Steambot Chronicles – PS2 – Review

Spiky haired blond hero with amnesia?

Check.

Fully customizable mecha to pilot?

Why not? Check.

Panhandling for money by playing a rhythm mini game?

Huh? Well, if you say so. Check.

The main character’s name is Vanilla Beans?

Whoa now! You’ve got to be joking, right?

Nope. Steambot Chronicles takes a whole bunch of Japanese gaming
conventions and slaps them all onto one disc for you. It all starts off with our
blond hero, Vanilla, being woken up by Corriander, Connie for short. Vanilla is
missing his memories and Connie has just missed the bus. Together they come upon
a beat-up Trotmobile and the search for a cure for Vanilla begins. Well, after
you give Connie a lift home in your new Trotmobile that is, she did miss the bus
on account of Vanilla being passed out and all.

Getting Connie home is easier said than done at first.
Trotmobiles, the game’s mecha, are the main feature of Steambot Chronicles.
Controlling them well is also the main challenge of the game. Driving a Trot is
done by maneuvering both analog sticks. Press both forward to amble straight
ahead or pull them both back to reverse. Trots can sidestep by pushing both
sticks either right or left at the same time and they are turned by pushing one
stick up and the other one down. You can also jump and use a “boost” ability
(quick forward burst of speed). Adding combat buttons, the L1 and R1 buttons
attack with the respective arms of the Trot, quickly makes maneuvering from
point A to point B while fighting off bandits a rather awkward affair. It’s
clunky, but after a few hours you’ll be piloting your Trotmobile like a pro.

You’ve got the hang of the controls, so let’s move on to
upgrading that rusty heap of a Trotmobile. Each garage in the game will have an
assortment of weapons and chassis to choose from for your Trot. There are your
typical swords, buzz saws and cannons for fending off bandits and fighting in
the various Trotmobile arenas. You’ll also find some stranger parts such as a
parasol roof that creates much needed shade in the desert and a front grill
mounted cuckoo clock that I never did quite figure out. The lower halves of the
trots also have a good variety of options including large wheels, spider legs,
and tank treads to name a few. Once you get everything outfitted the way you
want it you can then custom paint your trot with a base coat and an accent
color. You can also create your own vanity license plates for it using the built
in “paint-like” tool.

By the time you reach the first town you will have had the chance
to get familiar with driving and fighting in a Trot. Hope you didn’t get too
comfortable behind the wheel though because when you enter towns the game goes
on autopilot. As the town gate closes you’ll be presented with a list of
destinations in town. Selecting one causes your Trot to merge in with traffic
and head to the spot you picked. Because you’re Trot will follow traffic signals
and even allow other Trots and cars to cut him off, you might want to take this
time to get a snack or finish your homework.

Once your Trot is parked at the big orange safety cone, there’s
quite a bit Vanilla can do on foot. You can stop by the local tailor or barber
shop and choose from a good selection of local fashions and hairdos. When you
change Vanilla’s outfit or
coiffure it’s reflected onscreen and other characters will even comment on your
taste, or lack thereof. All that Trotmobile action is sure to give one the
munchies, so you’ll also be able to purchase food at various shops. Vanilla has
to eat on a regular basis or he ends up slowly stumbling around with his hand on
his stomach until you find a doughnut or a block of cheese for him. Beyond the
mundane eating, dressing up and grooming tasks he can perform, Vanilla also can
play a mean game of pool. Every town has a bar and every bar has a billiards

table with a variety of locals ready to wager on a game or two.
It’s a fairly decent mini game, considering it’s the only one besides the Trot
arena, and the AI is quite tough.

When you tire of cavorting around town you can also perform on
street corners or with a band to make a little bit of spending money. Even
though he’s an amnesiac, Vanilla is quite the musician. He starts with his
trusty harmonica, but you’ll also have the opportunity to learn to play several
instruments including the piano, a trumpet, and even an accordion. Each
instrument is played slightly differently, but if you’re familiar with rhythm
games such as Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero you’ll feel right at home.
For example, the harmonica is
played by moving the left analog stick between three columns of scrolling
“notes”. Each “note” is a “played” by pressing or pressing and holding one of
the face buttons. I placed the words “note” and “played” in quotes because
unlike games such as Amplitude or Guitar Hero where activating or missing a note
actually produces an appropriate response, the music sections in Steambot
Chronicles are just an exercise in pressing buttons to the beat.  Unfortunately,
your button pressing ability has no influence on the actual sound of the tune
Vanilla is playing.

There’s a whole lot to do in Steambot Chronicles but it never
seems like you get the time to do it. From the very beginning, the game
railroads the player from one fixed scene to the next. An early example is when
you meet Connie’s mother Rosemary. Afterward, I was all ready to head off to
explore the town of Nefroburg, but the game changes the time of day to night and
everything is closed so folks can watch the Garland Globetrotters (Connie’s
band) perform. I looked and looked but besides being able to play pool at the
bar or using my harmonica on a street corner to make a little change, you pretty
much have to go to the concert to progress the game.  This leads to yet another
event that leads to another and the cycle rarely slows enough for you to really
do anything besides keep up with Connie and the gang. I’d probably call it a
“somewhat-frustrating semi-linear adventure” instead of the “relaxing non-linear
adventure” it’s billed as.

Gameplay: 6.9

Steambot Chronicles takes the “jack of all trades, master of none” theory of
game design to a new level. Trotmobile customization and design is fun, but
piloting and fighting in them can be very difficult at times. The rhythm mini
games are neat idea, but are nowhere near as addictive as the full featured
games they attempt to emulate. The game also only lives up to the non-linear
ideal in spurts, with quite a bit of the players time focused on story elements
instead.

Graphics: 6.2

I have
very mixed feelings about the graphics in Steambot Chronicles. The art direction
is a refreshing break from the standard fare. The various Trot designs and
character designs are very unique and well animated. Unfortunately, the quasi
cel-shaded style outlines on Trots and the characters are inconsistent. From
some angles they are really thick and obscure details on the character, or they
are too thin and look out of place. It’s a minor detail that I normally wouldn’t
mention if it were not for the constant framerate drops that make the smallest
graphical defects stick out even more. The unsteady framerate breeds excessive
“tearing” where part of the screen has refreshed slightly ahead of the rest
causing the image to appear broken into two slightly misaligned pieces for a
moment. It’s not the greatest looking game, but the diverse gameplay helps make
up for the graphical stumbles.

Sound: 8.2

Atlus
USA has tapped extremely talented voice actors for their recent games. All of
the characters are wonderfully acted. On top of the standard dialogue duties
some of the main characters even sing! The songs are sung and played well, but
the lyrics don’t seem to follow a normal English structure. It seems to me that
they are translated as best as possible from the original Japanese lyrics. They
don’t quite stick in your head without the standard rhymes and verse/chorus
structure we’re all used to hearing. Sound effects are also well done especially
when you’re stomping around in a Trotmobile. Trot’s have this hard-to-define
creaky sound when moving that really makes them sound like the somewhat recent
invention they are implied to be.

Difficulty:
Easy/Medium

Steambot Chronicles is fairly easy. The hard part is getting used to the Trot
controls. Even after a few hours I was still struggling on occasion to get my
Trotmobile turned around to face the enemy that was pummeling me from behind.
Other than the occasional beating you’ll take due to the poor controls, finding
your way to the “end” of the game is considerably straightforward.

Concept: 8.7

The design goal for Steambot
Chronicles must have been to find the perfect recipe for a Japanese flavored
game. Combine a heaping cup of fully customized mecha with a spoonful of rhythm
gaming. Add a dash of adorable pop idol-inspired love interest. Don’t forget the
secret “non-linear adventure” ingredient and since we’re doing this whole
cooking metaphor, let’s go ahead and name all the characters after spices. Even
though the ingredients are all good by themselves, the result of mixing them up
is sure to be an acquired taste.

Overall: 7.1

There
is just so much going on in Steambot Chronicles that it would be impossible for
the entire game to be perfect. The team at Irem did a pretty good job of
blending all of the various elements of different genres into the game. If
you’re a fan of all of the different types of gameplay, mecha combat and rhythm
gaming in particular, then you should give Steambot Chronicles a try. If you’re
only a fan of one part of the game, you’re probably not going to be able to get
past the lack of polish you’re used to in other games that have a stricter
focus. Even with all the spots in the game that are a bit bumpy, Trot piloting
really is relaxing fun.