While most of the faction high commanders are all men, the Sunrider is almost exclusively run by capable, competent, non-sexualized women. It’s actually a little amusing how gender-equal Sunrider ends up being. Every girl in your harem pilots her own colour-coded giant robot, is what I’m saying, and I’ll be damned if that doesn’t make most of them even more attractive. ‘Ryder’, here, is a fancy word for ‘mech’. The women you pick up on your travels aren’t just capable starship personnel, of course: each one of them is also an accomplished Ryder pilot. Icari, here, taking her tsun game to a new level. Icari, the tsundere warrior with a dark past. Asaga, the always-optimistic Hero of Justice. Like any visual novel protagonist worth his salt, Captain Marauder quickly manages to surround himself with a gaggle of attractive twenty-something women with differing looks and personalities. But let’s just say ancient superweapons from the past factor in at some point.Īgainst the backdrop of the larger socio-political struggle of PACT and the Solar Alliance, the Sunrider forms a smaller hub of personal narratives and character interaction. PACT is lead by the enigmatic masked Veniczar Arcadius, hence the game’s name, whose plans involve… well, that’s actually unclear at the start. Yes, those terms are all meaningless to you right now, but Sunrider does a decent job of world-building throughout its narrative. ![]() ![]() You’ve already seen a glimpse of the larger storyline: the evil People’s Alliance, PACT, is hell-bent on conquering every Neutral Rim world this side of the Solar Alliance. The writing is usually funny and sometimes even gripping, the various romance plots don’t feel too much at odds with the larger saving-the-galaxy storyline, and the tactical combat gameplay is varied, interesting and challenging, with meaningful difficulty levels for every level of skill and masochistic challenge-love.įor instance: if you’re doing this particular battle on Standard difficulty, you’re either a mad person or a wizard of some distinction. But if you want a single-line take-away from this whole review, make it this one: Sunrider attempts to be both a fun-to-read visual novel and an engaging tactical combat experience, and somehow it manages to succeed at both. ![]() I have plenty of criticism about its writing, its characters, and several quirks of its combat systems and design. Sunrider is by no means flawless, of course. Where does this game get the gall to be actually really good? I’d play it once, finish it, write about it, and then move on with the rest of my busy week.Īnd while Sunrider definitely has all of those things, it’s also so much more than I gave it credit for. Some over-wrought dialogue, a few one-dimensional characters, maybe a little hilariously out-of-place nudity. Some dumb little game I could blow through in two hours or so. When I installed this free-to-play visual novel game from the makers of Sakura Spirit, I was expecting something… you know, light. You know, I’m actually a little upset with Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius.
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