The Bouncer

"It should have been better..."

Intro
The summer has come, and I was so eager that I went to the shop as soon as possible to purchase some interesting games to play. I heard that ''The Bouncer'' was a work by famous Squaresoft (now SquareEnix), in which Tetsuya Nomura was the artist. Squaresoft has been famous with the RPG series Final Fantasy, and Tetsuya Nomura was known as the great artist of most of Square's popular games like Final Fantasy series, Parasite Eve, etc. Just for those reasons, I was so willing to try ''The Bouncer'', since this is not a traditional RPG as Square's style. I did want to explore their true talent through this game. But after some minutes playing it, I was extremely disappointed...

Gameplay 5/10
The gameplay is awful, I think. You mostly can't freely control the characters by yourself, and you just have the chances to touch the gamepads when the battles begin. You just simply pick a character, then fight like hell with your purchased skills ; not to mention the characters' actions really look stupid and slow that upsets such players like me. It just makes me feel that my control pad is spoiled, or the characters don't do as I want. I don't mind if this is because of the game style, but it seems Square didn't know how to vary the style of the game to make it more fun. In my opinion, characters' flexibility is very important to 3D fighting games such as ''The Bouncer''. But Square hasn't paid much attention to this target. Besides, this is not the first 3D fighting game I played. I have once played a pretty similar game called ''Crisis Beat'', which was very unpopular, but I was fond of it more than ''The Bouncer''. In that game, the characters' actions were less beautiful than the ones in ''The Bouncer'', but they were flexible as you pressed the buttons. Besides, you can even collect the enemies' dropped weapons to use during the fights, or you can even use anything in the battlefield to damage the enemies, like flower pots, rubbish, benches, etc ; while in ''The Bouncer'', any actions out of fighting are tightly restricted. If Square added those extra actions to the game, I wouldn't dislike it like this. But fortunately, you are allowed to play Versus Mode with four players, or Survival Mode like normal fighting games; that has increased a bit of gameplay. In addition to those, I really think Square has made a mistake without adding a Practice Mode to this game. This game, in some way, is not different from a fighting game, so I think it's really necessary to have a Practice Mode. I don't know about fighting game fans, but for a ''clumsy'' player who gets used to play Action/Adventure or Role-playing games like me, it's really hard to figure out the characters' moves without a guide. This just partly reduces my enthusiasm to keep playing this game. Generally, I'm really unsatisfactory with ''The Bouncer'' about this quality.

Storyline 8/10
The storyline witnessed during is just so normal and rather tedious. But it's alright since there are several surprising events which the players can't expect. And it's really good of Square to have added the characters' complex pasts during the connection between the chapters so that the story can grow more detailed and emotional. The story begins with a kidnapping in which the victim is a pretty girl called Dominique. Her good friends, who are the the bouncers in Dog Street bar, come on the way to rescue her. There are many special events happening during the journey that recalls each of their past. Isn't it fine ?

Controls 6/10
Really sucks, sucks and sucks ! I just can't determine what causes this sucking, or is it just because the game pads are less sensitive. But I find it pretty low-qualified for such a 3D fighting game.

Battle System 8/10
The battle system of this game is fairly simple. But anyway, it's fine for a fighting game. Some lifebars and Experience Points to learn skills are enough to make the game. Characters' moves are also various enough, not so few. But if Square can add more skills, improve the characters' flexibility like most 3D fighting games such as ''Dead or Alive'', it will be very great.

Characters 6/10
Well, another disappointment. Here I don't mean the characters in ''The Bouncer'' look bad or ugly, but I mean the art style and the drawing. I admire Tetsuya Nomura for his great drawing and techniques of art, but it seems that he doesn't perform very well in this game. I was fond of his drawing through such games like Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy X, Kingdom Hearts etc. What interests me is that his style doesn't coincide in each of the games he designs for: FFVII looks completely different from FFVIII; although FFX had some characters resembling the ones in FFVIII, the artist was talented to create some unique characteristics and styles that differentiated the characters of the two games. I didn't feel any FFVIII sense after playing FFX for a while regardless the character similarities. But... when I play ''The Bouncer'', I just find myself playing a Fighting FFVIII, about its style and and the characters : Sion looks like Squall Leonhart plus Sora from Kingdom Hearts; Volt is a ''jewelled'' Zell Dincht, Dauragon is a ''long-haired'' Seifer Almasy, etc. Besides, so many characters look ''outlandish'' out of limit. I agree that creativities in character designs are important, but that shouldn't be too much. I really don't like this, I just can't imagine it could be this unsatisfying.

Enemies 7/10
I have written reviews for many games, and I often criticized this part when the games have variety of enemies. But it's really a pity when ''The Bouncer'' is not one of them, cuz I expect it should have had. There are so many repeated enemies and I really get bored to fight them. But anyway, this is not a standard to estimate a game, so I pass now.

Graphic 9/10
The graphic of this game is beautiful. It's truly unbelievable if Square can't get high marks about the graphic of their games. They are absolutely adorable for their great techniques of graphic, and they always perform this well in each of their games, including ''The Bouncer''. The characters and the details in the screen look very clear, and their mouth acting when speaking is clever too. Generally, ''The Bouncer'' graphic is not worse than any other game of Square like Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts. And they should keep this up.

Music & Sound : 8/10
The music and sound are fine, and I don't have anything to remark. Characters' voices are all right. The screams of enemies or the sounds of attacks are fun too. In conclusion, this is acceptable.

Secrets 7.5/10
If ''The Bouncer'' doesn't have this, it will receive my lower overall score. The game forces you to replay the scenarios multiple times in different manners in order to get certain endings and certain modes. This not only varies the gameplay with different characters and different modes, but also helps you to figure out the full story of each character in the game. But somehow it can make you get bored since the scenario of each fighter is not very different from each other, and you just replay and replay, as there's no other way than replay !

Replay Value 6.5/10
As I said, you have to replay the game many times if you want to unlock the various secrets of this game. This can be a good reason. But for bored players such as me, after having to replay the similar scenario so much, I just don't have enough enthusiasm to keep going. Hopefully the players can get rest by choosing other modes to play.

Conclusion
''The Bouncer'' should have been a great game, if it receives more attentions from the author. I think maybe Square wanted to make a change during their game schedule, after having succeed in RPG field so much. But in my opinion, ''The Bouncer'' can be considered a pretty big failure, just like their Final Fantasy movie. If they get more experiences and pay more attentions to such games, I think a sequel of ''The Bouncer'' or another similar game in the future will be happily accepted by the gamers world-wide.

Scores
Gameplay : 5/10
Storyline : 8/10
Controls : 6/10
Battle System : 8/10
Characters : 6/10
Enemies : 7/10
Graphic : 9/10
Music & Sound : 8/10
Secrets : 7.5/10
Replay Value : 6.5/10

Final overall score : 6/10 (not an average score)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/08/03, Updated 07/08/03