Atlus’ fortunes sure have changed lately, haven’t they?Personahas gone from a niche JRPG series you had to know to look for and has since become a household name. It’s just a shame that while Persona and its sister seriesShin Megami Tenseiare better known in the West, some of the studio’s back-catalogue remains buried in the seas of time.
Among those, there are few quite so deserving of a recognition as the 1999 first-person brawler, Maken X.
Maken X is the story of a girl and her sentient sword-worm medical device on a road trip to save the concept of personalities - truly a tale as old as time. In all seriousness, the story isn’t why you’re here. Atlus have crafted some truly memorable sagas, but the writing in Maken is only enjoyable because of how bad it is. Characters will seemingly swap personalities mid-cutscene, and it’s full of hilarious gems of ham-fisted deliveries that only a game from the 2000s could offer. There’s even a robot president Kennedy of the United States as a boss fight, in a boxing ring no less. I’m serious. Here he is in action:
Some story moments are fully 3D and even feature animated mouths, while others are literal static images in a black and white film grain. The concept of the death of one’s own mind gets casually disregarded by one of your allies when she tells you to possess her regardless - just one of the things you face on your journey to becoming a “blademaster”.
Somehow I doubt most people trained in swordsmanship feel that way, but at least you care so little about the cast that you’re not bothered by the ethical implications of mind-wiping various people into your personal arsenal. Yes, that’s right - you aren’t playing as the people you possess, but instead the sentient sword they all wield!
Your first host, the teenage science prodigy Kay, comments as an audience stand-in as you both journey along, jumping from projectile tongued (yes, really) Russian assassins to mystical Indian soul-sucking TV executives. Along the way, you try to save Kay’s father and stop a mysterious organization out to destroy emotion and personality in all humanity. It’s all very nonsensical, to the point the main fount of exposition literally says he doesn’t have time for “you people” and hangs up. From that point on, you’re blissfully free to focus on Maken X’s delightfully unique first-person brawling.
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What’s most remarkable about Maken X’s combat is how smoothly it works given it was made for a Dreamcast controller with only two triggers and a single analog stick to go along with the usual face buttons. Designing workable FPS control schemes for the system, whilepossible, typically had the benefit of you and your foes being at range when fighting. Maken X has you getting all up in their business, diving overhead like you’re a ninja, with strafing and lock-on options that further alter your inputs to focus on either speed or precision.
Let’s not forget that there are basic combo moves for each characters’ weapon, like “Down + A” that makes the otherwise impotent Jet Pilot character’s stun baton shock enemies for several seconds. you may also sacrifice a pinch of your health bar to charge up an ultimate attack for more powerful characters, often either badgering enemies in a flurry of strikes or firing off a ranged offensive.
Truth be told, I’m baffled this wasn’t ever repackaged as a PSP game - it would’ve been a perfect fit for the system. Arenas are gorgeous and varied, yet also smartly low-poly thanks to the game’s detailed, texture-heavy aesthetic. Most missions don’t last more than a few minutes at a time, ensuring you get a breather after frantically fighting to survive the latest gauntlet.
You’ll need that breather too, as the razor’s edge balancing can see you getting absolutely torn to shreds if you aren’t cautious. Maken X is an Atlus game through and through, including its willingness to knock you senseless for not playing properly. The flow of combat is easy to learn yet delightfully hard to master, even down to how you rank up. Experience points aren’t simply earned, but literally dropped by enemies as orbs that you have to gather, lest they slip through your fingers if you get distracted.
At any given time in a fight, you might be dodging rockets from sumo wrestler demolitionists while dodging tonfa-twirling skater ninjas, all while grabbing experience point orbs and lining yourself up for an optimal leap over your next target for a critical stab. It’s so much all at once, yet it never feels too overwhelming thanks to the well-designed encounters and levels that let you turn chokepoints and obstacles to your advantage.
Once you’ve got all of this intuitive stuff in your hands, it becomes a metagame of positioning, timing, and dodging that’s equal partsPunch OutandStar Wars: Obi-Wan. If you paired the latter’s second analog stick attacks with the rest of this combat, you’d be darn close to perfection, at least as far as gameplay is concerned. I’m not sure whether there’s a way to rectify the over the top presentation and story, nor does Maken X really need to.
Maken X is an absurd fever dream, to be sure, but the vivid sort that you’ll never forget - which is why it shouldn’t be left abandoned on the isle of misfit Dreamcast exclusives. There was a brief attempt to bring the game to PS2, but the remastered port is substantially worse, with a terrible third-person camera rather than the first-person option, and visuals that manage to look uglier despite releasing two years later.
We’ve seen modern ports ofMetal Wolf ChaosandCatherine, so surely there’s some intrepid Japanese publisher out there that can secure the rights to Maken X. It’s one of the two Atlus-developed first-person games that aren’t dungeon crawlers, and their last real attempt at any sort of brawler until they gave Omega Force and P-Studio the reins forPersona 5: Strikers.
Sure, it wasn’t a rousing sales success, but circumstances are far different now. A quirky, Atlus-developed first-person action game is a much easier sell these days - especially given how well it holds up despite its age. In the meantime, I know we can count our blessings with Persona finally coming to Xbox and PC, but let’s not stop short. Bring on all your weirdness, Atlus - your time has finally come.
