Time to start the action. This part should be more reasonably sized.

There’s a short cutscene of the ships getting launched. Rami gets a bit shaken and implies that someone died on their last assignment. Marie tries to brush him off by saying she has faith in Ros, which isn’t any more encouraging. You’re a bad liar, Marie!

IMTS inverts the previous game’s dynamic: downtime is pretty standard, while action is abstract and streamlined. This is probably pretty self-explanatory: You move between adjacent nodes one at a time, red = enemies, green = goodies. You can also sacrifice a movement point to investigate a node, which sometimes gets you minor items but usually gets you nothing and is almost never worth it. There’s also a turn mechanic, but the game eases you into it; mobile enemies and time-dependent events won’t show up for a while. For now, all that matters is that you get a bonus if you beat the mission within a given number of turns.

This mission also works far, far better as a tutorial than The Reconstruction’s first quest did. The pace is slow, and characters walk you through everything as it comes up instead of dumping everything on you at the beginning in an optional wall of text. Speaking of which, Marie musters a façade of professionalism to explain the basics of movement to me, and is immediately undercut by Rami rambling about how ”Even the last one managed to get the hang of fleet control eventually…” They are not very good at this.

Every node also has a unique description, which I think is a nice touch.

You’ll get into a scrap if you run into an enemy node (or if a mobile enemy runs into you). There’s a halfhearted stealth mechanic – you can spend movement points for a chance to evade the enemies, and smaller fleets have better luck, but I never use it. Most enemies are placed in such a way that you usually have to double back and go past them again, anyway, so it’s just not worth it. Combat costs less and can get you more stuff.

Battles are similar to how they were in The Reconstruction: 3 pools that function as both mana and health, you’re out if any one reaches 0, they’re called hull, systems, and pilot this time. There are a few key differences:

1. Everyone has the same health, 1000. The only thing that affects survivability is defense. This is an interesting idea that creatively examines preconceptions about the genre – when you think about it, it is rather redundant to have variable health and defense. One is almost always better depending on how the battle formulas are constructed (usually defense), so maybe it is a good idea to try cutting one out after all. In practice…well, it works well enough, but the fact of the matter is that players like number escalation. We like it when battles and challenges increase in scale as we go on; that really makes us feel like we’re getting stronger and better. This model can’t offer that – if you’re playing properly, damage numbers should stay roughly constant for the entire game. Indeed, they need to in order to provide a consistent challenge, since otherwise you’d be oneshotting enemies. Logically, I know it’s silly, but there is a certain something to it that IMTS necessarily loses.

2. If the fleet leader is defeated, you lose. While consistent with the story justification, I do find it a little punishing. But my biggest gripe is that this rule strongly disfavors a close-range build for Ros, despite the fact that you can only choose her build at the start of the game, before you know any of this. Anyone who selected a LAC Ros on the basis that lizards were cool will only now discover that they inadvertently chose to play on hard mode.

3. The rush feature is now automated. At the end of each round (and battles operate in rounds now, so no more getting twice as many turns as everyone else if you have high agility) the “zone of control” will shift depending on everyone’s relative positions. But not only does being closer to the front line get you more points, having more combatants gets you more points, so the winning side gets a mechanical advantage in addition to the intrinsic advantage of outnumbering the opposition. I think this makes the feature too overpowered and chaotic. The interesting thing about the rush mechanic was that you had to sacrifice someone’s turn to advance it – this forced you to moderate the pace of combat and make tactical trade-offs, plus it gave people something to do when they couldn’t attack. Now you can attack and get an attack bonus at the same time without having to make any sacrifices. It’s the sort of mechanic that rewards you if you’re already doing well and punishes you if you’re struggling. You generally want to be on the front line anyway (so enemies can be in range), and you’ll only want to retreat if things are going really badly for you; zone shifts will just exacerbate that, and pretty much ensure that a few mistakes will cascade into a humiliating defeat. It also makes it virtually impossible to fight when you’re outnumbered, which is counterintuitive to a later game mechanic. (It also discourages stealth even further – it works best with smaller fleets, but that just ensures that if you’re unlucky, you get really screwed.)

4. Instead of having a move and attack phase, characters use action points instead. Moving and attacking both cost various amounts of action points, so you can only get maybe one attack off the first turn but afterwards you can generally make 2-3. This makes combat go a lot quicker, which I generally approve of, but it sometimes makes it go too quick. Enemy parties can only be five at most and hitting elemental weaknesses is a one-hit-kill more often than not, so you can often sweep every encounter within the first few characters’ turns.

Like so. In theory, you’re not supposed to be able to do this so easily, because non-critical damage is capped at 900 so you can’t actually oneshot things without hitting a weakness. However, hitting a weakness is generally pretty easy if you’re playing properly and have a nice diversity of elements in your weapons.

This also has the effect of making AP the new agility, since getting more attacks is effectively the same as getting multiple turns in The Reconstruction. There is one good thing about this though, and that is that it makes skill costs an actual consideration. In The Reconstruction where you regenerated at the same rate you attacked, skill costs were barely noticeable, but since you’ll be attacking multiple times per turn here, you can easily ruin your health if you’re reckless. I’d say this is actually the biggest thing you have to adjust for, coming from The Reconstruction.

(Enemies only get one attack per turn unless you’re on the hardest difficulty level, which creates too stark of a contrast, I think – with one attack per turn they’re pretty pathetic since the 3-health system makes it hard for them to truly threaten anyone, but the game is balanced for that so when they suddenly get three attacks per turn, they destroy you.)

5. Attack skills are the only skills. Yes, really. Instead of the rich diversity of character skills seen in most RPGs, your options are only ever damage, more damage, or damage of a different type. There aren’t even any AoE attacks, everything’s single-target. This is easily the worst design decision in the entire game, since it pretty much vaporizes any possibility of tactical depth. The number of mechanics you can influence and play with are severely limited, and there is absolutely zero synergy between characters now. Characters in general become pretty interchangeable, differing only through minor stat differences and personal weapon (which is usually completely identical to a cookie-cutter weapon you can make yourself). It’s probably a good thing that AP makes battles so short, honestly, because long battles become incredibly dull and repetitive. It’s just “hit elemental weakness, hit elemental weakness again” ad nauseum, maybe retreating for a little while if someone gets injured.

Overall, the battle system is sleeker and more professional-looking than The Reconstruction’s was, but it’s actually far shallower and less interesting to play. Battles rarely feel like anything more than ephemeral interruptions in plot and exploration.

 

Here’s a better mechanic, though: some missions will have bonus walkaround areas where you can solve puzzles and get additional treasure. They are great, but sadly the developer got burnt out and kind of forgot about them in the second half of the game. It’s clear that a lot of effort went into this one – it’s fairly large, it’s got neat atmospheric effects, and there’s a cool puzzle where you have to divert the remaining power to the right spots.

The mission ends with a boss fight, of course. These are “Lessers” (si’shra), who have commandeered leftover craft in the chaos created by the Shine and are now wreaking havoc. Together with rogue AIs, they serve the role of generic enemy and boogeyman for the early missions.

This fight is pretty annoying and is an example of the 3-health system being implemented poorly. Every character has a unique weapon that they can’t remove, so no one is ever defenseless: Rami and Tezkhra get a hull-targeting one, Marie has a systems one. (Ros’ changes depending on her classification; LAC Ros gets a pilot weapon, so my fleet is extra uncoordinated.) You do get a pittance of extra weapons before the mission starts: two pilot, one systems. The problem is that the system one is a beam weapon, which Marie specializes in, and since the game tells you to distribute them based on weapon skill, it’s likely that the player will give it to Marie. If you do, you’ll only have one character who can inflict systems damage, so she can’t coordinate her attacks with anyone and basically has to solo the boss on her own. Fortunately the boss also has terrible pilot defense so you can take him down that way, but I still think this is unnecessarily punishing for a tutorial challenge. A better idea would have been to make hull the weakness – that way you’re guaranteed to have two people who can gang up on the boss instead of potentially getting screwed over by distributing the weapons incorrectly. And that would still teach you the importance of coordination and the 3-health systems, since then Marie wouldn’t be able to engage the boss and would have to mop up the mooks instead.

 

Fortunately, unlike Captain Yat the pack leader isn’t at all a threat. This isn’t like in The Reconstruction where it takes over ten attacks to finish a boss – I took out a quarter of his health in a single attack, and I get multiple ones per round! He can’t even match my damage output, and I outnumber him. The only potential threat here is that one of the flunkies can hit a weakness on Tez, but even that can be shrugged off.

The boss music is great, though. (Those bells!) The Reconstruction didn’t have a consistent boss theme, opting instead for some generic RPG Maker music as well as a few custom tracks that I generally found bland and lacking in consistency. Not so here! It’s kind of amazing how important something as simple as having a consistent boss theme is; it’s not something you really notice until you find a game that doesn’t have one. It helps to establish a tonal consistency throughout the story, and gives a greater sense of connection between the disparate parts of the game.

After the battle a bunch more Lessers show up, but the Sikohlon border patrol is hot on their tail, and they steal my kills. The fleet moves to their stronghold, the Machinatorium.

This is Mahk, the same guy from The Reconstruction. As you can see, his personality is quite different; he is arrogant, hostile, and childish, and turns all those traits up to 11 in his introduction here. Having a character act completely differently in a prequel is certainly striking, but runs the risk of falling flat if the author just uses it for cheap shock value and can’t actually sell the character development. I’ll be keeping an eye on Mahk’s character throughout the game, and will evaluate whether or not I can picture him evolving into Father Mahk by the end. (Although I will say, I can see where his pissy side comes from now.)

Also ew, those block shadows. Looks like the game used some RTP graphics after all.

Mahk explains that the agreement is simply that the Inquiry gets to use the Sikohlon’s services. That requires a formal deal, really? They’re a business, so they can’t possibly be this fussy about who they work for all the time. (Marie even calls them an “unregulated militia”, which implies they’ll sell to anyone.) The crew doesn’t even get a discount or anything, just the privilege of paying them for standard services. Maybe the idea is supposed to be that they normally sell mass-produced weapons, and hiring them for custom jobs is the special privilege Sorenson negotiated?

The crew is dubious of the benefits and thinks their standard weapons are enough. So they dislike the Sikohlon so much that they’re willing to waste the service Sorenson worked so hard for. This is why being mysterious and obfuscating is stupid, people!

Then this guy shows up: Ivoronus, president of the company. He is much more diplomatic than Mahk, and says Sorenson ”has been a… friend since before the Shine.” Wow, that emphasis isn’t suspicious at all! Once again, I don’t see why Sorenson didn’t explain this to them. “I’m buds with the president, we’ve been chatting for a while and he’s going to let you buy stuff from him” doesn’t jeopardize any secrets and is something they would have found out anyway when Ivoronus met with them. It also definitely is within the scope of their assignment since they’re the entire reason for the deal, so they have every right to know it – yet Sorenson shut them down when they explicitly asked for details. I’ll just have to assume the deal contains some hidden agenda that Sorenson’s really paranoid about, but the only diversionary tactic he knows is to completely clam up so it falls to Ivoronus to come up with a cover story.

He also reveals that the Inquiry’s side of the deal is to give Mahk an internship with the crew. Mahk is shocked by this, so I guess Ivoronus and Sorenson both get a rush out of withholding vital information from their subordinates.

This all seems just a bit too convenient for me. Not only do I get the best craftsmen in the galaxy on my payroll, I get a bonus fighter pilot too? What’s in it for them? Combined with Sorenson’s caginess, I have to suspect ulterior motives here. Perhaps Mahk is a spy. If the big two aren’t in collusion, Ivoronus is probably just as baffled as I am as to what Sorenson’s obviously evil plan is, in which case he would obviously want an eye on the inside. But what if Sorenson and Ivoronus are both on the same page? Perhaps he’s here to make sure the crew doesn’t discover anything they aren’t supposed to. Mahk seems too emotionally unstable for such a subtle task, but maybe I’m meant to underestimate him.

Everyone toddles off. Mahk is distraught, but offers to make a weapon for me.

Weapon creation is very simple. You use items you find or buy to specify the weapon type (beam, missile, or melee), the elemental property, and the health type. As the game progresses you can get better versions of these items, which will improve the resulting weapon’s stats and allow you to add a status effect as well. That’s…it, really. As a consequence of the extremely limited battle system, weapons are extremely limited and simplistic as well. The fanciest you can get is with “extension” shells, which function as passive stat boosts instead of weapons, but that’s still nothing like the amazing diversity of The Reconstruction. Once you make a full set of weapons for everybody, you’ll never update except to change the properties or raise the numbers.

The real problem, though, is that item rewards are completely random in this game. The quality of components is (usually) fixed, but the flavor of item is completely random. You can easily end up with a dozen identical components and almost nothing for the other areas, so if you want to be able to cover all your bases (which the game expects you to be able to do), you have to do the worst kind of grinding: item grinding. You can buy components, but they become obsolete very fast.

There is one possible way around this: every weapon will generate a code you can input into any game that will reproduce it without the need for components (though the generic money cost is quintupled). I believe this mechanic was made to encourage a greater sense of community among the players, since shared weapon codes can be used by anyone – a noble goal, but it never really took off. (I would attribute this to the dull, repetitive nature of weapon creation, myself.) However, it does allow sufficiently motivated players to cheat: through experimentation, it is possible to decode the algorithm and create new weapons by creating your own blueprint codes. I never quite managed to achieve the holy grail of creating new weapons from whole cloth, but it is pretty easy to create a weapon of X quality and modify one or more of its sub-parameters if you’re missing a vital component and have cash to burn. I expect I will be using this exploit quite a bit.

After the mission, my definitions get updated. This featured article, while cool-sounding and important to the plot, is not scientifically accurate; as far as neurologists can tell, we won’t ever have to lose memories to make more ones. Maybe that will change when we have thousands of years of memories, but I still think “our brains have a predefined limit and lifespan that cannot be augmented” is selling science short – I have complete faith that, thousands of years from now, we will understand our brains well enough to overcome their in-built limitations. Besides, aren’t the emitters supposed to ensure living things never degrade?

Anyway, Lessers: they are described as a stupider and more aggressive lacertian subspecies that humans gave up on trying to integrate into society. Most spacecraft contain traps that trigger upon detection of their unique chemical odor. The assertion that they’re hopelessly stupid and inferior seems pretty dubious, though, because they were awfully quick to commandeer and even repair leftover spacecraft from the Shine, and are now destroying everything they can. At first I wondered how so many of them survived, but planets were supposedly unaffected by the Shine, so if they never made it into space in the first place it does make sense for them to have come out ahead.

MODs are just robot defense units who have became aggressive after their command centers went boom. I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of how robots work, but this is super future technology so sure, maybe they’re autonomous enough to do stuff like this. Besides, RPGs need enemies.

“Spin” is just a time unit; it’s based on a mechanical gyroscope-like structure instead of the frequency of a cesium atom, which is weird because the article cites the cesium standard so the developer must know about it. The entire point of converting to an atomic standard is that it’s supposed to be universal rather than something tied to our specific planet or something that could be affected by gravity and other forces. You’d think that distinction would be pretty attractive to a spacefaring society, but no, they just created an artificial planet and measured its rotation instead? Oh, and this naturally means that their time scales are all messed up after the Shine, because they have to be periodically compared to the gyroscope, of which there is only one apparently. I presume Typelog is just evil and tried to centralize as much stuff as possible so they have total control over society, which backfired when all their infrastructure collapsed. And that’s not even getting into how unreliable time units would be in a society where people routinely travel close to the speed of light. People in transit would experience time completely differently from people at their destination, so you’d have to adjust everything basically any time you travelled.

We also get two more opinion pieces. This is Tezkhra, writing under a pseudonym for some reason that I don’t think is ever explained. I’m pretty sure no one else uses pseudonyms, including quite a few characters for whom it would actually make sense, which makes this choice pretty weird. This article foreshadows something that won’t come up until much later. His guess is surprisingly accurate, but I think his clairvoyance is somewhat justified, for reasons that will become apparent. The second article is just some gameplay advice on how you can predict an enemy’s weapon based on their sprite, though that kinda breaks down halfway through the game when enemies start having multiple weapons.

When I return to the Inquiry almost everyone’s dialogue is updated to reflect the mission’s success, which I appreciate. It’s always great to have a reactive and dynamic world! I also get to chat with the crew again.

Marie is a lot nicer this time. She reveals that she has some additional motive beyond the Inquiry’s stated goals, but says she doesn’t trust me enough to elaborate yet. Ookay, whatever.

Rami asks me how I thought I did, so I finally get to be confident and say I was awesome! I may be terrible at talking to people, but I can definitely play video games! He just tells me not to get overconfident, but dude, we’re only on normal mode, there’s no way I’m gonna lose.

”Uh, thanks fer comin’ by. I didn’t get t’know the last guy too well. I don’t want a repeat of that, ya know?”

NO I DO NOT KNOW, BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO TELL ME ANYTHING. AGGGHH. I get that the game wants to create an air of mystery around this, but mysteries need to be built up. I need more details to go off of before this can really establish a place in my imagination. As-is, it’s just “that thing they won’t talk about and the game forgets about after the prologue”. Why did he die? How did he die? What are they so afraid of? The game tries to get me invested in these mysteries, but it never follows through on them or even gives me enough to work with. You can’t expect your audience to create all your atmosphere for you.

Tezkhra explains that the lab was his idea, as he correctly guessed that the Inquiry would need some measure of self-defense. He then awkwardly segues into angsting about how he’s a living weapon because of his arm cannon. I tell him to chill, cybernetics don’t diminish your humanity (lizardity?). He appreciates this.

Finally I check on the new arrival, who is being whiny. I politely agree with his concerns, but he doesn’t appreciate the fact that I’m not quaking in terror like he is. Then, awkward segue:

Mahk: ”We are both captives of fate, sold against our wills here. My price was negotiated; I wonder what yours is?”

Guh…what? None of those are things anyone would say! No one actually talks like Vulcans! Alright fine, if I have to talk like a robot I’ll metagame like one. Mahk cited loyalty to Ivoronus as the only reason he put up with this whole affair, so he clearly values it highly. He’ll probably feel some kinship with me if I play to that… and indeed, he does. I get a relationship boost, and he spells out more explicitly that he is, indeed, motivated by loyalty… just not enough to notice that my statement in no way implies I value loyalty myself, evidently.

I do hope these conversations get better eventually. They’re pretty incoherent right now.

And I think I’ll post character bios too, like I did in The Reconstruction. Don’t worry, I don’t have walls of text this time; the layout is pretty self-explanatory. “A” stands for auroral, or beam weapons, “B” stands for ballistic weapons, and “C” stands for contact weapons. Yes, it’s stupid for spaceships to have melee weapons, but it’s an RPG, what do you expect. AT is “action time”, which determines how early you get to act in the round, RT is “reaction time”, which determines accuracy and evasion. You get valor after each mission, which increases your rank, which will let you get small stat boosts.

You can also see characters’ Typelog IDs, which are like social security numbers or something. Some of them are kind of interesting, but most are just strings of random numbers.

Marie is pretty good, if specialized. She’s got good defenses and is resistant to most early-game elemental attacks, and she has good enough auroral skill for her to stick around. Her only downside is that she has less AP than everyone else, so she only has two attacks at most. Her inexplicable hatred for Ros is reflected in her poor personal trust.

Rami has the best ballistics skill in the game. His defenses are also pretty good. His beard looks like it’s glued on. That’s all I have to say about him.

Tezkhra is slow but steady. He’s got a pretty even spread to his stats, which is good for defense but not so good for offense. He’s also resistant to most early-game elemental attacks. His ID contains a 5, which Typelog uses to mark unusual people; this is the basis for his penname. His first marker is 001, which strikes me as odd… I always assumed that part was chronological, since Marie (the oldest member of the crew) has 001 while Ros (the youngest) has 014, the highest number out of anyone. Maybe “fives” are counted separately.

Mahk is a glass cannon. He has good contact skill and the most AP out of anyone, but his defenses are poor so you have to be careful with him. He also hates Ros, but at least there’s some basis for it, unlike with Marie. I find it interesting that his temperament is classified further towards the passive end of the spectrum. I believe the official answer is that he’s too much of a wuss to be properly aggressive… but he’s not terribly reserved either, so it’s still a little strange.

Anyway. The plot’s over for this episode, so Ros is called back to the suspension lab. FTL doesn’t exist, so most people sleep in special box things during transit to stave off boredom. Ros’ protein is incompatible with this, however, so the only way for her to sleep is in a gel tank.

I think this is a reasonable question. (They already obliquely answered the second one, so that’s pointless.) Sorenson just gives Ros some crap about needing to keep her safe, which is obviously a lie since the tanks are designed for keeping things in, not out. It seems pretty clear the real answer is that they still don’t trust her, and don’t want to give her the opportunity for escape or sabotage. That seems really, really stupid. She’s clearly not a sociopath, the only reason she would possibly betray them is if they constantly treat her like she’s going to betray them and punish her for crimes she’s never committed. And they’re supposed to be the logical ones! The only way this would be understandable is if the past two Ouranoses started normal only to later snap and go on killing sprees, leading the crew to think they’re inherently unstable and untrustworthy. And that would actually be a great plot arc! You spend most of the game thinking they’re being unreasonable only to discover they’re justifiably terrified of you and you might not even be able to trust yourself. Instead, all we ever learn about the previous Ouranos siblings is that they weren’t very personable and died pretty quick. So…Sorenson’s just a dick, then.

After Ros is placed in the tank, Sorenson and Marie stick around to stare because they’re creeps. Sorenson asks Marie what she thinks of Ros…

Marie: ”I’m getting to know her a bit better. More than the last one, anyway. I think we’ll work out just fine.”

Your -48 personal trust says otherwise. If Marie was supposed to be initially hostile but easily won over, it would make more sense for her personal trust not to be quite so low – maybe -10 or something – or to have her be automatically brought up to neutral after the mission, since her main sticking point seemed to be that she didn’t trust Ros to do her job.

Then Mahk barges in. So the outsider is uncomfortable and disapproving of Ros’ treatment, how interesting. That doesn’t reflect well on Sorenson.

Sorenson: ”Mahk Sikohlon. I need you to report to Tezkhra in the Weapons Lab on this Ring as soon as possible.”

Neither does COMPLETELY IGNORING THE ACCUSATION Jesus Christ Sorenson you are terrible at this. “If I just act like I can’t hear their pointed questions, they’ll never suspect I’m evil!” Anyway, he wants to weaponize the Inquiry because OOPS CLIFFHANGER COME BACK NEXT WEEK!!! You think I’m joking but it’s seriously just ”After synchronizing with the relay near the Machinatorium, we received an… interesting message,” then cut to black. An understandable consequence of the episodic format, but the necessary word contortions are still really awkward.

So, that was episode 0. Definitely better than The Reconstruction’s prologue – the tone and focus was consistent with and relevant to the main story this time, and details were paced out well, allowing the player to get properly acclimated to the setting. There are enough plot and character hooks to keep the player interested – the game will fail to deliver on most of them, but that’s a discussion for later. All in all, it does what a prologue is supposed to do, and the basic story it delivers holds up as long as you don’t think about it too much. And it actually has story, which is a major step forward from The Reconstruction.

One thing that is of note is how weird everyone behaves… I do wonder if that’s actually supposed to be intentional this time. This isn’t elaborated on until later, but people supposedly suppressed their emotions before the Shine, and but now they’ve been jarred back into operating on instinct and emotion and are having trouble adjusting. This could go some ways toward explaining how inconsistent and irrational everyone is being, and, if players had enough faith in the narrative, could be a good bit of foreshadowing before that point is elaborated on. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t really work, because – surprise surprise – the characters’ behavior doesn’t match up with it. If people are aware that they’re not in control of their emotions anymore and are prone to irrational behavior, they should acknowledge that and try to self-moderate. Marie should be stepping back and thinking hey wait, I’m not suppressed anymore, maybe I’m letting my emotions get the better of me. Rami should cite this as a possible explanation when calling her out on her conspiracy theories. And Tezkhra and Sorenson, who are still suppressed, should be constantly checking everyone for irrational behavior and acting as the voice of reason. People should acknowledge that their behavior is unusual, even if they eventually decide they like having emotions better. Such a drastic shift in mentality should have more ramifications than people just continuing life as normal.

Next time the plot will get rolling, so hopefully I’ll spend less time nitpicking over characterization and more time on interesting happenings. Once again, I am still new at this, so your feedback is appreciated. Am I overrelying on pictures? Are my summaries confusing? Do you want me to continue with this level of detail or should I step back? Things you’d like to see or not see? Tell me in the comments below.

PREVIOUS | NEXT