Chaos in Andromeda: Summary and Rating

     

Chaos in Andromeda: Eyes of the Eagle

Denmark

Kirk Moreno Multimedia (developer); On-Line Entertainment (publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga, 1992 for Commodore CDTV

Date Started: 21 September 2017
Date Ended: 2 October 2017

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 30

Ranking at Time of Posting: 146/263 (56%)

What an infuriating game. I couldn't win it. My character got trapped in an enormous network of caves--the same that I had entered at the end of the last session--and couldn't go forwards or backwards. This is partly thanks to enemies who respawn every time you walk over a particular pixel. Even at high levels with lots of good equipment, my character left every combat barely alive, and I had to sit there and wait 5 minutes real-time for his hit points to regenerate before moving on.

Mostly the problem is the exploding robots, which often spontaneously generate in your backpath. Even if you filled all your inventory slots with droids of your own, you couldn't guarantee that you'd have enough to wipe out all the enemy's exploding drones. If there's another way to deal with them, I don't know what it is.

My character thus dies an ignominious death on Level 2 of the caverns. He missed a couple of crucial items on Level 1, and he can't get back there because the moment he passes one particular passageway, two exploding ball droids come rocketing down and kill him instantly. I do have a save state from Level 1, but that was like six hours ago, and I'm not willing to invest that kind of replay time.
     

My personal "ending" to the game.

     
I already replayed most of the caverns once. After finding the NPC who wanted that weather report, I was convinced it was a major part of the game. I reloaded from outside the caverns, fought my way through the first level again, brought the weather report triumphantly to the rebel intelligence officer, and got nothing more than a "thanks" for my efforts. I was pretty angry. But I later discovered that he surreptitiously slipped me a magnifying glass during the encounter, which was important for reading a set of blueprints.
       

I just told you!

    

Miscellaneous notes:

         

• The caves contained several machines that, when I got too close, caused my character to go insane and run around randomly for about a minute. I have no idea what was happening there. His "mind shield" ability didn't stop it from happening.

• I don't know why the game set up the Sword of Freedom to be such a great weapon. I found several better weapons in the caves, although (unexpectedly) never any ranged or sci-fi sounding weapons. I ended the game fighting with a spear. 

• In the latter areas, there were a few items that reduce your attributes, including cigarettes (-1 constitution) and beer (-1 dexterity).

• Very late in this session, I realized that in addition to "Drop," there's a command called "Leave" that lets you lay down your inventory for later pickup. That would have saved me a lot of angst. That one was my fault.

• At some point, I got a "Telekinese" power. It occasionally worked in combat, inflicting injury on my opponents. But you have to be right next to the opponent to use it, so it was no help with the droids.

     

One of the few times that "Telekinese" actually worked.

      

The extra portrait slots on the main screen are meant for droids. Each type of droid has a separate screen slot, so you can only have one of each type active at once. The outdoor area had delivered "D-probes," and an NPC on the first level of the caves sold me "G.H.O.S.T.s" On the second level, I finally found the occupant of the third window: a humanoid probe labeled "Robo-Digi-Sync." Despite his appearance, he wasn't more or less useful than the others. Although they look like additional "party members" in a traditional RPG, they're not. They can't do anything but move and blow up. You can't view their attributes or give them complex commands, and they don't automatically follow with the main character; you have to move them separately. Oh, and everyone, even friendly NPCs, attack them if they move into adjacent squares. They are not destined for long lives. While it would be theoretically possible to have a droid of each type active at the same time, it would be functionally pointless and annoying to move around.

       

The fourth type of droid, who looks uncannily human, joins the party.

        

At one point, I did see the object of my quest, Noko Yai, running down some corridors. I gave chase but lost him.

       

The closest I got to finishing.

     

Alex A., my helpful commenter from Italy, was able to win the game, and he provided screenshots to document the remainder. Winning involves finding a pair of "telepads" that bounce you between them. Before you blow up the chemical plant . . .
        

   
. . . you make your way outside and leave one of the telepads so you can make a quick escape. Then you re-enter and sabotage the main computer of the chemical plant with an "IC-666 Chip" and a "spinner-diode" (I found the first but not the latter). This gives you 20 seconds to escape before the computer causes a self-destruct.
     

  
Once outside, you meet Noko Yai in a circle of stones. He refuses to come with you and he's unbeatable (for whatever reason) with normal weapons. You have to vaporize him with something called a "H.A.V.D. Inverter," which I also didn't manage to find.
      

    
You can then enter your spacecraft and leave the planet. Apparently, there are different endings depending on whether you blew up the plant but didn't get Yai, got Yai but didn't blow up the plant, or accomplished both.

    

Part of Alex's winning text.

   
The endgame text says that you've been put in "some kind of hibernation" and then weirdly rips off 2001: A Space Odyssey with a complete non-sequitur for a final screen.
      

    
I'm sorry I can't carry this one as a "win," but not sorry that I didn't invest another 20 hours to get that as a final image.

    

My GIMLET:

• 4 points for the game world. I have to give credit to the developer for trying to do something original with it, and I guess it all kind-of makes sense if you pay close attention. There are a lot of plot elements that don't pay off--such as the rebels' insistence that the company employing me has an even bigger chemical weapons capability. Noko Yai's allegiances and motivations are never really clear.

      

This feels like it should have gone somewhere.

      

• 3 points for character creation and development. It would have been okay in a normal RPG. I like that you can improve attributes by both leveling and finding helpful items. 

• 4 points for NPC interaction, perhaps the strongest part of the game. There's a fine line between NPCs and enemies here, but either way you learn about the game world and obtain resources through dialogue. There are no dialogue options or role-playing opportunities, though.

       

An NPC gives a key item.

      

• 3 points for encounters and foes. None of your enemies are named, and it's hardly ever clear why they're attacking when other NPCs of the same icon aren't attacking. The game isn't even consistent in the appearance of the foes: sometimes the deadly exploding balls are red, sometimes blue. Sometimes little grey warriors are trivial pushovers, and sometimes they're deadly dreadnoughts.

• 2 points for magic and combat. There aren't enough options in combat. You just stand there and swing. The "psionic" abilities didn't develop enough, and weren't useful enough, to get much credit there.

• 4 points for equipment. There were a decent number of weapon and armor upgrades, plus attribute-boosting items, plus quest items. I have to give some credit for originality in the way the droids work, appearing as inventory items until you "use" them, and then appearing in your party.

     

About to swallow some vitamins for a constitution increase. Note the different types of weapons and armor I've equipped.

       

• 2 points for the economy. You get a few hundred credits for almost every enemy you kill, and it really just stacks up. There are a couple of NPCs to bribe, and you can buy probes from the NPCs who sell them indefinitely, but there's never a time you feel you have too little money.

• 4 points for the main quest, and with three potential endings. That's unusual for the era.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets almost all of that for the interface; Mr. Moreno was a rare Amiga developer who ensured that every button on the screen had a mapped keyboard shortcut. The graphics are all a bit too small, and there's no sound except for opening music and music you can play on your Walkman.

• 1 point for gameplay, which it gets for being a little nonlinear at the beginning. Beyond that, it has no replayability; and the ability to so easily get in "walking dead" situations makes it far too difficult. It just drags and drags. I spent 11 hours in a few screens of caves, mostly standing and waiting for hit points to regenerate after every single combat.

               

One of those walking dead situations. There really is no way to open the door.

         

That gives us a final score of 30, which comes out a bit higher than I feel it should, but I guess I'll leave it there. As I remarked last time, there are some decent and original elements in the game; they just don't come together to make a satisfying whole.

Reviews of Andromeda appeared in the August 1991 Amiga Power and Amiga Action. They rated it at 69% and 66% respectively. While I can't disagree with their final ratings, the reviews are both idiotic. They waste their limited space on goofy setups ("It'd be pretty worrying if, whilst munching your way through an early morning bowl of Honey Nut Loops, you received a letter from the future," the Amiga Power one begins); they get half the facts about the game wrong; and it's clear that neither reviewer played it more than a couple of hours. Amiga Action's screenshots are almost all from the opening cinematic rather than actual gameplay. The Action reviewer notes with some wonder that the inclusion of RPG attributes is a "style that seems to be seeping into all sorts of games nowadays," as if he'd never heard of the entire role-playing genre. If we each get a personal hell, mine will require me to spend eternity reading issues of British Amiga magazines.

There's one aspect that I haven't mentioned, and it deserves some attention even if it didn't make the game more enjoyable (for me) to play: an original and complex musical score. The opening screen features a kind of 1980 sci-fi techno-thriller tune that wouldn't be out of place in The Terminator or something like Scanners. You can hear it at about the 40-second mark of this YouTube video.

Even more interesting, your character has a Walkman with six tunes on it: "Mellowmarch," "Fade Gunner," "Koranis Antheme," "Never," "About Time," and "Boogaloop." They're all somewhat upbeat instrumental tunes with a techno beat, and as far as I can tell, they're all original (I ran them against SoundHound and got no matches, if that proves anything). The only other game I know where an in-game portable music system can be equipped and used to play actual music is the German Antares (1990).

     

The character's Walkman and his original music selections.

      

That brings us to the developer. The name--Kirk Moreno MultiMedia--sounds like a single developer trying to make his independent efforts sound grandiose. But there are several individuals credited on both Chaos in Andromeda and the company's only other title, Prey: An Alien Encounter (1993), and Mr. Moreno himself isn't one of them. These facts plus the decent production qualities make me think that KMM was a proper company. It had actual employees and an office in a commercial district of Aarhus (its former address is now the Sherlock Holmes Pub). Unfortunately, I can't find any of the developers, including composer Halfdan Larsen, listed on any other games. There are signs in the endgame text that they intended a sequel to Chaos in Andromeda, and some editions of the CDTV version may have been labeled Eyes of the Eagle: A Chaos in Andromeda Mission.
      

Unless I've mis-coded the country of origin for one or more of the titles on my master list, we won't see a Danish developer again until 2004, with MediaMobsters' Gangland. We will, however, remain in Europe for the near future, first as I try to make sense of France's Karma (1987), and then as I try to slowly make my way through a German text adventure, Drachen von Laas (1991), and even after that to the still-technically-European but less-foreign Kingdom of Krell (1987) from the U.K. It's probably also past time to wrap up Might and Magic III.

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

Game 263: Chaos in Andromeda: Eyes of the Eagle (1991)

     

Chaos in Andromeda: Eyes of the Eagle

Denmark

Kirk Moreno Multimedia (developer); On-Line Entertainment (publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga, 1992 for Commodore CDTV

Date Started:  21 September 2017

This is the first time I'm offering a pre-game header block, and we see a couple of new things in it. First, this is the first Danish RPG that we've seen--and one of only two on my entire list, although I originally had it as a UK title (for the publisher). There could be others that I've incorrectly labeled. The other new element is the "Commodore CDTV," which I'd never even heard of until today. It was apparently a short-lived console/PC hybrid, based on the Amiga, and Chaos in Andromeda might have been the only RPG released for it. We have to be grateful for that release, however, as it's the only way that I have a manual, courtesy of reader Alex A. I have not been able to find any documentation for the Amiga version.

I don't know what the CRPG scene was like in Denmark in 1991, but Chaos in Andromeda has no clear origin. The attributes are D&D standard (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma) with the addition of intuition and quickness. I suppose the interface vaguely recalls the MegaTraveller titles, but not so much that I'm convinced the developer played them. There is a vague similarity to Japanese console games, but not in any of the mechanics.

The backstory is either poorly translated, written by someone with a poor command of English, or deliberately written to be weird. The game takes place in the future, amidst an interstellar civilization called the "Ralon Universe." Humans are a minority, dominated by a race called "Berounars." (For some reason, the documentation calls sentient beings "capes.") A government faction or organization called CAMASC is seizing power. (Covenant Against Moral and Scientific Corruption.) The ruler of CAMASC seems to be called Dmar'Kne--I'll leave it to you to puzzle out that anagram--and they've been trying to gain influence in the Andromeda system. A terrorist group called the "Moon of Or'Yim" has been opposing CAMASC and has recently used (or is being accused of using) chemical weapons against a civilian population.

Into this chaos, CAMASC has decided to bring an agent, and for some reason they're using technology to snatch their chosen hero out of the distant past and bring him forward in time. Something about the "technology and health of mind" of the past era providing "conditions for the development of personal qualities vital to our needs." I warned you it didn't make any sense. I don't know if the whole "time transfer" thing is supposed to be taken literally, or more as a metaphor for the player moving forward in time to play a science fiction RPG. Anyway, shortly after the transfer through time, the ship retrieving the agent is attacked by terrorists and the agent, in a gruesome scene, loses his eyes. Fortunately, the future offers cybernetic replacements. No word on whether they came from an eagle, but there is some language about how I'll be able to see more with the new eyes, and clearly there's supposed to be some link here to the subtitle.
      

This part of the backstory seems needlessly complicated.

      
The backstory is fleshed out during the character creation process in which the player gives the agent a name and assigns a pool of points to each of the eight attributes, which can be set anywhere from 1 to 18.
      

Character creation.

      
The agent's first (only?) mission is to go to the planet Koranis 12 and find a missing scientist named Noko Yai. The manual notes that he might have been kidnapped, might have disappeared on his own. Either way, I'm to bring him back or kill him if he refuses. I'm also supposed to destroy any chemical weapon production facilities on the planet.
      

A brochure I found later in the game tells me about the planet.

      
The game begins as the Ralon Navy ship Concorde V touches down on the surface of the planet and the PC steps outside. His pilot is running around the area and has a few lines if the "Talk" button is pressed: "Good luck, Ace"; "Rember the stuff we unloaded on the platform"; and "I only had to bring you here and await orders from above." Other buttons, all of which have redundant keyboard commands, are "Look," "Barter," Get," and "Mood." The last one is an odd option, changing the character's face from a neutral expression to a snarl, signaling hostility to everyone around him. I don't know what actual uses it has in the game, but if done near the pilot on the starting screen, the pilot attacks and easily kills the agent.
       

Setting out. The ship is gone when you leave this screen and return.

      
The manual offers an overhead shot of Koranis 12, and I have no idea whether this is just the starting area or the entire game world. It depicts a number of tunnels, pathways, and buildings to explore, and I tried to move about in a systematic manner.
      

The map of the starting (only?) area given in the game documentation.

     
It soon became clear that Andromeda is something of an adventure-RPG hybrid, with what appears to be numerous inventory puzzles. I say this cautiously because I'm getting the "inventory" part all right, but not the "puzzle" part. Meaning I'm picking up a lot of stuff but not finding much use for it. You can't see objects in the environment, but the "eye" icon opens up when there's something for you to look at, and a message explicitly says "there is something here" when you've stepped near an item. The radius isn't very large for finding such items, so you really have to poke around into every corner and crevice.
     

It's a good thing I checked this little corner. The rope turned out to be a key quest item.

     
The character started with a "shortblade" and a suit of "Fhron-armour," which afforded an armor class of 2 (unarmored is 1). Later, I found some "yolted armour," which bumped me up to 3. I also found two other weapons, a club and a carpenter's axe, but I don't know how to tell which weapons do the most damage.
      

The game's inventory screen.

     
Some of the miscellaneous items I've collected include a fishing rod, a brochure about the planet, a medallion that's supposed to bring luck when you rub it, a souvenir "Amorf" tree, a pile of ashes, a pile of sand, and a "Rose of Reunion." Some of these things I bought from NPCs with my growing number of credits. I had so much stuff by the end of the session that I was running up on inventory limits.
    

Yeah, that's a message you want to see in the third hour.

     
Some items are meant to increase your statistics. I've found two batches of "natural spinach" that each increased my strength by one point. News reports increased my wisdom when I read them.
     

I purchase some souvenirs in what I guess is a shop.

     
NPCs roam about the map, and walking near them often triggers an automatic dialogue. So does walking into their houses. If they don't speak to you spontaneously, you can try to engage them with the "Talk" button, although in doing so I often get the mysterious message, "Your appearance prevents communication."
     

Are you trying to say that I'm ugly?

     
The interface is a bit maddening, because NPCs or environmental messages often pop up by surprise, and hitting any key dismisses them or moves on to the next screen (if it's a multi-screen dialogue). Since you're not expecting the message, you accidentally immediately dismiss it if you're holding the directional arrow. I have to keep reloading and seeing what I missed.

I get attacked at regular intervals by what seem to be randomly-spawning enemies, none of whom are named, and the icons are too small to really figure out what they're supposed to depict. Combat occurs either on the main screen or in a sub-menu of (oddly) the inventory screen. If you fight on the main screen, the game shows what Alex A. characterized as a "big ball of violence" (link to the TV Tropes page). You have no options but to stand there and let the computer duke it out.
     

Fighting on the main screen.

     
Fighting from the inventory screen is more tactical. You can set a shield icon over the part of your body that you want to defend, and then click on the parts of the enemy that you want to attack. I've had much more success fighting from this screen. In fact, combat seems a bit too easy; a lot of the enemies only have 1 hit point and thus die in a single hit. Post-combat, health regenerates slowly but steadily from walking or even just standing.
     

Fighting from the inventory screen.

     
I fought probably 20 combats in this session. Victory gives you both credits and experience points. Once I crossed 1,000 experience points, I moved up to Level 2 and my constitution increased by one point.
     

My stats after my first level-up.

     
The special encounters are mostly bizarre and nonsensical, and if they're in service to a larger plot, I can't figure out what it is. For instance, right outside the area where your ship lands, I encounter an old man and a young woman that he introduces as his daughter. The daughter makes me uneasy, and looking at her makes me faint. When I awaken, the NPCs are gone. Later on the same path, I "feel the presence of many people gathered for a holy ceremony, but see none." What?
      

What does that even mean?

     
In a "temple to the ancient gods," a priest lectures me about the limitations of physical strength, then pours me a drink that makes the character run around randomly (out of my control) for a few minutes. Travelers around a fire talk about a feared and respected rebel leader named Snowdancer. A man rushes up to me and says that "they" have killed the daughter of "Two-Dreams" and that there will be a holy meeting in the caves for all "true believers."
     

Why are you telling me?

      
The best I can piece together, there are a decent number of colonists in the area, but corporations and/or government entities have stomped over them while setting up facilities for chemical warfare, thus inspiring rebellious factions. I keep getting directed to the "City of Nimne" and the "Dungeons of Ghima."

In one house in the north of the area, I encountered a man who looked like me and introduced himself as the object of my quest, Noko Yai. He claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack and asked if I remembered it, then the screen then depicting a flashback of my character getting his cybernetic eyes. He then vanished into thin air.
      

Freaky

      
I have run into a few dead ends. A circle of stones led to an underground area, but passage is blocked by two NPCs who won't move and who kill me in one hit if I attack. In the southern areas of the map is a compound where I get attacked by a mob and killed every time I approach. The overhead map provided by the manual shows an entire area to the west that seems to be blocked by mountains, and I can't figure out how to reach it. A passage in the mountains is blocked by rocks. One building has a mail slot in which some item is stuck, but I can't find anything to fish it out (the fishing pole doesn't work). A "sacred altar" clearly wants me to do something, but I don't know what.
      

This robot blocks passage into a building. I don't know what he wants.

     
On the main screen, there are spaces for what at first I took to be three other party members. At one point, though, an NPC offered to sell me a "D-probe" for 60 credits. I purchased it, and when I activated it, it took up one of the slots. I couldn't view its stats or inventory or anything, but I could send it around to do some scouting (it wouldn't cross water, unfortunately). Switching to the probe shows a much more zoomed-in area. Other than moving, it apparently can't do anything except self-destruct.
     

The world through the eyes of a probe. He doesn't have the Eyes of the Eagle.

    
In one house, an old man told me that Noko Yai was last seen in Nimne, and I'd need a password to get into the city. He gave me a "cartridge" that he told me to attach to "Weather Station Zendor" to get the password.

The weather station was on a mountain peak on the other side of a bridge. When I initially crossed the bridge, it collapsed and killed me instantly.
       

     
In one of the few inventory puzzles I was able to solve, I used a rope to strengthen the bridge and was then able to cross.
     

I'm not sure how I did this without stepping on the bridge.

      
Once I got to the mountain peak, I inserted the cartridge into the weather station and got both a weather forecast and a password to Nimne, wherever that is. So that was a bit of a victory.
         

This feels like a reasonably large step on the main quest.

      
Andromeda is a very weird game so far, and like many hybrids, a bit unsatisfying as an RPG. Since it's so poorly documented online currently, I feel a certain obligation to see it to the end, but I can't promise it will hold my interest if it turns out to be too large or too long. If anyone has played it before, I'll be happy for ROT-13'd hints on the puzzles because I really don't want this one to drag.

Time so far: 4 hours
Reload count: 15 (3 from combat deaths, 6 to experiment with inventory items, 6 to see missed messages again)