Episode 56: Aquanox

Retro Spectives

Back in 1996, Archimedean Dynasty (AD) took the concept of a space sim and moved it underwater. It built a complex geopolitical dystopian world, thrust you in the cockpit of a complex machine and tasked you with discovering and solving a mystery that threatened all of humanity.

Aquanox picks up 5 years after the events of AD, where the fragile peace and cooperation between factions is on the brink of falling to pieces. Genetic manipulation runs wild, tensions are high, and the Western government is meddling in scientific experiments that have the potential to threaten the whole world. You once again play as Emerald ‘Deadeye’ Flint, making credits and maybe even saving the world along the way.

Aquanox streamlines a lot of the unintuitive and complex aspects of AD. The scope of the world is dramatically reduced, exclusively focusing on the Pirate and Western factions. The UI is simpler to understand, draw distance has been improved, and the spaces you fight in simplified. Even the presentation has been changed, with talking heads appearing on your radio instead of clicking around locations on the station map.

Does this all add up to a modern and more enjoyable submersible fighter? Or has something been lost in its attempts at modernising AD?

On this episode, we discuss:

• How does Aquanox do world building in comparison to AD? Are hard sci-fi info dumps on the technologies of Aqua enough to bring a world to life, or do you need a more personal connection to what inhabits the world?
• How intelligible and well paced is the main storyline of Aquanox? Do the actions of the characters and factions make sense, and is it clear who is on what side?
• How fun is the more arcade-like gameplay of Aquanox compared to AD? Is better draw distance really an upside? Is piloting in first person instead of from a cockpit really that big of a change?

We answer these questions and many more on the 56th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Aquanox OST: Kai Rosencranz

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Link to Aquanox Mouse Fix

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Have we been blinded by our love of Archimedean Dynasty? Does Aquanox 2 solve the issues we’ve listed, or is it more of the same? Is Aquanox: Deep Descent really as bad as everyone says? Let us know what you think on our text based community discord server!