Time Stalkers
Time Stalkers, also known as Climax Landers (クライマックス ランダーズ)[1] in Japan, is a Dreamcast role-playing video game featuring appearances of worlds (and playable characters) from several of Climax Entertainment's earlier games in crossover fashion. The player initially takes the role of Sword, a character caught in a world made of many worlds. As he goes along, similar heroes show up for the player to control. The player may do things such as enter dungeons, take special assignments, and upgrade/buy/sell items.
| Time Stalkers | |
|---|---|
 North American Dreamcast cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Climax Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Platform(s) | Dreamcast |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Roguelike, role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Game play
Time Stalkers is an RPG with rogue like elements such as Randomly generated dungeons/items/monsters ect. You accept quests to venture into these Dungeons to acquire specific goals such as "finding items " or defeating "X" amount of monsters. You may swap between many playable heroes with unique class skills or spells and itemization. There is also an aspect you can capture weakened monsters and raise them to fight in dungeons alongside you, this was also one of the first games to allow you to play VMU games with your controller, in this case with your allied monsters.
Combat is turned based and you have Stamina/Hp/Mana as combat resources. You may have up to three allies in battle at once. One hero character and 2 monster type allies. All allies gain exp and stats per level.
Dungeons are divided into "floors" with each being increasingly more difficult than the last until a final boss is reached. Floors will have enemies, items, traps that can be beneficial or deadly and other misc notable objects. The general goal of each floor is the reach the ending platform that will bring you to the next floor. At the end of each floor you get bonus points that you allot on your Hero character that you use to learn skills/spells or to master equipment. At the end of every dungeon you will lose all exp/bonus points but you have a chance to gain a "title" that provides increased base stats and teach you new base skills/spells/etc.
Plot
The time stalkers plot-line lands you Sword in a mysterious world after attempting to save a girl from harm. You awaken in front of an ominous clock tower and head inside to chase a headless knight. Once inside you get to the top of this tower you find the knight and defeat him only to acquired an odd book. Upon reading this book you are sent to the main area of the game, which is a mismatch is islands from other worlds, that are floating in the sky.
Once here an old man approaches you and says you must seek out and defeat "Dungeons" within these other islands to find the truth of why you're there. Sword comes across other "Hero's" that are playable characters while defeating these dungeons and more and more islands and dungeons start to appear. Later its revealed this old man that reveals himself to be "The master" is the one who has brought you and the other playable Heros to this mashup of different worlds for a purpose, that is yet unknown.
Reception
Time Stalkers was met with mixed to negative reviews. Pete Bartholow of GameSpot gave the game a negative review, criticizing its "traditional" story, randomized dungeon layouts, ugly graphics, and most particularly the resetting of experience points at the beginning of each dungeon. He concluded by advising gamers to instead get the "vastly superior" Evolution: The World of Sacred Device (the Dreamcast's only other RPG at that time), and gave Time Stalkers an overall score of 5.2.[2] IGN gave the game a 6.5, and praised the unique overworld and the monster capture mechanic. However, like GameSpot, they took issue with the resetting of experience points, and also complained of the game's concise dialogue and short length.[3]
Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "It ain't bad, but the Dreamcast RPG audience needs more than this generic fix."[4]
References
- "Game data". GameFAQs. Retrieved 2008-02-20.
- Bartholow, Peter (November 16, 1999). "Time Stalkers Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
- "Time Stalkers (aka Climax Landers)". IGN. April 5, 2000. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
- Lundrigan, Jeff (June 2000). "Finals". Next Generation. Vol. 3 no. 6. Imagine Media. p. 96.