The Battle System

Pick a fight

Anachronox's battle system is actually very good and it's a shame that it's underutilized (there are actually few battles in the game, and random encounters are fairly infrequent as well). At first, the battle system seems remarkably similar to the real-time yet turn-based system of the Final Fantasy series but it's actually more complex. Like Final Fantasy, the battle occurs in real-time, but each combat action requires a certain recovery period. It's real-time because your opponent will not wait for your turn to continue his attack, however the delay provides a reasonable amount of time to plot your course of action so that the emphasis is on strategy rather than your reflexes. As your characters gain experience, their recovery time will decrease and their defensive and offensive strength will increase. After every victory, your characters gain experience and pick up inventory items.

Can't we all just get along?

Battle Booty

Throughout the game, you will find more powerful weapons and armor as well as artifacts that can provide additional defense or strengths. Some characters have melee weapons while others carry ranged weapons. In Anachronox, this distinction is significant because the game incorporates movement into the battle. In every battle, there is a small and defined grid of where your characters can stand. For a melee weapon to be effective, your character must be close to the enemy. However, since range weapons incorporate line-of-sight, moving a melee-weapon wielding character can sometimes prevent other members of your party from attacking. Furthermore, you can move next to switches in order to affect the battle (i.e. enable a security system).

You can only move one space at a time

This isn't used frequently

Special character-specific attacks come from your "Bouge Bar" which builds up over time. Sly can use "Fatima Screen" in which his LifeCursor puts up a shield, effectively upgrading his defense, while Rho can analyze your opponents to see where their weaknesses lie. Each character has multiple battle skills which add an extra dimension to the game. Inventory items can add further offensive and defensive options as well. Still, with the exception of bosses, most of your enemies are so easy that you won't actually need to use these fancy strategies to win.

The MysTech

Once MysTech awakens, it can be used to endow your characters with extra skills. This is essentially the magic system in Anachronox and is more than just similar to Final Fantasy VII's materia system. For example, the FireSlag MysTech can be used to attack an opponent. However, it can be used to extinguish a fire on your own party. Each MysTech artifact has multiple different degrees of use. You can use double the energy for a more powerful level-2 fire attack/defense, quadruple the energy for level-3, or octuple it for level 4. Interestingly, the source of energy for MysTech comes from … irradiated rodents. I'm not kidding - you actually find and stockpile "glodents" in your inventory in order to power MysTech. The MacGuffin can be a driving aspect of any story, but geez, at least make it seem grander in scale - the Maltese Falcon wasn't encrusted with Oreos, after all.

Real-time Turn-based battles

That's pretty cool

About halfway through the game (spoiler alert), your characters will discover that attaching Elementors to MysTech will modify their properties. Elementors are bugs of many different colors. These bugs can be leveled up to further. There are over 250 million different MysTech/Elementor combinations you can create. I doubt they tested them all. :)