Alter A.I.L.A.

Ok, this happened to me a couple of times: I ask someone if he/she liked Alter Aila, and they tell me "Oh yeah, Alter Aila Genesis is one of the best rpgmaker games.

While this is not wrong, it's clear that many people do not know the existance of Alter Aila, the... uhm let's say prototype of that great game that is Alter Aila Genesis. But how is this game?


Three agents and one is agent Smith??? Is this THE MATRIX?

Let's start with the story...
In this game we play as Blue, a prisoner in futuristic arena, and the one with the highest win percentage. Blue fights using two handguns, has a nice "scan" ability, and in most cases (three paths out of four) he acts as a sort of supporting character. Only in the true path also called "Innovator Route" (more on this later) he assumes the role of leader, becoming a full fledged protagonist with a lot of more lines and also resolving every issue (funny thing that in Alter Aila Genesis he is even MORE a supporting protagonist then here!).


Always outnumbered, never outgunned! (despite combat being the weakest part of the game at least sprite and layout look good!)

Ok, I mentioned the "Innovator Route", but what is this? Well, unlike Alter Aila Genesis, that is a single adventure, Alter Aila has not one, not two, not three but FOUR different story paths that determines the role of Blue and what happens during the story. Besides Blue there are other prisoners (also with color codenames) like Green, a female skilled in rifles and first aid and Yellow, the hotheaded leader of the indipendents. These other prisoners will take different sides during the course of the story, so depending on the choice done by Blue after the prologue, there will be different party members and opponents depending of that choice, but this also will determine which characters will survive to the end and which ones will be killed during the events of the story.

Unfortunately to play the fourth true (and best) path you first have to complete the other three, at least you will keep the money from the previous run, so things are usually a bit easier after the first playthrough, given the scarce amount of (expensive) healing items and money available.


But only this time, my friend! Because depending on the choice of path different characters may die, and the events unfolds in a different way!

The game is a classic adventure with a three members party, the good news are that mapping is pretty good (chipsets comes from different sources, like the old rpg Albion and other games, but there are also rtp and edits) and perfectly fits the cyberpunk atmosphere, enemies are usually visible and often avoidable and the charsets perfectly match the monsters sprites and the characters battlers. And they are pretty nice too!

Now, the bad news: combat is unfortunately dull an uninteresting, I mean most skills possessed by the party members aren't that useful (you can probably solve each non-boss encounter just selecting "autoattack") and the system is usual to most other rpgmaker games that you already played (as expected there will be some weapons that are weak against some monsters and strong against others).
The game also has a nice quantity of secrets, optional bosses and super weapons that can be found but are totally optional.

But combat isn't the only activity: there are also a couple of puzzles and events that aren't always that easy to solve, luckily there is a solution that can be found on the game page if you are in trouble.


The obligatory cyberpunk bar... with the classical talkative bartender source of informations!

Verdict
The strong points of this game are the originality of the story, and the setting. While the gameplay pales in comparison to Alter Aila Genesis, this is still a solid entry and a good sci-fi/cyberpunk game that will deliver hours of fun. The weak points are probably the force replayability and the old styled boring combat, anyway this game has still its charm (even if, as already said, probably the re-made version is better under every aspect EXCEPT maybe for the presence of only one route!).

Despite its flaws this game has its merita and has a special place for me but the quality of this work is clear. Obviously the Genesis is far better and would get a 4.5/5 from me, but his older brother still gets a 4/5.
It's all quite good, but the story and the narrative are especially noteworthy.