cyberpunk Archives -

I’ll Have a Starburger, Starfries, and a Space Coke, Please

Having played Starbites for almost 25 hours and obtaining my first ever platinum trophy on it, I can confirm with absolute certainty that it is an RPG developed by IkinaGames and published by NIS, and not a chain of intergalactic-themed fast food restaurants. There is a bar in it, but it’s called Salud’s or something. There’s a pun there about salad bars, but I’m not sure if it was intentional.

The game is set on the planet Bitter, where salvagers eke a living off of war-torn wastelands surrounding a multi-levelled city known as Delight. It’s got a definite cyberpunk thing going on, but it completely lacks the edge of the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 or The Ascent. There is a bit of swearing, though, which makes it pretty hardcore for a turn-based JRPG about a plucky, optimistic young adventurer assembling a ragtag bunch of misfits to save the planet.

The little emblems beneath the enemy’s health bar denote what types of damage they’re weak to.

Despite its lack of edge, the story of Starbites is legitimately interesting. The set-up involves protagonist, Lukida, being horribly buried in debt and working for the heartless mistress of Delight City, Fennec. Lukida, being headstrong and more than a little careless, keeps getting herself into scrapes that just pile on the debt, yet she still never loses hope that she’ll achieve her dream of getting the heck off of Bitter. As for Bitter itself, many years before the events of the game a war was raging on and above the planet’s surface, and then some unknown event caused every starship in orbit to come crashing down to the surface at the same time.

This apocalyptic incident isn’t the only mystery surrounding Bitter, and when Lukida starts digging into the planet’s strange past and uncovering secrets about herself at the same time I found myself genuinely invested. The other party members are entertaining enough, but I did find Makobo, the mandatory, kooky child character, kind of annoying. Stoic ex-merc, Badger, was cool but a little bland, Jerome was kind of wishy-washy (I still don’t really know why he was around, though I appreciated his super powerful follow-up attacks), and super-serious Marie was a nice foil to Lukida’s optimism.

That leaves Gwendoll, the mecha-bike riding action girl with the very revealing top and lips that don’t quit. I liked everything about her character apart from the in-game model, which looked kind of weird and doll-like. This does kind of make sense, though, as it was very heavily hinted throughout that she is an android assassin “unknown” or “doll” but isn’t aware of it, but this aspect of her character is never fully confirmed or really explored beyond the very obvious “hints”. Still, I like Gwendoll, she’s cool, and I guess it’s cool that we know she’s secretly a murder robot even if no one in the game world does.

The guy with the beanie reminds me of someone, but I can’t quite put my finger on who.

The music provides a fine accompaniment to the on-screen chaos and brightly-lit cyber-nonsense. There’s a mix of rock, electronica, and classical to amuse your ears, and I did find a couple of standouts, especially in the various battle themes. Incidentally, I’m no musician but the title screen music of Starbites sounds to me like a near note-for-note piano cover of the title screen music in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Go find them both on YouTube and see for yourself.

The battle system in Starbites is standard, turn-based fare with a neat, Persona-like twist where you’re tasked with discovering and exploiting enemy elemental weaknesses. Each enemy has a number next to their health bar that counts down every time they take a hit from an element they’re weak to. Get this number down to zero and the bad guy will enter a “broken” state, missing a turn and taking additional damage until they shake off their mecha-depression. This means that you’ll be paying attention to the elements and number of hits offered by each of your characters’ available moves, and using that info to pile the damage on your enemies and mitigate the pain that’s coming the other way.

All of the enemies are mechanised, although some have human pilots. Lukida claims that they “knocked out” an entire camp of villains at one point.

The playable characters don’t fight personally, instead piloting “motorbots”, which are essentially mini-mechs (or a bike in Gwendoll’s case), and their available attacks tend to specialise in a couple of elements each, so it’s wise to keep your party rotating depending on the prominent enemy type in a given area. The playable characters have extensive talent trees, too, meaning they can be customised into attacking powerhouses or defensive, support types depending on your preference. There’s also loads of equipment to upgrade your mechs, but only certain pieces are represented visually. I really enjoyed the battles in Starbites, though, and found myself suitably intimidated by bosses with huge numbers next to their health bars and trying to figure out the best way to break them quickly. The final boss makes excellent use of the breaking mechanic as well. I won’t go into it any more than that, but just know that it was a very nice touch.

Alas, it’s not all cyberpunk sunshine and holographic rainbows. Starbites does have some downsides that can’t be ignored. The game did drag at times; exploration is a bit pedestrian, some areas are annoyingly maze-like, and searching for crafting ingredients doesn’t feel rewarding when the crafting mechanic can be completely ignored. There’s an option to speed up battles, and while I didn’t use it at all early on, from the mid-point I was spending a lot of time watching attack animations play out in super-fast motion.

Marie seems cool but she’s kind of grumpy. Lukida and Gwendoll seem like they’d be more fun to hang out with.

It’s also very visually bland. I used this simile on my RankOne profile already, but when you’re out exploring the wastelands Starbites looks like Stellar Blade if it was running on a potato. Textures are blurry, environments are flat, and the cyborg character models that mope around the hub area in Delight City are kind of dumb-looking. I do like most of the main casts’ character models and the mechs look great, but even these don’t stand up when the camera gets a bit too close, and when the developers put these textures on full display during a cutscene close-up, it can really take you out of the moment.

Still, if you pretend you’re playing a PS3 RPG from your back catalogue instead of a brand new PS5 game, then you should be able to put up with it, and you’ll be rewarded with a wonderfully balanced battle system, fun characters, a legitimately interesting story, and a general, cosy JRPG experience that you won’t regret. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the guy at the counter has just shouted out my number so I’m going to go and pick up my Starburger, Starfries, and coke. All this talking has made me hungry for space-themed junk food.

A Long, Long Way to the Top

The Ascent is a twin-stick shooter RPG set in an almost painfully detailed cyberpunk world, and the most striking thing about it is that world. The game takes place in one of those arcology things that I first heard about in SimCity 2000, on a distant, dystopian planet called Veles, and once you’ve fought your way out of the first location (a deep, industrial area teeming with mutated “ferals”), this arcology is artistically and impressively realised.

Different ammo types are effective against different bad guys. Against robot baddies like this guy you’ll need energy weapons to take them down effectively.

A city built on multiple layers, metal walkways, piled rubbish, alleyways with bars and shops with detailed interiors, hordes of NPCs hanging around or walking here and there, dancing holograms, passing hover-cars, shining neon lights, and crazy-looking alien races, there’s something to look at everywhere you go in this game. You’re very much encouraged to explore every corner, too, with side-quests and hunts for upgrade parts taking you behind every dumpster and inside every high-tech, equipment-strewn laboratory. The Ascent’s world and ambience is an amazing achievement, but I never felt fully compelled to uncover every area and interact with every NPC, and found myself glazing over when any of those odd-looking alien fellows tried to lay any kind of lore on me.

It might be because of the pacing. The world is large and sprawling, and while there are fast-travel options, they are limited and come with some hefty load-times. Also, whenever you try to walk anywhere you’ll find yourself constantly attacked by veritable hordes of tooled-up cyber-assholes to an immersion-breaking extent. It does get annoying, and it gets you to wondering where the heck The Ascent’s equivalent of MAX-TAC are. These streets are absurdly lawless, and wandering NPCs are constantly strolling into the line of fire and getting themselves spectacularly dismembered. It’s too much and it’s all the time, and it took me out of the world.

There is a story with loads of lore to back it up, but I couldn’t drum up much interest and found myself checking my phone, sipping my root beer, or staring into my lime and coconut-scented candle during cutscenes.

As for the gameplay, it’s pretty good. The violence unfolds in satisfying fashion when you’re not overloaded by the non-stop backtracking encounters, and there are loads of weapon-types and techy skills and upgrades to fiddle about with until you find a character build you like. It does feel clunky sometimes, though, and there are some frustrating difficulty spikes to the point that on one or two occasions I felt that I had to cheese my way through. It was that, or grind a few levels, and I wasn’t enjoying the combat enough (and nor was it mindless enough) for me to go grinding.

It was the atmosphere that kept me coming back until I beat the campaign.

The Ascent is undoubtedly a good game, and the environments are nothing short of stunning, but some frustrating battles, user-unfriendly fast-travel and world design, long load-times and occasional slowdown all hold it back from being as great as its visual design deserves. I found myself wishing it was a little bit more linear and a little bit more action-coded. A bit more of a quickie, if you will.

I bet it’s a lot of fun to play cooperatively, though! If your pals can put up with the load-times and constant wandering around, that is.

Played on PS4