Beaten: Parasite Eve
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, leaves Chrysler Building on Ex Game.
There are games that stand the test of time and are pretty much always great, no matter how far in the future you play them. The old turn based Final Fantasies still hold up, the original Super Mario Bros. still holds up. Parasite Eve...does not. To be honest, I've only played this on emulator, then finally purchased it from the Playstation Network PSOne classics category, and started to play it. I finally settled down this week and pounded out the rest of it in two game sessions.
The first big warning sign is the game is only 9 hours long, if you don't include the optional dungeon. For an RPG, that is insanely short, and you can tell this was an early playstation title. Clearly they were pushing disc space, but a two disc game is only 9 hours long? Too many FMVs, not enough game. I will pretty much wave off the ugly polygons, the odd looking FMVs (though still better than some of Final Fantasy VII popeye-armed FMVs), and the prerendered backgrounds that make finding boxes a pixel hunt. All of that pretty much came with the generation, and I enjoyed the old Resident Evils.
The second big warning sign is how clunky the combat is. It does 'cut' away to random battles, but they still show up on the prerendered backgrounds. Since the detection of where you can walk is so wonky, often times you are never quite sure where you can and can't go, especially in spots with odd angles. Since the game is an action RPG, and you have to actively dodge attacks, this can lead to you getting nailed by attacks where you had plenty of warning, but just couldn't move with the arena. Other times, you'll get nailed because Aya moves at a speed that suggests a leg injury (despite her animation insisting she is running full out), and the only time she can be called agile is when she casts Haste...which lasts maybe three attacks before wearing off, and uses up valuable healing magic points. Other times, you'll get nailed because...well, the monster just doesn't like you, and despite early monsters giving you nice warnings, sometimes the designers just coded a monster that'll nail you, nothing you can do about it. Bosses are really bad about this, they move much faster than your character, and will use attacks that hit nearly the entire screen...or just rush up and knock you down to one HP.
The game did something right in that you can customize guns by adding and removing attributes from them, and unless you're so stupid as to remove an ability from an armor you've bumped the attributes up insanely high on, thus losing those, you're never directly 'screwed' out of the defense/attack bonuses you add to your armor and weapons. There is an oddity that you get numerous weapons with multi-shot capabilities....when all that does is make Aya sit still for each shot, and get nailed by even more attacks (See above). Most of the game I went with a weapon with 1 or 2 shots, and that was it, sitting still any longer was an invite to use up even more heals. Still, if you find a great weapon but don't like the fact that it has 5 shots, you can always change it.
The final gripe has to do with the final boss fight, which surprise (Hi Squaresoft!) is a multi-parter. First part is fine, you can read his attacks, dodge out of the way, slide in to blast him, barring the cheap 'I'll knock you to 1 HP so fast you can't dodge' move. The second part splits, so you have one bird moving around like its on meth, and a beast shooting lasers across the whole map...difficult, but doable. Then the third, again, gains a 1 HP no warning attack, an attack that knocks you to half instantly, a melee attack that is near impossible to dodge, and a ranged attack which is your only chance to deal damage to him without getting hit...assuming you can move Aya under him fast enough so you don't get nailed several times. It's basically a roulette, if he spams the ranged attack, you can get numerous attacks off for free. After that? A chase scene, where one wrong turn is instant death...and repeating the whole boss fight over again. Whoever thought you could describe this as fun instead of 'controller breaking frustrating' was an idiot.
The games main sin though? It's dull, and it's boring. The story is gibberish (not literally), and they toss so much philosophy and pseudo-science babble that at some point you can just insert 'Mitochondria did it' into everything and be done with it. The random encounters are mostly waiting to shoot them, and running in circles till your gauge charges up so you don't get hit. Unless its one of the few random encounters in the game that does a decent amount of damage, you are at more risk of getting distracted and getting nailed a few times than actually dying. I had on a Youtube video of some other games music (By the way, music, not that great either, spent the game with it muted), and I got distracted by the videos, numerous times. Doesn't help when you walk around a museum ten times looking for that one door you missed.
....Damnit, still have the Chrysler building to call this completed.
No comments:
Post a Comment