Steambot Chronicles restores my faith in Japanese role-playing games. This open-ended adventure featuring a protagonist named Vanilla (??), a band called the Garland Globetrotters and a mechanized vehicle called a "trotmobile" is one of the best role-playing games I've played this year.

Developed by IREM, Steambot Chronicles does everything a decent role-playing game should. It offers a myriad of activities, side quests and metal on metal combat that is all wrapped up nicely in a rather large 3D world populated by hundreds of NPC's and villains. It's a great game that offers so much depth that at first it's a bit overwhelming. The biggest problem with the game is learning how to drive your trotmobile, but once you get the hang of it you'll realize this is one of the coolest games on the market.

The game tells the story of Vanilla, a young lad who washes onto the shore of Seagull Bay and is found by Connie who just happens to be picking herbs for her sick mother. Sure, the game starts out with the typical amnesiac hero who doesn't know his a$$ from his elbow, but as the game marches forward you'll realize that it doesn't matter. Even though the game featrures its fair share of lame Japanese RPG conventions, ultimately it does a good job of letting you control your own destiny for good or for ill. Beyond the multitude of tasks you can take on, one of Steambot Chronicles key selling points is that it offers a good and a bad path, and how you talk to some people will result in some interesting situations..

One of the key themes of the game -- besides the trotmobile elements -- is learning and playing music. At first you start out with a harmonica, but as you progress through the game you'll find a variety of other instruments including a trumpet, a base, a saxophone, drums, and a whole lot more. Practice and you can earn money by playing at parking spots throughout the various cities and towns that make the game. At some points in the game you have the chance to play concerts and learn songs with the world famous Garland Globetrotters -- Connie's famous and traveling band. Later on there's an opportunity to rock out with someone else, but we'll leave that for you to uncover on your own.

Fashion is also an interesting element within the game, and getting different outfits can both affect an ever fluctuating nickname and unlock a photo album. But beyond that it's fun to try out different outfits and come up with your own like. Couple it with a few interesting hairstyles that you can purchase and you're on your way to becoming your own man. While this doesn't really affect the game in a dramatic way, it's a nice aesthetic touch that I thought added some personality into the mix.

One of the key elements in Steambot Chronicles is your vehicle, and you'll spend a lot of time using it for all sorts of activities. The game was designed in a way that when you are not following the main plot you take on a lot of different task. These tasks could include treasure hunting, gathering resources and goods to sell between towns, excavating fossils, delivering passengers between towns, buying and selling trade goods, battling in the local Arena and plenty of other fun stuff. You start the game out with a pretty basic trotmobile, but as year earn money and visit garages scattered throughout the lands, you can purchase lots of additional parts. Your basic trotmobile is made of several components including a main body, legs or wheels for moving, a grill, a windshield, two arms and back. These items are called "frames," and as you progress through the game and collect them you can begin to develop new and more powerful frames that give you more hit points and allow you to carry more weight. Trotmobiles are capable of hauling all kinds of resources, can be armed with a myriad of armaments for both melee and distanced combat, can be armed with grills that afford more lighting or enhance the bot's ramming capabilities, etc. In the ladder parts of the game you can even gain parts that let you fly or travel over large bodies of water. Frame development is simply case of spending the dough and learning which items can be combined to create more enhanced versions of each frame.

One of the biggest mistakes people make starting this game is understanding the controls. If you don't get the hang of them from the get-go and give up you'll truly be missing out on a grand gaming experience. The game use the left and right analog sticks in tandem to move forward, back , left or right. That means that you'll have to push both sticks forward to move forward, etc. to turn left or right players will push the right or left analog stick backwards. If you get crazy with the controls you'll find it very hard to move indeed, with your trotmobile turning wildly or moving sideways. Once you get the hang of things though, the trotmobile is pretty easy to get around in..

Your trotmobile also comes standard with the ability to dash forward and ram an opponent (which can be enhanced by adding a special grill), pick up objects and other trotmobiles by pushing L3 or R3 and the ability to jump. After each outing in the world, players can stop at garages scattered outside the safety of the cities and in cities to swap out frames, repair damage and fill up on fuel. These spots also offer the ability to sleep, save your game and customize the colors and license plate on your machine.

We've mentioned some of the things you can do on your Trotmobile but there's plenty to do when wandering around towns like collecting clothes, buying and selling all kinds of treasures, and engaging in hundreds of side quests that involve a myriad of different NPC's. The game's response system affords you the ability to respond in a number of ways which can affect the outcome of events, which is a nice touch. There's plenty of other fun stuff to do as well like playing the stock market, being a news reporter, wagering on arena battles, buying and selling stuff, playing pool, playing music, practicing with your instruments, renting and furnishing an apartment, dating and a ton of other cool stuff.

There is a main storyline and it allows you to really define your character the way you want - good or evil. The storyline branches off into a hero and a villain path, and appropriately gives you a series of missions to prove yourself as you delve deeper into the game. But when the end credits roll that is not the end of your adventure. There's still a lot you can do and there's surely some side quests that you've left undone somewhere. Steambot chronicles does a grand job of giving you a gaming experience that can go on forever if you want it to.