Chaos in Andromeda, and in Gameplay

The one time in the game that there's "no doubt" about something.

     

Well, I'm in an uncomfortable position with Chaos in Andromeda. I haven't won it, don't know if I can win it, don't know how much longer it will take even if I can, don't know if I care beyond a vague desire to be the only one online to fully document the thing.

There's a nucleus of a decent adventure/RPG hybrid in Andromeda. The adventure game puzzles are based more on inventory than logic, but the RPG side is better developed than the typical hybrid. Attributes and leveling truly do matter, and there are a lot of in-game ways to develop the character.
      

My statistics at Level 9.

     

Since I began, all gameplay has been on the same map, or structures accessible from it, which makes the game world rather small. But you do so much backtracking that it seems bigger. In some ways, it reminds me of the two Legends of Murder titles, where you criss-cross small areas, hunting down items and clues, unlocking new sub-areas as the plot progresses.

Unfortunately, there are too many problems with the game. These include:

1. Inventory woes. You have limited inventory space; there's no way to tell which items are going to turn out to be vital; and once you drop an item, it's gone forever. By the third or fourth hour, every time you find a new item, you're agonizing over what to keep and what to discard. Discard the wrong thing and you're in a "walking dead" situation.

These aren't the only inventory problems. Items that you read are one-use items. Their text shows up on the screen and then the item disappears. It's easy enough in the modern era to take a screenshot, if you know to do that, but back when the game was new, players must have had to take a lot of handwritten notes.
     

I'm glad I captured this, because the list disappeared after I read it.

     

Generally speaking, I found that if you can "use" an item and it disappears after you use it, there's no point hanging onto it. These include a lot of attribute-boosting items, such as spinach that increases strength, combs and lotions that increase charisma, and books that increase intelligence. Some of these items are at fixed locations but others you acquire randomly in successful combats (if you have a free slot). I'm not sure this is universally true, though. In particular, there was one scroll and one potion that are probably supposed to be used at specific locations. I got sick of carrying them around and said "screw it."
       

Some of my equipment. I've been carrying the scalpel, tree plank, needle, energy saw, linder device, and "rose of reunion" for hours. There's no clear use for any of it.

         
Perhaps the worst issue is the inability to see items on the map. You have to walk into the right pixel and see a message that "there is something here." It's extremely easy, even when you're being thorough, to miss those specific pixels.

Finally, to make things worse, NPCs routinely steal from you, forcing you to chase them down and kill them to get your vital equipment back. If you miss the theft message, you're out of luck permanently.

2. Combat difficulty. As we discussed last time, you can either let the game duke it out on the main screen, or you can go to the combat screen and target specific parts of your enemy's body while shielding particular parts of yours. I did the latter for most of the game before I realized that autocombat on the main screen was both faster and more successful.
     

Killing an enemy on the combat screen. This turned out to be inefficient.

     

Although you level rapidly and get an extra attribute point per level, the game seems to scale enemy difficulty with you. Now that I'm Level 12, I keep running into enemy tanks who kill me in single combat even when I'm starting at max hit points.
       

This confusing message comes up a lot during auto-combat.

       

On a related note, it's virtually impossible to distinguish NPCs from enemies until they get next to you. They use the same icons (which are barely distinguishable anyway) and color. I have no idea why some attack and some don't. It's not uncommon to enter a room in which 3 icons rush to attack and 3 wander around randomly. There's actually an entire class of NPC who rushes up to you and won't leave you alone, but refuses to attack unless you force the issue by changing your "mood."

3. A nonsensical story. I really don't know what's happening in the plot. NPCs offer brief, cryptic statements that make it hard to tell what their motivations are or what side they're on. Every other word is some bit of futuristic jargon that you have to turn to the manual to translate. Most of the time, when an enemy is attacking me, I have no idea why he's attacking me. Am I supposed to be following my original mission or sympathizing with the rebels? Who knows. Both sides try to kill me regardless.
       

A typical sentence from an NPC. "Twacka" means "hideout." To get there, I have to go through the "beckes," meaning "caves."

       
The screen shot of Koranis 12 that I offered in the last entry turned out to be what I think is the entirety of the game world. I explored everything but the bit to the southwest, on the other side of the mountain. Everything that I accomplished was in service of getting to a series of caves where (I think) the rebellion is hiding.

The adventure side of the game progressed in the usual manner where Item A is necessary to get Item B to get Item C, and so on. Thus, the password that I retrieved from the weather computer allowed me to access a compound in the southeast. I had to find some tweezers in one of the buildings in the compound, then use them to fish a "guest pass" out of a mail slot, then use the pass to enter the basement of the compound, where I found a bunch of futuristic technology, but never fully understood who ran it or what it was for. For some reason I destroyed a CPU center by throwing ashes into an air vent.
     

This feels like a major quest solved, but I have no idea what it actually did for me.

     
I used a fishing rod to catch a fish, which I gave to a hapless fisherman in exchange for some pincers, which I used along with some copper wire to repair a broken control panel. A blanket thrown over a camera shielded me from capture, allowing me to access a room where I bribed an NPC for a keycard to access the rest of the rooms on the level. (This NPC, by the way, attacks you if you get one square away from him. If you kill him, you don't find the keycard on his body, so you're in a walking dead situation and don't even know it. You have to offer him money from two squares away for it to work.)
      

Bribing an NPC from one square away. I would have never thought to do this. I got the hint from Alex.

     
One of the other rooms had a safe with a pair of mountain boots, allowing me to walk over the rubble on a mountain path and enter the lair of . . . I guess one of the rebel leaders? There were some documents about the rebellion, including the names of some rebel agents.
     

Of course it is.

     
My helpful commenter Alex was invaluable through this process, helping me with puzzles that I misinterpreted or items that I missed. But even he could only take me so far.

Enemies attacked more-or-less randomly, often respawning the moment I was out of sight of their original locations. My character leveled rapidly and got some inventory upgrades, including a "torc-helmet" and some leather gloves. At maybe Level 5, he got the psi power of "Illusion," and at 10 he got "Retunation," which creates a kind of mind shield. Neither proved to be the solution to any puzzle or obstacle that I found.
     

The Danish developer taught me some English. I didn't know that "illude" was a word. It means "trick." I still don't think it's used right here.

     
One particular inventory item is worthy of recollection. In the northern part of the map is a circle of stones around a stone slab. Walking up to the slab takes you to an underground tomb, guarded by two warriors. The moment you try to enter the tomb, about 8 red drones launch at you out of nowhere. If they get next to you, they self-destruct and kill you. You have to dive into the caves quickly before they reach you.

In the caves, I had to kill one of the guards to get past him, then use a lever to pry open the sarcophagus within and steal the Sword of Freedom. I guess it's probably the best weapon in the game, although I didn't notice a huge improvement over the spear I had been wielding earlier.
      

"Thornblower" is apparently a famous rebel slain in an earlier era.

    
Meanwhile, the 8 drones don't disappear. They wander the map until they acquire you, then zoom up to you and explode. I had to buy a series of my own droids and send them one-by-one to engage the red balls and take the hits.
    

Another droid sacrifices his life for mine.

     
The culmination of my explorations was to learn about the hidden entrance to the rebels' caves in the mountains. I followed the directions and entered.
     

Navigating a hidden mountain path.

     
I had been led to believe that by wearing something called a "Star-Ribbon," the rebels wouldn't attack me, but that wasn't true at all. I've spent a couple hours trying to make any progress in the caverns, but the enemies are so hard that I have to wait and heal after every battle (if I win), and new enemies respawn constantly. The caves have a bunch more of those red droids that kill you in one hit. Fortunately, there's a guy in the caverns who sells droids that you can send against them, but the whole process is annoying and slow-going.
     

A red droid kills me for the billionth time.

      
Limping through the area, I found a set of blueprints with symbols too small to see, "some kind of control room" where I couldn't do anything, and a couple of chemical vats. An NPC near the vats says that they're full of "eufaeum," an effective chemical weapon, but that CAMASC (my employers) are producing 10 times the volume that the rebels are. I remember seeing those vats in the compound. Maybe I'm supposed to destroy them? If so, I don't know with what.

I went back and forth about quitting the game (making this my final entry) several times. I got closest when, trying to pick up yet another inventory item, I finally got rid of the "weather report" I'd obtained near the close of my previous session, 10 hours ago. It wasn't but 15 minutes later that some rebel intelligence officer asked me for it.

I'll give it a little while longer, but this is not going to be a four-entry game.

Time so far: 14 hours