Most people thought there weren't any hardcore RPG games for the Dreamcast until Eternal Arcadia's release, though if you ever get your hands on an import list of Dreamcast games from Japan you'll be pleasantly surprised. I was happy to pick up a copy of a mecha-anime RPG called "Sunrise Eiyuutan".

Sunrise Eiyuutan follows the traditional mecha style format as the classic Playstation game Xenogears. At first view the game looks very similar to Xenogears. All the mechas have a very similar design to Square's classic game, and there is even a character that looks like Elly (laugh).

The story itself is very detailed and is put into episodes like a cartoon-serial series. It makes you feel like your watching a whole manga video collection. As the game starts you have arrived in the small town of Terra where you first must look for fellow pilots to explore the mysterious planet of "Eiyuutan" with you. As the game progresses you will meet fellow explorers, both good and evil.

The first 8 episodes of the game are very heavily text and CG based, so expect a lot of clicking through the text…well at least you can speed up the text not like in Xenogears where the text scrolls at a set speed. The remaining 18 episodes are also heavily story based but have a lot more battle sequences in them.

The in-game town graphics are all 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, with anime style characters. Everything is viewed from a first-person perspective while you are in a town or city. The pre-rendered graphics are extremely detailed and the colour choice is just magnificent, with all the backgrounds keeping to an anime-manga art form. The map graphics remind me of Final Fantasy 8 except with the anti-aliasing and the 640x480 graphics resolution. The only downfalls of the graphics are that all the CGs are in a lower resolution (supposedly to save GD-ROM space).

The battle system and controls are magnificent, the battle system is actually really well designed. At the first glance the battles don't look that difficult and the system is rather simple to use. But the battles are based on strategy other than just levelling up, so think up your battle strategies 'cause your gonna need them in this game. The battle system works in the following way: you and your enemy have a main spaceship in which you store all of your mechas. Both of you will use the mechas to defend and attack each other, and the aim is to break through your enemy's defensive line and destroy the opponent's ship. In the end the battle system is really unique compared to most RPGs and it is refreshing to see something different; it definitely doesn't draw itself to magic and special attacks.

In between the magnificent graphics, gameplay and storyline is the music. The music itself is nothing spectacular, your standard Japanese female singer singing a Disney-style tune, and the sound effects are your standard fare also. This game would be great if it had some speech during the main cutscenes as the characters portraits don't change facial expression and it is hard sometimes to determine the characters frame of mind.

If you enjoy anime and mecha you're gonna love this game, you'd better brush up on your Katakana and Kanji languages as this game is very text heavy. Its time to get out your "Technoman" memorabilia and play the best mecha game on the Dreamcast so far.