Parasite Eve

"This would have been a classic ... if it was longer than an hour!"

Parasite Eve was a game dubed ''The Cinematic RPG''. For the time, it was. It easily had the best FMV's out there. Now, they still look good, but not as well as FFIX. But then again, you can't expect that either ...

(Note: This is the Japanese version getting reviewed)

Graphics: 10/10

-WOW! These are beautifal. There is some signs of pixilation, but it's nothing to worry about. Aya Bera (Your only Character) looks real good (and I'm not just talking about in the game :) ) O.K., back to the game ... The backgrounds are really something to see, as they look better than almost any game I can think of. The enemies/spells in this game look pretty good, and there are a few enemies that look really impressive. Well, if Square's trying to just sell games on graphics nowadays, there doing one hell of a job.

Sound: 9/10

-It's pretty damn good. The sounds of Aya walking in the snow (the effects) are all done very well. The music (battle/boss) wise is decent enough to not hit the MUTE button on your remote. There are a few tracks in PE that REALLY fit the game, and were really damn good. There wasn't any tracks that I really disliked. I thought the battle music was average, but not crap. And the music definitly fit the grove of the game, for each situation.

Control: 7/10

-I don't usually rate control in an RPG but for how this game was set-up, I thought I had to. The control is perfect (with the analog controller) without the analog controller it's not great, but you can live. All in all, I'll throw up a 7/10 here.

Story: 10/10

-I'm going to rip on the gameplay ... not the story. The story, no matter how long it was, simply put ... great. It's too bad that whoever developed this game didn't think very long about what he had in this game, and it will show in the gameplay review. Oh well, that's just one problem with this game. One ... BIG problem. The beggining of the game see's Aya Bera being taken too the opera (In a lovely black dress, I might add :) ) and, while at the opera, during the play something major goes wrong. This unfoldes into one of the coolest story's I've ever read, especially for what they had to work with.

Gameplay: 5/10

-This game took about a few HOURS to beat. It's sad too, because with the excellent graphics, sound, story, it's just a shame that Squaresoft couldn't deliver on the gameplay aspect of it all. Well, I'll try to tell you other aspects of the gameplay besides it's length ... I ... will ... try :( O.K. well, for one thing leveling up is also a pain in the ass as well. Why? Because once you fight an enemy in a certin place (They are activated at first like they were in Chrono Trigger without being able to acutally SEE the enemies first) you only get a ''chance'' at fighting them again after beating them the one time that you ''had'' too. It's really a stupid system compared to how it could have been, because this game COULD HAVE ruled. Now there is an ''EX'' mode after you beat the game where you can go back and find secrets and even try to beat the ''Chrysler Building'' which, in fact could take you longer to beat than the original game! (Note: I am NOT joking) And that, is sad people. The battle system is pretty good, Aya uses Gun's to attack, and she can use magical attacks called ''Parasite Energy''. Her PE ''bar'' gets re-filled after you use a PE attack you basically (time refraning) you get unlimited PE attacks. This especially gets ''cheesy'' when you can switch armor's in-battle to refil the bar faster! Takes a lot of the challenge out of this game. The difficulity is about above average. If you can beat the Chrysler building without using any cheats your a pretty good RPG player. Also another thing that hurts this game a tad is Aya doesn't have to many item slot's for stuff she'll need throughout the game, such as wepons's/armor's/junk/regular RPG items. You can ''store'' items in boxes in various places. The guns thing is a pretty cool idea that I liked a lot. You can get certin guns throughout the game and you can even modify them and add more power to them at the wepons shop in the NYPD. Um ... hope I didn't leave anything out. The only reason gameplay didn't get a 3 or 4 was because of the replay value and moderate challenge. Also how you can modify wepons/armor's is really cool too.

Overall: 8/10

Conclusion: This game could have EASILY been a GOTYC (Game of the year Canidate) had it not had the poor gameplay. Well, at least there is the EX mode. This game has awesome graphics, sound, story, control, and below average gameplay. It's not that playing through this game was bad because of the gameplay ... it's just that it wasn't long enough to get a great score, and I have to take that into consideration. PE could have been called ''One of the greatest of all time'' but unfortunitly I have to call it ''Could have been one of the greatest of all time''.

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Email me:paulwolfstien@aol.com

-PW

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/00, Updated 10/21/00