The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Parasite Eve

A "Cinematic RPG" no less! So this means that whenever you play it, someone with a huge hat will be sitting in front of you, talking loudly into a mobile phone, or giving away the ending. Thanks man!

Parasite Eve was based on the novel with the same name, written by Hideaki Sena which even recieved some kind of prestigious Horror Award that noone's ever heard of.



Consequently it got turned into a movie.



I don't remember much from the movie cos it was 5 or 6 years ago that I saw it, but it wasn't anything special I think. Later on, inspired by the games, I decided to read the novel which is infinitely better than anything that was based off of it.
The book has a beautifully chilling atmosphere, very medical and biological, with a rather sad and disturbed, but understandable main character. Towards the end it even delivers the gore and sickness you'd expect from a horror story so it's a great read all round, you just have to learn Japanese.

The game never comes anywhere near the chillingly sterile setting of the book, and instead goes for obvious quasi-gore and a more mundane setting.
It was made by Squaresoft, long before it merged with Enix, to become....uh....Squeezy or whatever it's called, and by the looks of it, it was an attempt to rival Capcom's Resident Evil, or in other words, get a piece of the "Survival Horror" action, only with Square's trademark RPG elements thrown in, cos they suck at anything else.
They have it take place in New York, starring Aya Brea, a beautiful young blonde policewoman, who on her day off decides to go to the opera with a friend. Soon though, the story kicks into action with the Opera Singer appearing to be the prodigial Eve some ancient parasitic being which has a thing for Mitochondria.
If you don't know what mitochondria are, then I challenge you to try a day without using them and see how you like that. Next time, be nice to them okay?



Before long the entire audience bursts into flame, except for Aya, and it is up to you to find out why exactly, and en passant fix this whole Evil Parasite thingy up good.
I say it's an RPG derivative of Resident Evil, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is NOT. I think Square may have been slightly influenced by it, but it plays totally differently. Now the sequel is another story entirely, but I'll get to that in a couple of days probably.

Basically you get pre-rendered backgrounds which you can move around in freely, but very very SLOWLY, and combat occurs more or less in real time. Actually, it's a lot like Chrono Trigger in that battles do not occur randomly, but at set points, and you fight on the spot, without any real transition to a battle arena.
The screen stays fixed though, so you have limited space to move about in, and the biggest difference with Chrono Trigger is that you can actually run around at all times, even when it's not your turn to attack.
Your turn is of course decided by a gauge slowly filling up, and once it's full, you can use your gun or your special Powers to kill the many monsters. The real problem though, as I said, is that Aya is really goddamn slow. In fact at one point, I was overtaken by a 90 year old woman with only one leg. And she was DEAD. And enemies of course can bounce, jump and run about happily, without a care in the world, for the only being above them in the food chain moves at 3 inches per YEAR.

"But Ingen! What about this Cinematic RPG stuff? What does it even mean!? Tell us!"

Yeah yeah, I'm getting to that, geez. Honestly, some people...
Basically the cinematic aspect lies in the movies.
Now I want you to let that one sink in, because it might contain a little bit too much information to comprehend all at once.

Thing is, movies are PLENTIFUL, there's one at almost every corner and it seems even the slightest aspect of the story has to be told through a CG sequence, otherwise we might miss something. Parasite Eve was made somewhere between Final Fantasy VII and VIII, and in terms of movie quality it indeed lies somewhere in between. They are without a doubt rather dated, but they still look nice and they're pretty well directed too.
But as we all know CG Movies consume large quantities of memory, which leads to the game being incredibly short, despite it being spread over 2 Discs. You'll blaze through it in no time at all, so you're not exactly getting your money's worth.
Still, it should be insanely cheap nowadays so don't let that stop you.

If anything should stop you let it be one of these factors:
- The game's difficulty is rather cheap. It's not too hard most of the time, but when it is, it is simply because enemies will throw any kind of Status Ailment at you or very simply because they're a lot faster than you are.
- One major gripe I have is with the Auto Potion function which you can find on some armor. It automatically uses up one potion when you're down on health, but it is programmed tou use your BEST potions! It will always start with the strongest healing items, and then work it's way down, whereas the opposite would make more sense to me.
- There's very little to do. Combat is fun, generally, but the environments you have to plow through are boring and eventless. Occasionally there's a very pathetic attempt at a puzzle, which always boils down to "find item A to insert in slot B" and you're done. Other puzzles are of the 'push button to open door' variety, which is insulting to ANYONE's intelligence.
- Your inventory is extremely limited. I hate games with limited item-carrying in the first place, but this one is really bad. Your pockets fill up in NO time, and you get new items all the time, which can be frustrating. Also, why can't I USE any items on the spot if I get something new after a battle? Why do I have to discard?
But most annoyingly, you'll get some items that are PURELY in the game to clog up your inventory and serve NO purpose whatsoever. Nice one.
- Whoever is responsible for this needs to be shot: After a whole string of long and arduous final battles, you finally beat the "Ultimate Being", or so you think, because it falls to the ground and just sloshes around. What ensues is a nerve-wrecking and extremely annoying race towards the exit. If you get too near the creature, it will devour you with one attack and it's INSTANT GAME OVER, meaning you have to do ALL of the battles over again. The first time I thought I just had to approach it to give it its last moments, but I was killed immediately, which left me swearing like a drunken sailor. NOT a nice note to finish the game on.

In the end what you're left with, is a rather unique game. The battle system is fun, the movies are pretty and full of action and there's lots of treasure to find.
The fact that it's really short only saves it from becoming too tedious, but what's there will most likely entertain you if you're into the genre.
Nice, but not great: an 8+ seems about right.

posted by Ingen! @ 8:45 PM