Spiky haired blond hero with amnesia?

Check. 

Fully customizable mecha to pilot?

Why not? Check.

Panhandling for money by playing a rhythm mini game?

Huh? Well, if you say so. Check.

The main character's name is Vanilla Beans?

Whoa now! You’ve got to be joking, right?

Nope. Steambot Chronicles takes a whole bunch of Japanese gaming conventions and slaps them all onto one disc for you. It all starts off with our blond hero, Vanilla, being woken up by Corriander, Connie for short. Vanilla is missing his memories and Connie has just missed the bus. Together they come upon a beat-up Trotmobile and the search for a cure for Vanilla begins. Well, after you give Connie a lift home in your new Trotmobile that is, she did miss the bus on account of Vanilla being passed out and all.

Getting Connie home is easier said than done at first. Trotmobiles, the game’s mecha, are the main feature of Steambot Chronicles. Controlling them well is also the main challenge of the game. Driving a Trot is done by maneuvering both analog sticks. Press both forward to amble straight ahead or pull them both back to reverse. Trots can sidestep by pushing both sticks either right or left at the same time and they are turned by pushing one stick up and the other one down. You can also jump and use a “boost” ability (quick forward burst of speed). Adding combat buttons, the L1 and R1 buttons attack with the respective arms of the Trot, quickly makes maneuvering from point A to point B while fighting off bandits a rather awkward affair. It’s clunky, but after a few hours you’ll be piloting your Trotmobile like a pro.

You’ve got the hang of the controls, so let’s move on to upgrading that rusty heap of a Trotmobile. Each garage in the game will have an assortment of weapons and chassis to choose from for your Trot. There are your typical swords, buzz saws and cannons for fending off bandits and fighting in the various Trotmobile arenas. You’ll also find some stranger parts such as a parasol roof that creates much needed shade in the desert and a front grill mounted cuckoo clock that I never did quite figure out. The lower halves of the trots also have a good variety of options including large wheels, spider legs, and tank treads to name a few. Once you get everything outfitted the way you want it you can then custom paint your trot with a base coat and an accent color. You can also create your own vanity license plates for it using the built in “paint-like” tool.

By the time you reach the first town you will have had the chance to get familiar with driving and fighting in a Trot. Hope you didn’t get too comfortable behind the wheel though because when you enter towns the game goes on autopilot. As the town gate closes you’ll be presented with a list of destinations in town. Selecting one causes your Trot to merge in with traffic and head to the spot you picked. Because you’re Trot will follow traffic signals and even allow other Trots and cars to cut him off, you might want to take this time to get a snack or finish your homework.

Once your Trot is parked at the big orange safety cone, there’s quite a bit Vanilla can do on foot. You can stop by the local tailor or barber shop and choose from a good selection of local fashions and hairdos. When you change Vanilla’s outfit or coiffure it’s reflected onscreen and other characters will even comment on your taste, or lack thereof. All that Trotmobile action is sure to give one the munchies, so you’ll also be able to purchase food at various shops. Vanilla has to eat on a regular basis or he ends up slowly stumbling around with his hand on his stomach until you find a doughnut or a block of cheese for him. Beyond the mundane eating, dressing up and grooming tasks he can perform, Vanilla also can play a mean game of pool. Every town has a bar and every bar has a billiards table with a variety of locals ready to wager on a game or two. It’s a fairly decent mini game, considering it’s the only one besides the Trot arena, and the AI is quite tough.

When you tire of cavorting around town you can also perform on street corners or with a band to make a little bit of spending money. Even though he’s an amnesiac, Vanilla is quite the musician. He starts with his trusty harmonica, but you’ll also have the opportunity to learn to play several instruments including the piano, a trumpet, and even an accordion. Each instrument is played slightly differently, but if you’re familiar with rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero you’ll feel right at home. For example, the harmonica is played by moving the left analog stick between three columns of scrolling “notes”. Each “note” is a “played” by pressing or pressing and holding one of the face buttons. I placed the words “note” and “played” in quotes because unlike games such as Amplitude or Guitar Hero where activating or missing a note actually produces an appropriate response, the music sections in Steambot Chronicles are just an exercise in pressing buttons to the beat.  Unfortunately, your button pressing ability has no influence on the actual sound of the tune Vanilla is playing.   

There’s a whole lot to do in Steambot Chronicles but it never seems like you get the time to do it. From the very beginning, the game railroads the player from one fixed scene to the next. An early example is when you meet Connie’s mother Rosemary. Afterward, I was all ready to head off to explore the town of Nefroburg, but the game changes the time of day to night and everything is closed so folks can watch the Garland Globetrotters (Connie’s band) perform. I looked and looked but besides being able to play pool at the bar or using my harmonica on a street corner to make a little change, you pretty much have to go to the concert to progress the game.  This leads to yet another event that leads to another and the cycle rarely slows enough for you to really do anything besides keep up with Connie and the gang. I’d probably call it a “somewhat-frustrating semi-linear adventure” instead of the “relaxing non-linear adventure” it’s billed as.

Gameplay: 6.9

Steambot Chronicles takes the “jack of all trades, master of none” theory of game design to a new level. Trotmobile customization and design is fun, but piloting and fighting in them can be very difficult at times. The rhythm mini games are neat idea, but are nowhere near as addictive as the full featured games they attempt to emulate. The game also only lives up to the non-linear ideal in spurts, with quite a bit of the players time focused on story elements instead.

Graphics: 6.2

I have very mixed feelings about the graphics in Steambot Chronicles. The art direction is a refreshing break from the standard fare. The various Trot designs and character designs are very unique and well animated. Unfortunately, the quasi cel-shaded style outlines on Trots and the characters are inconsistent. From some angles they are really thick and obscure details on the character, or they are too thin and look out of place. It’s a minor detail that I normally wouldn’t mention if it were not for the constant framerate drops that make the smallest graphical defects stick out even more. The unsteady framerate breeds excessive “tearing” where part of the screen has refreshed slightly ahead of the rest causing the image to appear broken into two slightly misaligned pieces for a moment. It’s not the greatest looking game, but the diverse gameplay helps make up for the graphical stumbles.

Sound: 8.2

Atlus USA has tapped extremely talented voice actors for their recent games. All of the characters are wonderfully acted. On top of the standard dialogue duties some of the main characters even sing! The songs are sung and played well, but the lyrics don’t seem to follow a normal English structure. It seems to me that they are translated as best as possible from the original Japanese lyrics. They don’t quite stick in your head without the standard rhymes and verse/chorus structure we’re all used to hearing. Sound effects are also well done especially when you’re stomping around in a Trotmobile. Trot’s have this hard-to-define creaky sound when moving that really makes them sound like the somewhat recent invention they are implied to be.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Steambot Chronicles is fairly easy. The hard part is getting used to the Trot controls. Even after a few hours I was still struggling on occasion to get my Trotmobile turned around to face the enemy that was pummeling me from behind. Other than the occasional beating you’ll take due to the poor controls, finding your way to the “end” of the game is considerably straightforward.

Concept: 8.7

The design goal for Steambot Chronicles must have been to find the perfect recipe for a Japanese flavored game. Combine a heaping cup of fully customized mecha with a spoonful of rhythm gaming. Add a dash of adorable pop idol-inspired love interest. Don’t forget the secret “non-linear adventure” ingredient and since we’re doing this whole cooking metaphor, let’s go ahead and name all the characters after spices. Even though the ingredients are all good by themselves, the result of mixing them up is sure to be an acquired taste.

Overall: 7.1

There is just so much going on in Steambot Chronicles that it would be impossible for the entire game to be perfect. The team at Irem did a pretty good job of blending all of the various elements of different genres into the game. If you’re a fan of all of the different types of gameplay, mecha combat and rhythm gaming in particular, then you should give Steambot Chronicles a try. If you’re only a fan of one part of the game, you’re probably not going to be able to get past the lack of polish you’re used to in other games that have a stricter focus. Even with all the spots in the game that are a bit bumpy, Trot piloting really is relaxing fun.