Curate of Curiosities

Previously, we got woken up from cryosleep because the universe exploded, and the space authorities need us to fix things. We teamed up with two guys who appeared in the epilogue of the creator's previous game to rendezvous with the Sikohlon, a family of arms dealers, despite the fact that due to the fact that universe-wide peace has been achieved, there would be very little nead for an arms dealing business, and the fact that those who played The Reconstruction would associate the name with a pacifist group.

While it seemed that our adventure would be tragically cut short due to this game's incompatibility with Linux, I did find another program that works with RPG Maker VX, and after tweaking the game files a bit, I'm now able to play it at full speed.

And now we begin the game for real.

Once again, Ros is waken up, though the game doesn't make clear how much time it's been since our last mission. Could have been just a week, could have been a hundred years, or even a thousand years, it doesn't matter.

We're ferried to the briefing room again and informed of a new development: there's a habitation that has successfully recovered from the Shine, and we need to get onboard so we can use it as a template for the reconstruction (ayyy!) of the rest of the inhabited universe.

And right on cue, the Lessers that we encountered back in the prologue are attacking it.

We don't even get a chance to explore the Inquiry after the briefing, we just go right to the launch sequence.

This mission's a pretty simple one, just take out the Lessers that are attacking the habitation. They haven't gotten any tougher since the prologue.

While combat in this game is faster-paced compared to The Reconstruction, at the same time it is a bit monotonous. While The Reconstruction's characters had a variety of skills, of varying degrees of usefulness, our fleet members' skillset is only determined by the weapons equipped on their craft, so they will only have access to attacking skills.

The inside of the habitation looks pretty clean, just what the guys at the Inquiry needed.

And we get a new fleet member out of the deal. He's a doctor, just like Rami.

Between missions, you can chat up your party members to make them trust you more, as well as get some insight on the setting. While I understand that this can make the characters less one-note compared to those of The Reconstruction,

Next mission, we need metals to build up the habitation's defenses. Good thing that there's a docked spaceship full of the stuff right nearby! But there's one issue, there are autonomous attack drones nearby that will shoot down anything that gets near. At least it's not Lessers this time around.

Plus, we've gotten on the radar of someone named "Lagarto Desperado." Uh huh.

Now that we have more party members that can fit in a single fleet, the game introduces us to controlling multiple fleets. But we only need one fleet for this mission. And instead of Lessers, we face autonomous drones assigned to defend the area. Since there didn't seem to be any need for self-defense until recently, what could they possibly defend against? Shooting down rogue asteroids?

Like the prologue mission, we are required to go into the ruins of a spaceship. Inside, we stumble around until our scanner picks up the materials that we're looking for. Thrilling.

Talking to the fleet members after every mission can get annoying, but the glimpses at the kind of concessions that society had to make after immortality-granting technology became widespread.

Quite a few people died in the wake of the Shine, right? And even more are being threatened by Lesser attacks. Eventually, we're going to have to deal with the prospect of bolstering the existing population. You think that such an advanced society would at least consider the use of cloning technology or something similar, especially since they seem to be the ones responsible for seeding planets with life for this latent energy thing.

Typelog is the entity responsible for storing all the text logs that you can read in the pause menu, as well as people's unnecessary memories. An extremely vital service for an immortal civilization. If we want to restore society, getting its infrastructure back online is a top priority

This mission introduces blind zones, areas of the map that are obscured by fog of war due to lack of active communication nodes. Fortunately, there are relay nodes around the area that can be activated to reveal parts of the map. Our destination is the communications hub at the bottom.

Although it's abandoned, theres still one person left inside. It can only be a Lesser, seeing as how it managed to spring the trap that's triggered by their scent. Tez and Mahk can sense it too; the occupant's scent is particularly noxious. Is there anyone else we know who was lizard-like and especially noxious?

This is a Lesser who only refers to himself as "The Black One," and he wants Tezkhra dead. Hmmm...think back to The Reconstruction's epilogue, Tez mentioned that he was caught off-guard by a Lesser. You don't think that this guy may have had something to do with it?

After he's dealt with, we chat up the party some more, and it's on to our next briefing. We found some more metal in an abandoned mining facility. Normally, we would have drones do the work, but it's in the middle of an asteroid field

The gimmick for this mission is that some nodes of the map are in the midst of micrometeor swarms, and if you get into battle in any of them, your fleet will take hull damage each turn. But you only fight one enemy fleet in these conditions, and they go down way to quickly for the damage to start building up.

We've only been fighting two types of enemies in this episode, Lessers and drones. At least when we were fighting bugs in The Reconstruction's first chapter, each of them had different skillsets. There was even one with an AoE attack. But nope, here everyone's weapons are single-target only.

Hmmm. If we can't contact home base, then something must have happened to the Inquiry's communication. We just got here, so there's no way that somebody could have tampered with the relays we activated this quickly right?

It looks like there was after all. Well well well, if it isn't our lizard stalker. This must be the final mission in this episode, even though nothing in the briefing hinted at it. So since he's a Lacertian, is he really Hispanic, or just LARPing as one?

This part of the mission confronts us with every mechanic we've faced in this chapter: we have the micrometeor swarms from earlier in the mission, and blind zones from the mssion before, but are also introduced to a new mechanic. There are two nodes to the sides of El Lagarto where enemies are situated, and if you face him without dealing with them, they will open fire on your fleet.

On to the man, well, Lacertian, himself. His Hexahowitzer hurts, but overall, he's nowhere near as tough as the bug queen. His two minions are pretty inconsequential, too; one of them goes down before it gets a chance to attack. The whole boss fight only takes two turns. I take it the sluggish combat was a common criticism for The Reconstruction, so Space Lizard may have gone a bit too far in the other direction.

Back on the Inquiry, it may seem like we have a choice as to whether or not we execute him, but it looks like that can wait until the crew wakes us up from our suspension tank again.

So that's episode 1, of the five that were released. Well...none of the characters are obvious jokes, yet I can think of precisely one instance of subversion regarding the main character. Ros seems awfully chatty for a customizable protagonist. I supposed it would be different if I selected different personality values for him, but I'm not sure if the engine could support such complexity. While The Reconstruction's storytelling was pretty aimless up until the final chapter (I'm still not over how vague the phrase "rid the world of turmoil" in the game's blurb turned out to be), here we have a concrete goal from the start; rebuild intergalactic society after it was wrecked by the Shine. Not just that, but we have a potential connection with one of The Reconstruction's unanswered questions with the Black One.

So far, so good. Here's hoping that the rest of the game can live up to it. And here's hoping the gameplay gets less monotonous, at that.