Parasite Eve Review

Developer: Square (Squaresoft/Square Enix)

Publisher: Square (Squaresoft/Square Enix)

Genre: Horror, RPG

Format: Playstation

Released: September 9th 1998

It’s Christmas!! in Manhattan and you have taken a horrible Daddy’s boy out on a date to go see the Opera. Not sure the opera got a positive reception but I found the actors to be very stiff during their performance. Sick of watching this garbage our protagonist has a stare down with the main actress who seems to have a fiery passion for this play, so much so that she sets the row ablaze. Here I thought the front row was the splash zone. Our MC is part of the NYPD so instead of fleeing she pulls out her pistol and gets her detective feet moving. If the charcoal people aren’t enough she also finds that both the actress and herself share a certain history but of course this is too early in the game to find out what that is.

Not only do we have the crazed actress to deal with but regular birds and vermin aren’t transforming into all sorts of creations. You bet they can spit fire as well. At the first sight of this shape shifting rat we get a taste for the battle system. It’s pretty good, you have free reign as far as running around goes which is rare for any RPG. So instead of you standing still and taking a hit all dodges are in your questionably capable hands. Also rare for RPGs is the use on guns however the range is limited so don’t think you can snipe from across the screen. Depending on the weapon used you get a sphere of effective attack the size dependent on the range level of the weapon. Pistols have shorter range than rifles for example. Melee weapons are in this as well but for the most part they are for when you have no ammo left.

The damage is also proximity based so make sure your enemy is in that sphere or you may miss the target completely or do about 10% of the usual damage.

As you level up you also unlock Parasite or magic spells. Some incredibly usual others not so much. Feel free to use them as much as you’d like as Parasite Eve is pretty generous when it comes to regenerating your energy for the spells. Which again makes a great change from your standard RPG when you hope for an elixir every battle. The enemies have varying types as well depending on your location. One minute you could be fighting rats, the next a bush with tentacles or even an electric furless polar bear.

I’ve been singing it’s praises for a while now so let’s touch on the flaws that the game has. The first which comes to mind is the sprinting. Put simply it’s not sprinting. It’s a light jog at best. I can understand slowing you down during battles to make it harder to dodge but when you are just running around it can feel painfully slow.

Next we have the inventory, you have limited inventory which increases as you level up which is great however you’ll find it fills up which junk (quite literally) very quickly. Now when you open a chest you can place whatever you into the chest and swap it with the new item which is really good. After a battle though when you get your loot if you don’t have room you can’t glug down a medicine bottle to make space you have to discard it instead. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it is annoying.

Exploration isn’t too linear, you are limited in the places you can explore but you can run around the area however you like. If you need a key to progress some are easy to find however there are a few times where a key or item is in a drawer which you can’t grab as the game is very precise in how you open the containers. A pixel off and you won’t open that drawer so you’ll think it’s a non interactive drawer the same as 100 others in the area. This unfortunately leads to unneeded backtracking.

Getting back to the positives you can upgrade your character with bonus points which are obtained after battles. Now you can’t upgrade health or damage but you can upgrade inventory size and how quick your attack meter fills. To upgrade weapons and armour you can use bonus points as well or there are drops which increase a certain stat. Pretty handy if you have a favourite gun as you can keep it around for ages instead of ditching it for the next one you find.

All things considered I will give Parasite Eve an 8/10 the combat and upgrade systems are great, the music especially the theme is incredible but the story is lacking and little nit picks I have stack up. Still I easily recommend this to any RPG or even action game fan.

It's getting hot in here, so get out your mitochondria - Mamushi