Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius Reviews

9/10 PogChamp

Nice game. nice graphics both in Linux and Windows

This game is so great honestly, it's the best game in the entire franchise, yet thankfully it's also the only one I'm willing to pay full price for and it's entirely free.

I actually like this more than Liberation Day's combat and reloading features. Played for both the story and battle, not alot of mecha / robot turn based battle strategy games available here on steam.

A light tactical game combined with a visual novel, where the choices you make matter. It's easy to get caught up in the story. I enjoyed this.

So for anime fans its fair, but for people that actually want good gameplay its pathetic. There are limited choices to make in the storyline and the battles, which are the majority of the game, are pathetically designed. The difficulty settings say the default is the way the game is designed to be played, great but i like harder challenges. So I played on hard... well the SECOND mission it is not possible to surivive until TURN 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with simple luck, and getting that luck seems to be about a 50/50 chance. because it is only the second mission means there are no particular stategies you can do to survive longer, it comes down to nothing other than iff the enemy hits you or misses on their turns. So what is the point of this? it's utterly pathetically broken as strategic combat.

Oh well, I downloaded this one for the waifus, but, surprisingly enough, I found the gameplay part to be quite immersive and challenging, if a bit unpolished. The plot is your standard space opera...with battle spacefaring waifus (too bad there's no real way to pursue a romantic relationship with one of them - the plot is more or less linear in this department). As for the production values, they aren't anything special, but more than adequate for a free game. Overall, a solid experience which got me interested in the pay-to-play sequel.

I downloaded this when it first came out, played for 17 minutes and then stopped for years. Then I was bored and decided to play it again. I had a great time. What an intense ending. The art is poor, though to be fair this is a free indie game. There's not many event CGs and most of the times you just have a background and characters in their standard standing position behind the dialogue screen, whose speaker is hard to follow because the name and the dialogue are separated so far apart. If they changed the dialogue box color for each character, like brown for Ava and red for Asaga, it would have been much better. The gameplay is... laggy? The attack animation is very basic and takes quite long, and I skipped them a lot, but there's no transition or anything. When you click to skip an animation, the screen pauses for a second and then you're already on the next phase. There's no sliding to close the scene or screen fading out to black and opens up to the next scene. This is particularly annoying during the enemy's turn as you may want to skip a lot of enemy's animation. The voice actors are alright. The dialogues aren't voiced and they only speak a few lines during battle. I especially like Ava's voice actor, but Icari's out-of-nowhere tsundere lines are simply horrible. So why did I give a thumbs up? It's the well-written story. The conflict the main character is having actually feels rough, heavy and difficult. It's not a story about choosing which girl to date or anything cheap like that. It's about what kind of leader you want to be. You have a ship to protect. Your morals and professionalism are crossing each other, and the romance just makes it even harder. I only care for one of the girls, but maybe that's just me being me rather than the other romance being poorly written. The story builds up to an AMAZING ending, I'm telling you. I won't spoil anything, but GOD DAMN I'm glad I chose the right option (for me) on that final choice. IT'S SO GOOD!

For a free game this is surprisinly high quality. The combat is challenging (if you want) and fun. The soundtrack also is beautiful and very fitting in many scenes, though there are a few were it doesnt mach the tone of the scene but only a few. Characters are interesting and quite likeable. Ships and ryders designs are very well done. Overall a must play for lovers of strategy games and space operas.

for a free game this is great - the battles get a bit hard if your not on the idealised upgrade path however its the story that's the best part of the game anyway so I just dialed down the battle difficulty a bit when it got to being a real chore and enjoyed the game even more. I initially thought the girls all looked a bit similar but its quickly clear that each has a deliberately very different personaility from each other. You get to be their hero - and why not. I'll not say too much but the ending was good and leaves you wanting to buy the next game in the storyline - having saidf that, this one is plenty long enoufgh for a good enjoyable playthrough spo its not a cheap teaser so you buy the next, its a great game in its own right.