Aquanox Deep Descent

This game is tragic, if it were not a game set before Archimedean Dynasty in the Aqua setting it would probably not get a redthumb review from me. If one were to imagine the game almost completely unaltered except with direct references to the old Aqua setting changed to legally distinct ones, it would be an alright 6dof shooter game one would not be too upset about buying on sale. Deep Discount. To get the parts that I didn't hate out of the way: -The basic mechanics of combat are Alright, even if they're let down by encounter design and the whole repair kit/shield battery system -The high amount of caves did at least provide some tactical situations where you don't use breaker or shard -No complaints about the graphics -I played through and finished this game. Despite loving AD and playing through it dozens of times over the last 30 years I have never been able to stomach a playthrough of Aquanox. This is not high praise, but sufficient enjoyment was achieved to get me to the end and annoy me enough to leave this review. My main complaint about the story in this is under no circumstances should you have paid for the license to use the Aqua setting. Taken by itself, the story isn't amazing but it basically works. But you did not have the courage to let it stand on its own, instead of something inspired by Aquanox you had to come in and mess with Archimedean Dynasty. Why? Brand recognition? As much as the game tries to wink wink about AD it is as if the story had no regard to the events of that game. The shoehorning in of Dead Eye was to the detriment of this game. In the hook for potential sequels the new player characters are essentially killed off. Why do this at all? Either the MC of this game should have been Dead Eye starting his career with 3 friends or the future games should have been the Cryos as mercs. Also, how is he older than Neopolis? But there is so much more! Why are the factions the way they are? Who even are the 'Indo-Pacific Federation'? Are they the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Japanese? Could they even be Australian? We have no such problem with the Atlantic Feder-uhh, Alliance. They're NATO under the sea. If you look at the oceans on something like google maps the factions of Aqua as Massive depicted it make a lot of sense. They were all places that have deep sea to escape to. Lacking the ability to reach other oceans in a timely manner, each developed a new, distinct culture that is a fusion of the countries that started those particular deep sea colonies. East Asia, settling the Pacific, would face a huge continent sized reef trying to transit to the Indian Ocean. There is a reason why Australia is a mysterious place in AD where no one goes, the Tasman Sea is shallow. They'd have to go right around it into the southern ocean. The original Clans Union and the Shogunate had to deal with the Timor sea being a radioactive hellzone. But all this world building is thrown out because seas rising and the POM layer being a magical electical fence 40m deep instead. Also magical gates let you traverse an ocean in minutes. The result is Aqua is a few stations that send small fighter fleets to raid some strategic... caves? The idea of man-made gates being much shorter range than Senthic gates is immediately discarded as we go from the Atlantic to the Arabian Sea to Mariana's Trench via Egypt with a few hops between caves. Who led the united effort to construct these gates everywhere that couldn't keep this tiny world united? There is nothing in this story that is improved by being legally in Aqua as an entry of the Aquanox series! Without the license a lot of this would be sloppy, but forgivable. What was done to the Bionts is literal Character Assassination. They aren't even known until near the end of AD, and they certainly weren't occupying prime deep sea territory. They had absolutely no desire to assimilate anyone like a Borg. Survion embodied the hive mind but did not personify it. It was a critical point in a big complex that got destroyed with a bomb. It was easy for the writers to keep them around in Aquanox. How do the Bionts come back twice from the death of Manta? We will never know, because Deep Arrow are clearly not getting to do a whole series. Perhaps it is better to imagine what contrivances they had waiting for players. The Senthics completely change the setting. Anyone that has played through AD would probably remember the combat music that samples one of the cutscenes, drilling this into you: "The surface a nuclear wasteland, the last survivors fled to the depths of the oceans, to deep sea stations harvesting the final gifts of the Earth. They took with them the storied history of Man, and sank into darkness for centuries. After the dark times, for the last time, Man rose again to a new life, the only life left on a dead world. A world that is our own creation. We called it: Aqua." The setting was not 'Scientists that were basically NERV from NGE upset The Elder Things from The Mountains of Madness. They scoured billions of people from the surface of Earth to teach us to be less mean to each other.' What a waste.