Tech Romancer

Time to check another console off the list. With the official launch of the new generation (I think this would be 9th Gen?), it's safe to assume a lot of folks out there will be getting new gaming consoles for the holidays this year. I know I did!

So, did I pick up a PS5, or did I go with an XBox? Neither. I got a Sega Dreamcast for Christmas this year. I've been after one of these for a long time and thanks in no small part to my wife, I've finally got one. It even came with a bunch of games, running the gamut from console mainstays to obscure outliers.

I should also mention that while I've never owned a Dreamcast before now, I do have a lot more familiarity with it than I do other Sega consoles. I've certainly played more of it than the Saturn and I would even say I put more time on it than I did the Genesis. I've played a lot of the heavy hitters here, Sonic Adventure, Soul Caliber, etc. A lot of these titles were also ported to other consoles, I covered Grandia II a few months ago and I still always forget that Resident Evil: Code Veronica was originally a DC exclusive. As such, I decided to pick the strangest of the games my new system came with.

That leads us to Tech Romancer, which is not a dating sim about androids but a 3D fighting game, originally released in the arcades in 1998 before being ported to the Dreamcast in early 2000. Developed by Capcom, its in a similar vein to games like Power Stone or Ehergeiz, a 3D fighter where you can roam freely throughout the arena. That's an okay start but unfortunately, at least for me, the game's story and aesthetic are based on (sigh) mecha anime. Think Gundam Wing or any other of those million series' I spent most of my life actively trying to avoid. I know I've complained about anime before, but this may be my least favorite of its sub genres, I don't know what it is about it but it really bugs me. I always liked the Front Mission games and Xenogears is great, they borrow a lot from the genre, but most of it is just too hard for me to stomach.

I will say, the game does look great. I always forget how powerful the Dreamcast actually was. The anime style visuals are well done and the robots are big and detailed. Their attacks all look pretty cool and the anime cutscenes in the games story mode look great. The sound isn't as memorable, it isn't bad but it doesn't really do the game justice. The voice acting is okay, it's in Japanese but it adds to the more tense moments in the game. This could just be me, but I always feel like Japanese VO artists overact in these games while English VO artists tend to underact not have enough energy behind their lines. I guess I would rather have the former.

But this was all just too much. In many ways, Tech Romancer embodies more what I dislike about modern fighting games than what I like about older ones. There's constant explosions, everything is flying around, you're getting millions of different projectiles thrown at you, random stuff is flashing and the characters are yelling at you at the top of their lungs. It's all just too much. Sometimes that much chaos can actually add to the fun, but I don't think it's done right here.

The biggest problem for me were the controls. All of the mechs move so stiffly it feels like they aren't actually responding to your inputs. I feel like all the characters move super fast or incredibly slow and you almost want to pick the slow guys because you can see inputs registering through their slow, deliberate animations. You have a button for jumping, a button for blocking and another for attacking, but I feel like I could never get my mech to do the same move twice. I think they tried to have your different attacks determined by screen distance, but I don't know. Each machine also has special moves, which I could rarely get to work. At least the hit detection is good and the priority system is fair. Walking in 3D works surprisingly well, but it almost feels like an afterthought.

There really isn't much more to say here. The game does offer a number of modes and has a wide selection of characters, which is a plus. But it's very clunky and the battles tend to get old quickly. The game is also filled with translation errors, at least I think they're errors, which threw me quite a bit. I almost feel like I'm being a bit unfair, but I found the entire aesthetic offputing and it made it difficult for me to get invested. If the controls were tighter and the combat more fluid, maybe I could have looked past the in-your-face anime tropes, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

4/10