? GO GO GO GO.
Final score breakdown:
Story: 6/10
Graphics: 7.5/10
Sound/Music: 7/10
Controls: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Final score: 7.5/10
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