Wachenröder (バッケンローダー), released 8/6/1998, developed by TNS, published by Sega

Game 100! This is the second to last Saturn game I will be playing. It takes place in a steampunk like world, an island that has been cut off from the rest of the world by some kind of mist that keeps people in.

The game begins with a very dark backstory for the main character (Lucian); he’s born in a slum in one of the six districts of the island, where there is a heavy water treatment plant that fills the area with pollution and magnesium. His little sister is one of many who suffer from a wasting disease that prevents them from being able to go out into the light. Eventually he decides to enter some kind of tournament to earn money for her medicine, but while he’s out registering for it, she dies. He vows vengeance on Sword Master Duran, the leader of the area. The game then switches to 4 years later, when he is wandering around aimlessly.

Lucian soon meets Carol, a woman who is also looking for Duran — but Duran is soon overthrown and forced to flee for treason, which brings a bounty hunter into the party as well who is looking to get the money for Duran. The plot proceeds from here, involving the mysterious “forest dwellers” who seem to have unusual technology, the six “sword masters” who rule the areas, and the secret of a disaster that sunk a nearby island.

The story is fairly good, and has voiced dialogue for a good part of it. It’s a bit short and the ending is cursory but overall it’s entertaining. There are a lot of names in the game that are taken from real stuff, like Titus Groan (the hero of the Gormenghast books), Fatboy Slim, and Franky Zappa.

The story is partly narrated by Verbet, a blind woman who also appears as a character in the game, and partly just regular story sequences.

The game is the usual player/enemy turn. Each character begins with 99 action points, that can be used to move, attack, and use special moves. Any AP left over can be converted to “cool down”, which is important for the overall attack system.

It doesn’t look like I got a screenshot of it, but all the weapons are these chainsaw-style motor weapons. You can choose a power between 1-5 for each attack, or use a special attack, or a super-special attack. These all add heat to your weapon, which you have to cool down — weapons will cool down automatically between turns based on the temperature and weather, but you can also redirect leftover AP to cooling down. If your weapon gets too hot, you will overheat and will not be able to act for a few turns.

A lot of stages also have switches that you need to manipulate to raise and lower barriers, open gates, and such.

Some characters have guns or bows that can make ranged attacks, but most are just “sword” attacks.

The system is interesting and fun to play with, but the game is extremely easy — one of the easiest SRPGs I’ve played. You usually only have to take on a few enemies at a time, and you can defeat them with powerful attacks and then cool down before fighting the next ones. There are only a couple of stages that require any thought beyond just basic move-attack, including the final stage which is slightly tricky (but still not that hard.)

You never upgrade your weapons in any way but you can equip three items to each character. The item equip is a bit confusing because you have multiple slots (head/arm/foot/etc) but it’s not always clear why certain items can only go in certain slots. There are shops before some of the stages.

Overall I would say this game is OK. The world is interesting and the atmosphere of the game is appropriately grim and grey, while still offering some interesting things outside of the typical “ruined city” cyberpunk situation. The story is serviceable and has some nice parts, but it’s too short and the ending is rushed (I wonder if they had to accelerate the development because the Saturn was in its waning period). The system has some good ideas but the game is so easy that it feels like you don’t often have to get particularly in-depth — in particular, the potentially interesting question of having to trade off attack power vs. heat often makes no difference because you can use powerful attacks and then just have other characters fight while you cool down. About halfway through the game you start getting the Sword Masters in your party, and they are far more powerful than your other characters.

In a way this is similar to some other late-system games I’ve played (like Energy Breaker) that seem to have been a bit rushed because they wanted to get the game out before the system was no longer viable…although I don’t know if that was the case here.