Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

Zach Goodier

Sunrider is a free game on Steam, funded by a Kickstarter campaign that places players at the helm of a visual anime novel that puts the play in the role of Captain Kayto Shields, the newly assigned captain of the Sunrider, an advanced assault carrier built on the Independent world of Cera, that finds itself between two opposing galactic powers, the Alliance and the PACT forces.  PACT is on a mission to conquer the outer worlds around the galactic rim, presumably a prelude to invading the Alliance, which occupies the wealthy galactic core.  Before you even get the chance to conduct tests on your new ship, PACT attacks your world, using the super-dreadnaught called Legion to destroy the capital city, and presumably Shield’s family and home along with it.  Forced to flee, the Sunrider soon struggles to find new allies in an attempt to find a way to take back Cera.  However, there are difficult decisions to make, which challenge your sense of honor and duty, and just what you’re willing to sacrifice in order to win.

Just look at this main cast, and then you should get where half this story is going.

First off, let’s start out with this game’s greatest strength… IT’S FREE!!! This is a beta title, but it’s 100%, no BS, absolutely free to download and play.  So no matter what issues you might have with this (and there are a few to be had), you never feel like you’ve been screwed out of any money.  That being said, this game offers a lot for the nothing you pay to play it.  When you’re not in conversation or making decisions to advance the story, you’ll either be upgrading your Ryders (basically mecha suits like discount Gundams), or participating in battles.  The amount of customization and options is surprising, but it really isn’t quite as deep as it initially lets on.

Meet PACT, the guys who like to ruin everybody's good time.

The characters are… well, a harem, basically.  You play the only major male character on the ship, and all of the Ryder pilots you pick up are female, who of course start bickering and competing for your affections.  You have the up-tight tsundere that pretends to be uninterested when she obviously is, the overly zealous energetic one, the freelancer that just hangs loose and acts cool, the innocent one, and the a couple others.  Basically, your standard harem cast.  This doesn’t do the characters justice, even if there are moments where they actually have hints of depth.  There are a couple of twists and turns, but not a lot to impress you.

In battle, you replenish energy each turn, and you have to balance movement and support abilities with combat to maximize damage.  Larger units require more energy to move, with light units, like the Phoenix (pictures above) having the lowest movement cost, allowing it much more mobility.  

The game-play is fun at first, but as the difficulty goes up, it becomes more and more frustrating.  Part of the issue is that you have to spend carefully on upgrades to specialize your units, which I had failed to do very well in my first play-through.  However, that aside, the difficulty is still even on the middle settings, and it can be unforgiving if you’re not prepared.   The UI also feels clunky and unreliable at times, making it difficult to get units to do what you want them to, even with practice.

Upgrades offer a lot of options, but reckless spending can lead you down a rough road once the difficulty picks up.

This game does a lot of things right, but it definitely shows it’s budget and grass-roots development.  The story ends on a very distressing cliffhanger, leaving one character very likely crippled, if not dead.  This could ruin some of the hopes of romance fans, as well as fail to offer any sort of definitive conclusion.  This game was meant to lead us into the franchise, and whet our appetite to buy the next game that continues the story.  There is an attempt to add side missions, but most fall flat and fail to seriously impress, other than offering some extra income or other fringe benefits.  Perhaps the biggest failing of this game is that the “choices” all basically fall flat when you realize all roads lead down a fixed, linear path, and all you’re doing is changing a few insignificant details along the way.

Oh, the captain just wanted to see you ladies in swimwear, but that other thing you said sounds good, too.

All-in-all, this is a great, free, indie title.  It has flaws, and there are some leaps in logic throughout, like every half decent ryder pilot being a foxy girl, and the commander of the advanced prototype being a guy who looks like he’s 18, but if you can get passed that, then this is a decent game with potential for the future if they can fine tune the experience, and keep the story interesting enough.  I like the tactical gameplay, but the difficulty spike late-game can be frustrating, and the lack of farming for money to spend on upgrades means you can back yourself into a corner if you find some tough enemies and you didn’t invest in the right gear or upgrades.  The story is fairly good, but the choices don't really effect the story, so the overall road is fixed.

Good:

- Combination of ship and mecha command feels fresh and exciting.

- Nice customization options for all your combat units, improving on their specialties to make them even more effective.

-FREE!!!

Bad:

- Gameplay not as deep is it makes itself out to be, like the choices and customization features.

- Easy to back yourself into a corner if you haven’t been careful about purchases and upgrades when you hit the daunting late-game difficulty spike.

Scully Rating: 7.0 out of 10