Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

I was, at first, planning to do this one as part of a Steam Pack, but then I discovered I had too much to say about it, so here goes: Full article!

And that's approximately 0.02% of the entire selection of free games.

Steam houses all kinds of free games: There’s the basic free games, mostly short experiences that one made available for all to play without spending a dime, but there are bigger games in that category sometimes. There’s all the free-to-play stuff, which can be easily avoided. Then there's Early Access, with some games that are free, others that you'd pay for, but the result is the same: The developers want a base of players to test the game and report anything that has to be changed. They’re like betas open to the public.

From this page. And if you calculate...
Yep, more than 14 times the demanded amount.

Today’s game is… technically none of these. It’s free for a reason: It was funded on Kickstarter and its developers aren’t interested in making money off the first two chapters of this story they wanted to tell. (There IS a third chapter, titled Liberation Day, and it’s not free, but I will keep my focus today on the first two). Indie developer Love In Space set up a crowdfunding campaign for the story they desired to tell, and managed to not only gather the funds, they actually collected 14 times their original goal and then some. This is a story people wanted to see made, and they delivered. And so, this game was released by Sekai Project on July 2^nd, 2014.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I won’t be critical towards it. One of the great things about Steam is how developers can simply release an update of their game as soon as said update is ready. This is one of the cases where I actually hope my criticism is constructive to the development team at Love In Space, and that they take it into account if they are to update the game in the future. Mind you, I have technical criticism as well as story-based criticism, but only the former really matters - I acknowledge that any of my gripes about the story are my problem only, as it is the story Love In Space wanted to tell. Also, to be clear, the free game on Steam includes the first and second games in the trilogy, titled “Sunrider: First Arrival” and “Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius” respectively. The free game on Steam has the name of the latter, but includes the former.

The Sunrider series takes place in a world where humanity has become the dominant species in the galaxy. An enemy faction known as PACT has risen and the conflict between that group and the various planets’ governments has spiraled into a war. PACT has taken control of many planets in its wake, and enslaved their inhabitants to use as workers and soldiers. In return, an Alliance has formed among the free worlds to fight the threat, but the war is far from over.

The Sunrider, in all its Kickstarted glory.

He DOES look only 16!

Our hero is a young up-and-coming captain by the name of Kayto Shields (A Japanese-sounding name + English family name? Captain when he looks barely 16? ♪♫Ga-ry-Stu…♪♫), from the main capital of Planet Cera. He is being assigned a ship to pilot, the Sunrider. His second-in-command and childhood friend, Ava Crescentia, is very serious in her task and presents the ship as well as its various features. Unfortunately, as they were preparing for a test drive, the space station is attacked by PACT, which unleashes the big guns: A gigantic warship with a large cannon that decimates the entire army and blasts the capital of Cera to smithereens from space. The Sunrider survives, but has to flee.

Ava is the by-the-book, serious girl. Also the childhood friend.
The romance visual novel stereotypes are getting so clear!

It encounters the PACT troops once more, but is saved in time by a mecha piloted by Asaga Oakrun, a heroic woman who comes to their help and decides to join the team afterwards, helping the Sunrider with her giant robot’s own arsenal of weapons. Hey, what else can I say: Chicks dig giant robots.

Shall I move around, or shall I attack?

Asaga brings the Sunrider and its crew to a nearby planet where the ship is repaired by a pale blue-haired girl who also owns a bakery: Chigara Ashada. She apparently operates both! Hey, why not. It’s practically mundane compared to the later revelations in the game(s). Chigara also happens to be a mecha pilot as well, though she specializes more in debuffs and repairs (understand: HP healing). And from there on, the adventure continues, with plenty of side-quests, missions with special requirements, and more allies joining the fight.

And now, from a single ship, we're now three.
Soon we'll be four, five, six.
We are building our own mini-army!

Like I said, this is a full game, so there’s so much more to see. What I’ve described only corresponds to, what, the first hour of gameplay? There’s a lot more. The story takes twists and turns, it feels like an anime. Actually, come to think of it, this series seems to pay homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion in many aspects… and that’s, unfortunately, an anime series I never saw, though I’m aware of the basics. I was more of a Megas XLR guy, you know? I didn’t grow up watching girls and guys in skin-tight suits in mechas fighting demons, I was watching a fat guy in a robot with a car for a head smashing all of his buttons to destroy whatever alien entity has stepped in his neighborhood. Pilot the robot with your mind? Not good enough! Give me buttons. Buttons, buttons, buttons. Buttons! More buttons!

BUUUUUUUUUUUUTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS!

…I should stop there now.

As for why this concept got so popular on Kickstarter, it’s because this is something that was never done before: A combination of a visual novel and a tactical RPG/strategy game. Most visual novels incorporate puzzles instead (just think of Hotel Dusk: Room 215, or the Ace Attorney franchise). This combination, however? Not that I can remember. Some other games come close, but put far more focus on one or the other.

Also gotta give it to them, the CGI models are pretty
awesome.

The strategy aspect is done quite well: Each character has a finite amount of "action points" to use each turn, and every action costs points (anywhere from 20 to a hundred). Each ship on your side has its own abilities, and you need to learn to use every ability to get the upper hand in battle, even as allies join and you control 6 or 7 ships (if you can call a mecha a ship). Most battles pit you against a mini-army, and some fights see the enemies summon more troops as the turns go. Many fights have a main ship surrounded by underlings, so you can either cut to the chase and kill the boss, or kill as many underlings as you can – at the end of a battle, you make money for each unit destroyed. Remaining units will surrender if you kill their boss, and you won’t get money from those. The amount needed to repair the ships is also deducted from that total at the end of the battle.

Upgrades are the key to victory! As always.

Outside of battles, you can upgrade every ship in your team, using the money earned from battles. You can decrease the amount of points needed to activate attacks or effects, which may become vital as the enemies get tougher. You also gain command points with each fight, and those can be used to send special commands during future encounters, commands that may help you in destroying enemy ships. There are story-based missions, but also plenty of side-quests, which can give you a chance to collect more money.

Since those don’t have much of an impact on the visual novel side, I should also mention that this game comes in six difficulties. The first one ditches all strategy to be a pure visual novel game. The next 4 are basic difficulties: Casual, Ensign, Captain and Hard. Then there’s a sixth mode, known as Space Whale Mode, apparently so hard that very few have apparently been able to complete it…

Those uniforms look so much NOT proper for a space army.

The visual novel side is also done rather quite well: Kayto Shields struggles in his role as captain, and you have to make pretty difficult decisions at times. These decisions may impact the game greatly over time. Striking deals with the Alliance, fighting space pirates, exploring the galaxy and stomping out the forces of PACT… it’s all there. The dialogue is accompanied by expressive images of the characters, as is normal for the genre. And each person has a complete and complex backstory, including secrets and greater motivations. Not to mention that, since the story borrows a lot from anime, most characters have an arc of their own, a path towards character development as they discover more about themselves. I’ve always found this to be the strength of anime: Massive casts of characters, extended storylines where every major and secondary character learns something or becomes a better person.

This said! It’s not only a visual novel about space warfare. It’s also about… love. Because it is perfectly normal for a Captain to romance any members of his crew, right? The story of Sunrider borrows a LOT from romance visual novels, delving into what I consider the most annoying trope of the genre: You’re one dude surrounded by a cast of female characters, and you can romance each and every single one of them if you try hard enough. Captain Shields’ dialogue options range from formal (as should be normal from a captain) to openly romantic (or, at the very least, close to flirting and teasing). This clashes with the rather serious tone of the conflict. Also, you know what they say: Never find love at the office. And in this case, the workplace is an armed battalion at war against a powerful enemy. Breakup is the least of Kayto’s worries; how about the death of anyone he had grown a romantic interest for? I don’t think Kayto should date anyone he hires for this fight. Without knowing the full story, I can tell something will go wrong there.

Long story short: I applaud the combination of visual novel and strategy games, but I’m unsure about the combination of a story-heavy, war-based story and the normally lighthearted tone of romance visual novels. I mean, thank God it’s not a dating sim on top of that!

Speaking of that… Is it me or near everyone in the game looks like a teenager? Kayto, Shaga, Chigara, space pirate Cosette (though that one has an in-game justification)… almost everybody else. This isn’t an issue as I’m quite certain it was the idea from the start. Romance visual novels tend to do that. In fact, across all the information I’ve gathered on Sunrider: First Arrival, the sequel Mask of Arcadius, and the third game titled Liberation Day, I’ve seen about one or two characters who look like proper adults, this is one of them.

And that was likely what they were going for. I don’t have a problem there. Or rather, I wouldn’t, if the characters also behaved like adults. Unfortunately, it feels like a movie about high schoolers, starring actors in their mid-20s who can look 10 years younger after two hours of makeup. The characters are stated to be adults in the story. Yet, they tend to act the part of the common stereotypes of teenagers seen in romance visual novels, which are frequently set in high school. Kayto isn’t that bad, but then again, you make the decisions for him; he can be by-the-book or a creepy flirt. Many girls of the crew obey common stereotypes of the genre: The genki heroic one who spouts memes and is always happy; the reserved, shy, pale-haired girl who desperately wants hero-senpai to notice her; the aloof, task-focused, dark or brown-haired one; the weird one with a clear interest in the hero and a fun hair color; the one who incites suspicion in everyone but grows into an important ally… Thankfully, all of them have the ability to kick ass in strategic combat.

Quite easy to see what their mecha-driving uniforms
wanted to emphasize...

This isn’t Ender’s Game we’re talking about, this isn’t an army hiring kids and teenagers. And yet that’s what it feels like. But! Once again, that was probably the idea. And, you know what? Yes, I think the space war plot and the lighthearted romance visual novel don’t mesh too well. But, that’s the story they wanted to tell, that’s the story the backers wanted to see, and Love In Space delivered with not only one, but three games for their audience to enjoy. I can’t fault them for that, nor can I ask them to change anything on that aspect. So what if I’m leery about parts of the plot? It’s a complete story, and if I can believe the information I’ve gathered, the story can take multiple paths, leading to many possible endings. There was a TON of effort put into the final product, and you can tell. I’m actually quite impressed by the end result!

At least they were able to include almost
everything they could. Except maybe a
harem ending. Am I the only one creeped
out by those?

I do have some points of criticism, however, though they mostly lie on the technical side. On my screen, the game window is pretty small, making the text difficult to read. It can be resized, but it won’t fill my current resolution, nor will it center itself on the screen – and for some reason, moving the window brings it back to its original small size. Granted, there is a fullscreen option to remedy to that, but I’m not a fan of playing games in fullscreen.

Some reviews on Steam describe this game as very difficult. I’ve seen that comment, of course: “The Dark Souls of-” Can we stop that, please? Can we stop comparing games of genres that have little to nothing to do with each other? I mean, it IS pretty tough. But thankfully, there are 5 difficulty settings, from “Casual” to “Space Whale”, which is said to be potentially impossible. Well that’s just great. And I'm a darn casual, so I know what difficulty I pick.

"Again me"?

Among other things that bug me, there’s the text. Not the plot, mind you; the text. As I was playing First Arrival, I spotted quite a number of spelling errors. It diminishes the quality of the work and impacts the impression of professionalism when spelling mistakes are so glaringly obvious. It would have been good to proofread the dialogue some more.

All characters are voiced and say lines depending on what’s going on during space battles. They however only have a few different lines for each situation (their ship getting hurt, attacking the enemy, using a captain’s command, being picked for an action). The lines aren’t sufficiently diverse, with maybe two or three different lines for each situation, for each character. It unfortunately gets old quick to hear the same lines over and over. More lines of reactions would have helped. Asaga keeps spouting “I’mma firin’ mah lazer!” as if it hadn’t been overdone already by 2014…

What if I want to click in that area but I don't want to move?

Final point of criticism: You can skip the short cutscenes of your characters attacking, hitting and possibly destroying enemy ships. In my case, I skip them because I got annoyed by the repetition of voice clips rather quickly. There’s one problem: If the character that just attacked still had enough points to move around the grid, and you accidentally click one of the hexagons they can move to, they will move to it. I think it would have been better if there was an option, in each character’s battle menu: A button to click on before you can properly move, as it was too easy to make a character move instead of keeping it in place. Don’t forget that moving takes 20 points originally, on a maximum of 100, so a ship accidentally moving can cost you a chance of performing any other action, whether it’s an attack, one of many debuffs, or a healing move.

I guess this is all: Good game, I have a few issues with the story, and some issues with the gameplay and system, but otherwise it’s an impressive creation. Sincerely, congratulations to Love In Space for this game. It isn’t perfect, but it’s fun, it’s complete, and it’s free. If you enjoy strategy games and visual novels, I do recommend you try it, though be wary of the points I raised about gameplay and such. And if you enjoyed the two games in Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, be sure to check out the third chapter, Liberation Day.

Next week: Something else!