"Nucleic Domination" got you down? (Xeno3998's Squaresoft W/O)
Written: Jun 24 '01 (Updated Jul 23 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: Great cinemas, nice sound effects and a great science based story.
Cons: Aya runs like a sloth and this game is still over quickly, lots of flaws
The Bottom Line: This game's flawed, but you can still find it enjoyable. It's a great but convoluted story that'll make you glad you stayed away in Biology.
rader6795's Full Review: Parasite Eve for PlayStation 1
The following review is part of the Squaresoft Write-off (hey… that almost rhymed!) hosted by none other than Xeno3998. If you’re taking the time to read this review (instead of just rubber-stamping it), please take the time out of your day to give the following members of Epinions that pretty penny they work so hard to earn.
Also, for those people not accustomed to my writing style, I’ve dumbed the review down by adding a few headers to the review for easier reading. I won’t water down the review; I’ll just add these headers for easier reading and, in some cases, my own personal enjoyment.
Prologue
Squaresoft… a name synonymous with roleplaying games. Many gamers, myself included, have a long, storied history with the company formerly known just as Square. My story, as I’ve told many times before, started well before I even knew who Square was with a highly anticipated game on the 8-Bit classic Nintendo Entertainment System. That game was none other than Rad Racer II, a far cry from the roleplaying games Square is now known for.
I’m not going to bore you with the complete history of Square… you can read many of my other Square game reviews such as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Anthology for that. But, I will briefly touch upon one period in gaming that broke my heart.
As I eagerly awaited the coming of the “Ultra 64,” I remembered seeing pictures of a prototype game from Squaresoft that showcased the system’s abilities. That prototype was all realtime and boasted fully polygonal versions of characters from Final Fantasy VI complete with the Bahamut summon spell. It looked, in a word, amazing. You see, up to this point, roleplaying games were always shunned by the general public for their rather “blah” visuals, since the American gamer is rather fickle.
This video, of course, was made shortly after Squaresoft and Nintendo collaborated on a project that would later go down as one of the best roleplaying games on the Super Nintendo, albeit an easy one. For those of you who haven’t already figured it out, I’m talking about Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. And, knowing what a great working relationship the two companies had, with Nintendo being the first company to give Square its chance and even licensed Final Fantasy here in the states in its first incarnation, I knew that the two were a match made in heaven.
So, like the sheep I was, I sat there waiting in agony for Nintendo to finally (after many, many delays) release their 64-bit next-generation system, now dubbed the Nintendo 64. But, there was one problem.
Squaresoft stabbed Nintendo in the back. You can sugarcoat the preceding sentence any way you want, but the end result’s always the same. Squaresoft stabbed Nintendo in the back. More importantly than that, Squaresoft stabbed Nintendo’s fan base in the back.
You see, Squaresoft decided they would jump ships and join the Sony team based mainly on the fact that it was an easier medium to program on. If the past is any proof, it shouldn’t be long before those bastards at Square jump ship again due to the difficult architecture of the Playstation2, but maybe they’re older and wiser.
So, after a couple of years being just a Nintendo 64 owner with a load of spite, one game caused me to jump ships like no other game before it. While the game that made most people decide to become Playstation owners was Final Fantasy VII, mine was The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.
This may sound bad, but hear me out. You see, up until that game was released, I had no problem going without roleplaying games. If there’s anything I do way too much, it’s live in the past. And, while people were enjoying their fresh, new roleplaying games, I was still playing my Super Nintendo roleplaying games such as Chrono Trigger, The Secret of Mana, Shadowrun and Breath of Fire 2. Heck, even to this day, I’m trying to find time and money just to go back and get the games I missed like Lufia 2 and the original Harvest Moon. But I was fine enough until I finished the masterpiece that is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and I needed more.
Short Intermission for a What Many Gamers Consider Blasphemy
I’ve got to say this, too, before I continue. I, unlike the general gamer, was not impressed by Final Fantasy VII. Not only did I find it overly long and boring, I continued playing the game only to beat what was, at the time, considered the most difficult boss in a roleplaying game in the Ruby Weapon. That, my friends, is why I have yet to review it. It was a good game… a GOOD game, but it couldn’t compare to Final Fantasy IV or Final Fantasy VI.
The Continuation of the Prologue
So, I bought two games when I finally broke down and purchased my Playstation. First and most important, the game that truly brought me to the dark side was Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete. I remember reading in Diehard: GameFan about this game around the same time Final Fantasy III (or VI or what have you) was released. And, thanks to Nick Rox, I dreaded the fact that I was neither a Sega CD owner nor a Genesis owner for that matter, just because I’d only need to buy a Sega CD to play that game, then. The other game I purchased was the game I’m about to review, Parasite Eve.
Parasite Eve came at a pretty good time where RPGamers expectations were at an all-time low for this generation of gaming. You see, there was a short spurt of critically acclaimed RPGs coming from the likes of Suikoden, Wild Arms and, of course, Final Fantasy VII. And, while Final Fantasy Tactics wasn’t exactly a popular title at the time (Due, for the most part, to a barely existent ad campaign by the geniuses at Sony.), it was critically acclaimed. It’s a shame that most gamers didn’t give it the time of day. Still, there have been rumors of its re-release, so maybe more gamers will finally have the chance to play this marvel of a game.
As I was saying before going off on a tangent, Parasite Eve came at a good time. Gamers finally accepted roleplaying as a real genre of gaming that wasn’t exclusively for nerds and people with no life, but as somewhat intelligent gaming for the masses. Why read a book when you could read and interact with that text that keeps popping up on screen when you press a button, right?
Based on a Japanese novel of the same name, Parasite Eve was different than anything Square had put out before it. It was a roleplaying game, yes, but it was also a horror game at the same time. Horror, as a genre, was no longer exclusive to the Castlevania and Ghosts and Goblins series or those poor souls who were dumb enough to pay sixty dollars for Quest 64, but expanded as a genre itself with Capcom’s release of Resident Evil
The Meat to Your Potatoes, The Story to Your Prologue, The Review
Within the first ten minutes of the game, you’ll realize the game is different than any roleplaying game before. It’s Christmas Eve 1997 and your character, street-smart New York detective Aya Brea, is attending an opera at Carnegie Hall with a date, when something goes wrong. In a graphic (read “super cool”) CGI cut scene, Aya and Melissa Pearce, the main female operatic singer, make eye contact. And with no rhyme or reason, Melissa Pearce’s fellow actors spontaneously combust on stage setting it aflame. Soon thereafter, as Melissa continues to sing, all the people in the crowd combust as well… except for Aya and her date (which, it turns out, is a GAPING plot hole). People being burned alive begin to fall from the balconies of the theater, one of which almost crushes Aya in the process. People never seem to think of others in a situation like this.
So, being the dedicated detective that she is, Aya pushes her date aside and begins to investigate this horrific scene. Hidden somewhere in her slinky black dress was a gun AND a billy club that she takes to pursue the only other survivor of this mess… Melissa Pearce.
And, in stereotypical New York cop fashion, Aya starts a shoot first, ask questions later attitude and begins to blast away at the opera singer. After the first shot you get on Melissa connects, Melissa unleashes a power within Aya known as “Parasite Energy.” Aya continues to pop many a cap in Melissa’s punkass, but it’s to no avail, as Melissa makes her escape, saying something scary and mysterious, after taking about six bullets like she was Tupac… um, the first shooting, not the second. Alright, revision, Melissa takes these bullets as if they were merely mosquito bites, and floats off the stage for an escape.
So, Aya sluggishly follows (you see, you can’t move fast in high heels), jumping down the hole that Melissa created, and sees a young girl. After advising the girl to run along and get away from the crime scene, the girl runs through a door. Aya simply shrugs the apparition off, apparently desensitized by the carnage that took place shortly before seeing this girl, and continues through the door. And, still in pursuit, she is startled by the squeak of a small rat.
Another intermission for what Seanbaby.com would call “Nintendo Logic”
After seeing people burst into flames and fall to their death and seeing a ghost walk through a door, Aya continues on her journey without so much as a second thought. Yet, the simple squeak of a rat, something fairly common in the dank alleys of the New York streets she patrols, startles this woman enough to where she’ll stop and turn to it. Okay… take that all in? See what's wrong with that? Good, I can continue now.
The Continuation of My Review
So, as she watches the rat, it mutates in typical Resident Evil grotesque fashion, leaving blood, skin, muscle and bone exposed in the process. Tres cool. And, after the extended mutation, during which she probably could’ve impaled the rat with her high heels instead of watching, she’s on to attack this mutation. A daring New York cop, yes. An intelligent New York cop, well, I’m not so sure.
So, after offing it and many other enemies, reading Melissa’s diary and sending a clown to his well-deserved death (I bet he was an ICP fan.), she meets up with Melissa again, playing a piano. And, when Aya enters and points the gun in her direction, Melissa herself mutates into some sort of monster. Now calling herself Eve, she explains to Aya that mitochondria are sick of “nucleic dominance” and not going to take it anymore.
And battle ensues, and so begins a strange, dark roleplaying game.
The main part of the story revolves around her relationship with fellow detective and fatherly figure, Daniel Dollis, and his son, her relationship with a scientist by the name of Maeda, her past with Melissa Pearce and, most importantly, the intracellular organelle responsible for energy production known as mitochondria. You see, in this story, mitochondria are considered parasites that took control of Melissa Pearce, but in real life they’re a basic part of cells that are vital to survival.
From a scientific standpoint, I’d like to pick this game apart. Then, of course, I realized I wasn’t that smart. So, I’ll just go over the basic elements of any game.
Get a Load of This
First and foremost, of all Square games on the PSX, this suffers the least overall from load time. Sure, Brave Fencer Musashi and Vagrant Story had no load time since the battles took place in the same screen you traveled upon, but the transitional load time for when switching rooms and to the menu screen were always pretty high. Parasite Eve does have a load time when entering battle or switching screens, but it’s not nearly as severe as Chrono Cross or Final Fantasy VIII, respectively, so I won’t complain any. Then, when entering the menu screens, there’s no load time at all. I was, and still am, impressed. If only Final Fantasy Anthology would’ve fared so well, the world would be a better place.
As They Say in Ogre Battle, “Fight It Out!”
The battle system is this game’s main strength, all around. There’s three different things you’ll be watching on the battle screen. The top bar is the Active Time Bar. When this bar fills, Aya is free to make an attack, change weapons or armor, use magic (called Parasite Energy) or use items. The second bar is Aya’s hit points. For the non-RPGamer, this is your energy bar. Once it’s depleted, you’re dead. It’s accompanied by a numeric representation of the bar to the left of it. Finally, the last bar is the Parasite Energy bar, which is the fuel to your Parasite Energy fire. When this bar is depleted, it slowly restores, you lucky dog, you.
More important than those bars, is the fact that you truly have control over your character in turn-based combat with real-time movement. While you still have to wait to attack, you can move your character around the playfield to evade attacks or just get a better shot at the enemy.
Each weapon has a range statistic that represents how far away from your enemies you have to be for a high hit-percentage. Also, the closer you are to an enemy, the higher the damage you’ll be dealing to them. If you’re point blank, you’re more likely to get a critical hit than if you’re trying to ping them from a safe distance with your Tim (Sorry, that’s a hybrid Monty Python and the Holy Grail/Magic: The Gathering reference, y’all. It just goes to show that I’m true to my word when I say I’m a geek… I’m going to go cry, now.). When you do press your attack button, a spherical grid will pop out of Aya, representing her attack range. Gamers familiar with Vagrant Story will feel right at home here, as it’s virtually identical in every way.
Also familiar for Vagrant Story players is the weapon system. While you won’t be stopping at workshops trying to create a new blade by combining a leather glove and a scimitar (for the elusive “cow-skinitar” blade), you will be able to strip old weapons and armor of their attributes and bonuses with tools. The bonuses are easy, as it just adds some whatever numbers are in the bonus column to the item you’re modifying’s number. The attributes, however, can only be switched if you’ve got a “slot” open on your weapon. No slots mean no attribute modification, but you’re still free to modify your bonuses. Be aware that using tools to modify your equipment will make whatever was left of the previous item unusable and, thus, a discarded item.
As I mentioned earlier, movement takes place in real time during combat. If an enemy throws a fireball your way, you have to evade it yourself. There’s no accidental missing like those found in your typical turn-based RPG unless you’re out of the enemy’s range. The problem is, Aya seems to be a bit of a prissy and runs around about as fast as I walk. As a matter of fact, I thought my game had a glitch because she was crawling just on her feet. It turns out she just walks really slowly. Still, unlike many RPGs, fighting isn’t your boring sit-and-wait type and ends up being pretty enjoyable.
At the same time, gun-based RPGaming has been done and done better already in the likes of Shadowrun on my good old Super Nintendo. Still, it's really a breath of fresh air in the stagnant turn-based roleplaying crowd whereas Shadowrun was real time... and both games had characters with slow movement. It's like you have to be slow to fight with a gun.
Like a Trick-or-Treater’s Loot, It’s a Mixed Bag
Graphically, it’s a mixed bag. The CGI cutscenes are beautiful and freaky when they need to be, but look like they were created on a Commodore 64 when you compare them to those found in Final Fantasy IX or Chrono Cross… or even worse, Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within. Of course, this game is a few years old and Square’s since learned a trick or two; like how to poorly code games that were brilliant on the Super Nintendo onto the Playstation when they would’ve been more than perfect on Nintendo 64. Okay, okay, so I’m still bitter to this day. Sue me.
The play field and battle screen are pretty much one and the same, with the exception of enemies and Aya’s gratuitous energy meters in battles. Much like Final Fantasy VII before it, this game has prerendered backgrounds with polygonal models forming everything that might possibly move on the screens. This includes allies, enemies, most doors and treasure chests. The backgrounds are damn near perfect while the models just aren’t that great. There are some nice details, like the highlights of Aya’s hair, but even on a 27 inch TV (which is slighty larger than the average user’s size), you can’t see many character details, such as their eyes, unless they’re right in front of the fixed camera. Still, it’s easy enough to distinguish most of the characters so I can’t really complain. Once again, all this means is the game’s showing it’s age. And to think, we have to chop a tree down to tell how old it is.
Also, a flaw in the design of prerendered backgrounds and real-time models is that you can always tell if something doesn’t belong, as it just doesn’t look right. See that locker that’s shaded a slightly different color? Yeah, it opens. Wait… what’s that jagged item behind the pillar? Ah… it’s a treasure chest! Fans of Capcom’s survival horror series know this problem very well… most notably when you’re looking for the valve to the water hose in Resident Evil 2. It just makes it too easy to find items that way, whereas it was possible to hide things with sprites or fully polygonal environments. I guess I’m just trying to hold onto old school while accepting only the very best of the newbies like Skies of Arcadia.
Finally, though it’s a minor quibble, when the screen makes a transition, it may leave start you off facing a whole different direction. I like games that flow and this game just isn’t one of them. While I could confidently hold left if I entered a door on the left in Final Fantasy, I have to wait for the screen to come up before I can tell you which direction I need to hold for movement. If you’re used to playing flowing games like I am, then you’ll find yourself accidentally walking off screen and having to wait on for the previous screen to load again.
Anyhow, the graphics do well to create a realistic and slightly creepy world, but the fact of the matter is that this game isn’t as scary, say, Resident Evil 3. Mutants just aren’t as good at their job as zombies are, I guess.
Yo, V-I-P! Let’s kick it!
What can I say about the music? I would rather listen to Vanilla Ice’s Greatest Hits… no, screw that, his worst songs than listen to a lot of the music playing in this game. With the exception of the battle music, every song in the beginning of the game is TRYING to capture the feel of New York (see the soundtrack to Chasing Amy for something that feels like New York) with hard beats and a slightly techno feel. But, in the end, it fails worse than a movie starring Tom Green in a dramatic role would.
Yet, I’m one of those people that MUST play a game like it was intended, so I still leave the volume up, if not just for the sound effects in the game. As such, I’m constantly playing this game in short doses so as not to bludgeon myself to death with a Dual Shock controller.
Later in the game, though, the music does stray away from the upbeat attempt at the New York sound and provides some nice tunes that fit the mood. So, I’m having a conflict because the beginning tunes will drive you crazy while the later tunes will make you glad you have the music up if not just for atmospheric value. I’m ending this music critique because, while I’d like to say the music was terrible, some of the score is downright brilliant.
You are… the WEAKEST LINK!
There’s just one true problem with this game. You see, it may take you longer to read this review than it will take you to play through this game. Though not nearly as bad as Metal Gear Solid on Playstation, you’ll be spending a lot of your time viewing cinema scenes, be they real-time or CGI. This game would easily fit on one disc if it wasn’t for the numerous CGI sequences throughout the game. In all entirety, it shouldn’t take you more than twelve hours in this game if you take your time. This was one of the fatal flaws found in Arc the Lad that prevented it from reaching American shores. (Sidenote: Thankfully, Working Designs is bringing Arc the Lad and its two sequels to the States later this year.)
Thankfully, there’s a New Game+ option opened once you beat the game the first time. Once again, this game is extremely short even with the new section, the “Chrysler Building” that you can work your way through and more powerful enemies throughout the game. But, replay value is replay value and at least Square TRIED to add something to the short, short game.
In Conclusion
Parasite Eve is by no means a bad game. Of course, without the Square treatment of visual splendor and a great script (that might be due more to the book though I’m not sure), it’d be stuck in mediocrity. I don’t know how to rate this game, as I’ve been singing its many praises but it’s also a very flawed and short game.
If you want survival horror with a better story than that found in your average Resident Evil knockoff (and Resident Evil itself), then this game is for you. If you’re looking for some hardcore roleplaying gaming, then look elsewhere.
Seeing how this game was placed on Sony’s “Greatest Hits” selection last year, fans of both genres should give this game a look for the twenty bucks it’ll run you. It’s a game that’s good enough to introduce an RPGamer to survival horror and a survival horror gamer to RPGs. Overall, this game manages to be rough around the edges no matter how much Square polished it. If you don’t go into the game looking for the next Final Fantasy, you’ll find a lot to like in Parasite Eve.
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