The storyline behind Galerians:Ash takes place years after the first Galerians title. The supercomputer named Dorothy has been defeated, but not before she manages to unleash more of her humanoid creations (the Galerians) upon mankind. The Galerians have, of course, super powers, and are destroying everything they see. You play the part of Rion, who in the first game defeated Dorothy, then found out he was actually one of her Galerian creations. Rion is then resurrected back into a human body and is armed with a variety of psychic powers to battle the new wave of Galerians. I've really abbreviated the story here, but by watching the opening video for Galerians: ASH, you'll learn all you need and then some.

Gameplay

You play the game as Rion, a powerful psychic on a quest to defeat the last Galerians before they destroy humanity. Rion is armed with three psychic attacks which he uses to combat the Galerians and other enemies spread throughout the game. The three attacks are Nalcon, Red and D-Felon, which require you to charge them up before using. While you're busy holding down the button to charge up your attack, you'll find you're still being pummeled by your opponents, which stops the charging process and forces you to start over. Pretty much the only way to charge a weapon is to get a lot of distance between you and your attacker, start charging, and when the attacker finally walks towards you, blast him. It's a choppy combat system to say the least, and it runs in fits and starts, killing any fluidity it could have had.

Rion only has so much power dedicated to each attack, and once the attack is drained, you have to jump into the equipment menu to use the appropriate "injector" to restore your powers. Switching to the equipment menu is a simple task performed with the push of a button, but recharging a drained power requires you pause the game to get into the equipment menu, which really slows up the gameplay.

You, as Rion, must be careful not to overload his super-powerful brain else it will go into a sort of self destruct mode. Whenever Rion uses a psychic attack or takes damage, his AP meter begins to fill up, and if that meter gets full, Rion's brain will overload, or "short" as it is called in the game. Once Rion shorts, any enemy near him will die, but his hit points will decrease until Rion himself is dead. The only way to prevent a short is to jump to the equipment screen and use the delimitor, a special injection that drops Rion's AP level to zero.

Along with the psychic attacks, Rion is armed with a psychic shield. The shield works as advertised, blocking attacks from the basic attackers and some bosses. The problem with the shield is that it doesn't allow you to move while you're using it, and it only covers your front. So, while you're shielding yourself from a frontal attack, you can rest assured the rest of your opponents are coming at you from the sides.

A really unforgivable problem with the gameplay is the save system. While there are enough save points within the game to keep you from pulling your hair out, the implementation is enough to make you wish you had never picked up this game. Say, for example, you have just saved your progress and you're now facing a boss. The boss kills you quickly (as they frequently do) and you think you'll be returning to the beginning of the boss fight. It only makes sense right ? After all, just about every other game just makes you start the fight over, but in Galerians: Ash. once you die, the game simply ends, putting you back at the main menu ! So you have to choose "Load Game" to get the game to load back up to the save point, then you head back in for your boss fight. And if you die in that boss fight, Heaven help you, you'll go right back to the main menu, Load Game, and start the process again. It's a controller- crunching moment the first time you discover this infuriating flaw in the gameplay.

Puzzles in the game are rather simplistic, so you shouldn't expect too much of a brain teaser here. Some of the puzzles have artificial difficulty injected in them by the fact that waves of enemies are attacking you as you try to finish them, but other than that, the puzzles are simple stuff.

Graphics

Galerians: ASH is a good looking game, no doubt about it. The creepy cgi-anime style characters make you feel like you're hanging out in one of your worst nightmares, while the detailed environments pull you into a world you'll hope to never visit again. Animations and movie sequences are really quite a sight and do an excellent job of giving the game a dark and disturbing mood.

If there's one problem with the graphics, it's the camera, which just can't seem to keep up with you while you're playing. At times the camera swings about with reckless abandon, and at other times it just lags so far behind you can't figure out what's going on in the game. The first-person camera mode is even worse, with a super squirrely motion that will make even the staunchest gamer motion sick.

Sound

The musical score, when it appears, is just a melodramatic attempt at being spooky and futuristic. That's not to say it's bad, it actually fits the tone of the game well, but it's also nothing extraordinary. It's not industrial, it's not techno, it just "is."

There is a lot of speech in this game, and the voice actors apparently forgot that they were supposed to "act" at some point. All the lines are delivered so deadpan, you'll wonder if anyone bothered to get out of bed to deliver their lines. I've heard two rocks clapped together produce more emotion than most of the voice actors in Galerians: ASH.

Replayability

Assuming you survive the game's torturous save system, you won't come back for seconds. Galerians: ASH, is an adventure title with no unlockables or hidden items, so once you've finished it, you can safely pack it away and forget about it.

Overall

What you have with Galerians: ASH is a really good idea that just didn't get fleshed out enough to make a great game. It's a passable way to spend about 10 hours, after which you'll have finished it and moved on to something else. For fans of the survival/horror genre, it's a pretty worthwhile rent, even with its gameplay issues, but I wouldn't suggest purchasing it since it's such a short game.