Gemnalysis: Maken X, the missing Atlus game

[Welcome to Gemnalysis, a new series dedicated to examining games that never quite caught on. The series focuses on the history behind the game and company who made it as well as examining if the game is still worth giving a shot or not.]

Atlus is a company with a lot of street cred in the gaming circuit, but oddly enough a great deal of it is misguided. People like to give Atlus credit for a variety of games they never made, because most people don't realize that Atlus plays a much larger role in the industry as a publisher than a developer. In the past decade there have only been three game series that Atlus has personally released games for: Shin Megami Tensei, Trauma Center, and Etrian Odyssey. They're all incredible series that live up to the companies' reputation but almost anything else you see with the Atlus label on it wasn't made by them. Almost. Before the year 2000 hit Atlus did develop a few "side" games, the last of which was Maken X for the Dreamcast. It shares a lot in common with the Shin Megami Tensei series and in my mind may as well be considered a spin-off. SMT fans in particular ought to give this game a shot.

Now like most Atlus games Maken X is an aquired taste, so if you asked me if it was good I'd say "It's one of the coolest games on the Dreamcast if you can stomach a little frustration." There's two kinds of people who should stay away from this game: People who like to whine about flaws and people who don't have a high tolerance for weirdness. How weird is this game you might ask? The main character of the game is a living sword with psychic powers. Imagine if you were playing The Legend of Zelda but found out Link was a mindless puppet carrying the Master Sword around. Now imagine the game is first person. Now imagine one of the bosses is the United States President with a robot body and you fight him in an electric USA themed boxing ring. Yeeep. Takes a lot of imagination to actually visualize what this game is like.



Trying to describe Maken X in too much detail really fails to convey the experience because at its heart the game is very simple. The crazy plot and concept make the game sound a lot more complicated than it actually is. The concept behind the game can make it sound kind of intimidating, but it really shouldn't be. I can't believe in all the time I spent researching this game that nobody tried to make the comparison to Doom because the level design is extremely reminiscent of retro first person shooters. Each level is compact, contains one or two hidden areas, and has health and power up items scattered at key points. Maken X is actually a really solid fit for the Dreamcast library because at its heart this is an arcade game. At a glance you wouldn't think it but this game actually has a pick up and play sort of quality to it.

The game begins with you being introduced to Maken, an artificial lifeform with psychic ability that builds a sword around itself to protect its body. Maken has the ability to use humans as hosts to move around as well as steal the memories and knowledge of anyone that falls victim to it. The game's characters really play Maken up as "Having the power of a God." This is your character. You even name it at the beginning of the game. After waking up you quickly discover there is an organization hellbent on stopping you and your Godlike power from becoming a threat to its plans.

As the lab where you were created falls under attack by a single powerful assassin, a young girl named Kei Sagami picks you up and becomes your very first host. After defeating the assassin with Kei Sagami's body a mysterious old man confronts you claiming to be responsible for your creation, asking that you stop this organization from destroying mankind. This old man implores you to do the right thing, but admits that he cannot force you. From this point on the game follows a globetrotting theme where you wander around 20 levels all over the world, slowly making your way to the game's final encounter.

By the second level of this game you'll have already learned three things: This is a first person action game with an emphasis on 1-on-1 melee, you have the ability to obtain new characters by stealing their bodies, and the voice acting can be quite cheesy. Atlus is a company that's known for stellar localization and translations, but back in 1999 they'd only just started publishing a lot of games. This was right around the time Atlus started making a name for itself by putting its logo on a lot of niche Playstation 1 titles like Guilty Gear and Tactics Ogre, but oddly enough Atlus didn't publish their own game. Sega was responsible for Maken X's localization and the translation is only a couple notches above a House of the Dead game. While the game has some awesome concepts, don't go into this one for the narrative. You'll get a basic skeleton of a plot, which if you look at this as an arcade game is enough, but trying to figure out the finer details of the story will prove difficult.



Basically you wander around some quick but challenging levels, fight various enemies, and try to find all the hidden characters that allow you to make the game easier and get to new levels. Some levels can only be accessed if you use the right character while other levels are just a lot easier if know who to use. Like I said, this game is pretty simple at heart even if it has some complex ideas. Something that's gonna fly over most peoples' heads is there's actually a morality system in this game. During conversations with the games' characters simple "Yes" or "No" answers will determine the order you beat the levels, what characters become available to you, and what ending you receive. There's a lot of little touches in this game that most people won't find out about unless they play the game several times, and considering the branching paths the game does lend itself to replay value.

A really nice example of how your choices can affect the game is at the very beginning: After the first stage you steal the body of the assassin I mentioned earlier. The second stage takes place on board a crashing airplane. At the end of the stage there's an escape pod and a pilot. If you steal the pilot's body you will fly the escape pod to your intended destination and have to play the next stage with the pilot's weak body, but you'll also be led straight to an important character whose body you can steal. If you run straight to the escape pod in the assassin's body you will go off-course and end up at a different stage, but you will have a better body. Normally you can just save up all the bodies you've stolen and get them back later, but if you use the pilot the assassin's body is gone forever (the plane crashed after all.)

Considering the game does cool things like this it would have been really nice if this game had gotten a better translation. The story had a lot of potential and was probably much more engaging in its original form, but what we have is still a very enjoyable first person action game. Once the globetrotting theme starts you travel from level to level and a lot of them can be a pretty considerable challenge. The levels themselves are straightforward but the enemies and obstacles between you and the exit can be pretty rough. You can actually start getting new characters almost immediately and it's highly recommended. In theory you can play this game whichever way you want, but some levels will seem impossible with the lower level characters. Skill can get you pretty far though; the individual enemies all follow simple patterns that you just need to figure out. After you have the enemies deciphered it's just a matter of timing your strikes properly. That's hard to do when the game throws a new enemy at you, though. Things become a lot tougher when you have to fight more than one enemy too, but it's rare and can actually be managed with the simple controls. The controls in general are what's going to turn a lot of people off about this game: they take getting used to.



Frankly the game itself is a good fit for the Dreamcast considering how weird it is, but not necessarily the controller. The face buttons are needed for locking on to enemies, attacking, jumping and brain jacking (stealing bodies) and there's only one control stick. A control scheme like the one found in MDK 2 (the face buttons are used to move while the stick is used to aim) probably wouldn't have been all that great, since that would have required using the D-Pad to lock on to enemies. In Maken X you use the control stick to move around and the triggers to strafe and turn. It's jarring at first for anyone who's used to dual analog these days, but it actually does work. Not perfectly, but considering the game's simple level design it's passable. You don't need absolutely perfect controls to navigate the stages, and once you actually lock on to an enemy the control scheme works perfectly since you circle around them automatically. Someone who really wants to enjoy the game will think of ways to make it work. I developed one technique where I would alternate between turning and using the strafe button so I could navigate circular corridors fluidly, and I would frequently use the Y button to lock and unlock targets when I was fighting multiple enemies. The game itself is something to experience and it's not that great a sacrifice to make.

Patience is the name of the game. The tougher levels will require a several attempts and the controls take getting used to. If you can stomach a little frustration you're in for a treat: especially if you enjoy crazy character designs. Kazuma Kaneko is running the show on that front: a man so talented that other (bigger) companies ask him to do guest designs for their games on occassion. He developed Dante's Devil Trigger for Devil May Cry 3 and a couple of the mecha for Zone of the Enders 2. Shoji Meguro also did the soundtrack. While the music isn't quite as insane as something like Persona 3 and 4, there's a few really cool songs in the game.

At first glance you'd think this game would get by on its original gameplay ideas and unique story, but that's not really how you should look at it. While the game itself as a whole is extremely unique, the individual features aren't super creative in themselves. Even the famous "brain jacking" feature is just a different way of getting new characters, which is something many games have done in the past even if not in the exact same way. Maken X should really be viewed as a complex arcade game. The levels all last about 5-10 minutes a piece. While you can die often, the stages don't have very much wandering around. That much is very refreshing. I like to regard this game as a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff because it has so much in common with the series. It features the same artist and composer, has a silent protagonist whom you name, features a morality system, and contains dark imagry and insane character designs. If nothing else this game's got style and trust me when I say nothing else plays like it. I wholly recommend it to someone looking to pick up a new Dreamcast game. Consider it a history lesson. This was the last side projected that Atlus had produced until Catherine and Radiant Historia hit the shelves soon.