Remembering Time Stalkers

Way back in the year 2000, during the waning years of Sega as a video game giant, their last console, the Dreamcast, was hungry for RPG's. To be sure, the console was not without some fantastic titles (Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2), but some were...forgettable. One of these RPG's that have been forgotten by most gamers is Time Stalkers. But was Time Stalkers a truly bad experience? Was it simply a mediocre game that was rightly overshadowed by the titans of its genre? Or, was it an overlooked classic?

The story of Time Stalkers is ridiculously simple: You start off as Sword (worst name for an RPG hero I've ever seen.), a mercenary from some fantasy world who got teleported into a strange plane of existence, a mis mash of different worlds sewn together by a mysterious entity known as the Master. Sword is tasked with saving the world from some evil force, which then turns out to be Master himself. On his journey, he meets new allies: Rao, a lion man from a dimension in war, Nigel, a tomb raider and explorer, Pyra, an elf sorceress, Lady, a crime fighter, and the secret character, Marion.

Left to Right: Marion, Lady, Friday (Non Player Character) Nigel, Sword, Pyra, and Rao. Image taken from http://segaretro.org/Time_Stalkers

The main story is paper thin. There are also several sub plots involving ridiculously minor characters, but that was the key phrase right there: ridiculously minor. These characters had NO effect on the overarching plot whatsoever! That's a major problem, at least in my opinion: the RPG genre by then had a reputation for deep, fascinating stories, and Time Stalkers failed to deliver.

The characters weren't entirely bland, it's just that who they were was simply irrelevant to the story: none of them particularly stood out, and you could play as any one of them at a time as you gain access to them. But when it comes down to it, the presence of the other characters is there more to give you other people to play as, than to help build a better story, or better world. You are never forced to play as Nigel, Pyra, or Lady, and the game only forces Rao on you ONCE, as soon as you got him. It never mattered who I played as, all that mattered was that the dungeon was finished with someone. This isn't a good thing.

One of the biggest points of contention to the game was the fact that every time you enter a new dungeon, you start off at level 1. Doesn't matter if you put in three hours in the last dungeon, getting yourself up to level 57 or so, buffing yourself up and getting the best gear, because on the NEXT dungeon, you'll be level 1 again! Doesn't matter who, he or she will be level 1. And your item carrying capacity will be limited (Sword starts off only able to hold 4 items more or less)

But there were a few elements in the game that made it stand out. Dungeons were randomly generated, with each floor being completely random in its layout. But the absolute best part of the game was the ability to actually capture monsters and have them aid you in battle, like in Pokemon! This game was released at the absolute height of Pokemania, so this could not have been a coincidence. There were plenty of monsters to catch too, so for fans of Mon collecting, this game offered something good.

Sadly it has to be said: most of the monsters you collect are, in one word, trash. All the monsters you collect in the first dungeon do little more than do one normal attack. As the game progresses, the monsters don't really change their tactics: some can use a limited amount of magic, but those can't hold a candle to Pyra, the character who specializes in magic. The one monster type I was most disappointed with were the worm monsters: I thought they'd at least learn some status inducing skills, like shooting silk strings to lower the enemy's agility, or poisoning the enemy, ANYTHING. Instead, they just crawled up to the enemy and attacked. I was not happy with this.

There was little reason to go back to any given dungeon. There was no level grind to do, keeping any items you had was foolish as you started off with limited space for items, and generally, there were no REAL rewards for ever returning. A good chunk of what makes revisiting dungeons so fun was lost in this game, due to a feature that was, simply put, a mistake. No, let me rephrase that: it was one of the biggest blunders in RPG design history.

But the game had potential. The game was a crossover between Climax Entertainment's many games: Landstalker, Lady Stalker, Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, etc. The game was also only the second ever RPG released for the Dreamcast, so one could forgive the game for not taking full advantage of that console's technology. The game also pioneered DLC! You could actually buy minigames to play on the VMU (the memory card for the Dreamcast, which doubled as a portable gaming device, albeit a very weak one) from an in game store, using real life money. But because this was from before wireless Internet, you had to actually hook up a modem unto the Dreamcast to download the games.

As mediocre as the game itself was, had it been done just a bit differently, it would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest games on the Dreamcast. The cast could have been fleshed out a little more, there could have been reasons to encourage the player to use certain characters in the dungeons. For example, if you take Nigel, the third character to join the cast, to the very first dungeon, a volcano, he could fight and capture monsters that only appear when he enters. Or maybe, if one uses Lady instead, she gets to fight an entirely different boss who, upon defeat, leads Lady to a secret room full of treasure. Had the player been allowed an infinite amount of items, perhaps restarting every dungeon at level 1 would not have been as punishing as it was; instead, it would have been fairly challenging.

The minor characters themselves had so much potential too, as each were at least memorable in their concept. As the world in the game is an amalgamation of various different worlds, you get such oddities as a knight and a princess walking on a prehistoric realm while a robot factory is within walking distance from a 1980's style Japanese convenience store, all while a Gothic style clock tower looms over 1920's Chicago and a temple straight out of a fantasy novel. There was so much potential here: how would a hero from a Space Opera react to cavemen? How would Prohibition era gangsters react to a man wearing a suit of armor? But the game didn't go that far, even though it tried. There was a romance between a caveman and a princess (though the cavemen looked like very bad Native American stereotypes), and a sub plot about these gangsters looking for a new hideout, but that was it. The main characters did get some interaction with each other, but they were rare. And considering three of the six main characters came from different games (Nigel from Landstalker, Lady from Ladystalker, and Pyra from Shining in the Darkness) this was a missed opportunity.

Time Stalkers is a mediocre game that, had more thought been put into it, could have been amazing. It had some good ideas, but a good idea doesn't excuse you from executing it poorly. In fact, I'd say having a good idea obligates you to take that idea and execute it as best as you can. This is a game that could have been a super crossover, a company patting itself on the back during an anniversary by bringing some classic faces and putting them onto a new console generation. This was one of the first RPG's for the Dreamcast, at a time the most powerful console on Earth. Time Stalkers could have been the hot commodity of 1999 for RPG fans everywhere, and a good reason to buy the Dreamcast. Maybe Time Stalkers could have been a classic. Maybe it's true what Mr Enter says: There is nothing sadder than wasted potential.