Planet Ancyra Chronicles

The story and its world are well-conceived, but the game itself is ill-conceived and riddled with problems.

Firstly, the developer really managed to confuse everybody. This is a re-packaging of sorts of Solarix, which is a stealth action game, with De-Void, which is its walking simulator prequel, as one very long walking simulator. OK? OK.

And this incredible feat was achieved by ... removing all enemies from Solarix! It can't be that easy, can it? Correct, it can't. The result is insulting: moving through large, empty levels that were clearly created for stealth action feels like a waste of time. Finding lots empty crates, which were probably full of ammo, health, and other goodies in Solarix is just one let down after the other. There is little value to exploration, unless you have a fasination with analyzing stealth action arena design.

When you finish the first part of the game (faux Solarix) and move to the second part (De-Void) everything becomes much better. Exploration suddenly is rewarded with actual bits of story, and they are good. Wow, designing a game in advance to be a walking simulator apparently makes a big difference...

Unfortunately, even though the short second part is a major improvement, the game as a whole is still disappointing, and not just because of this inconsistency graphics are adequate, but not great, with far too much repetition in models and textures. Level design is uninspiring. And there are many little bugs: popup dialogs that don't disappear and that sometimes cannot be scrolled, elevators that don't go all the way down. Nothing that broke the game for me, but it felt clunky.

And it's all just far too long, far too slow, and far too empty. The story is terrifically dark and twisty, but it takes forever to progress.

I understand that the devs wanted to please fans by providing a complete walking simulator experience like De-Void, but it simply does not work well on its own. I honestly think it was better not to release it. A better option would have been to allow an "enemy-less" mode in Solarix, which gamers would clearly understand as a special mode in what is really a stealth action game.