Parasite Eve

This is probably one of my favorite RPGs. But when it's Square, what do you expect? Combining beautiful graphics, great music, unique story, and a solid cast of characters, you know you're gonna get one hell of an RPG. You play as only one character through the whole game, Aya Brea, a cop in the NYPD's 17th precinct. She uses standard police equipment (clubs, guns, and body armor), which is customizable thanks to the awesome tool mode! And though they don't fight with you, other characters do "join" you. Your partner, Daniel Dollis, a veteran cop who can sustain a huge amount of burns, comes along with you to most of the "dungeons" but waits outside and lets you do most of the fighting. Another one of your allies is Kunihiko Maeda, a Japanese scientist studying mitochondria. They help you in your quest to defeat Eve and save the human race.

(INTRO SPOILERS!!!)

The game starts off with Aya going to the opera with a guy Square intentionally wants you to hate, and did a damned good job. One of the performers in the opera is doing a solo, when she sees Aya. This makes her go berserk. The stage starts combusting into flames, as well as the other performers. Then members of the audience spontaneously combust into flames and fall from balconies in a beautiful CG movie. But miraculously, Aya survives without even a scratch (and somehow her boyfriend does, too, but this subject is never brought up the rest of the game. hmm..). The rest of the game's story is finding out the strange connection between Aya and Eve.and that little girl who appears throughout the game.

(END SPOILERS!!!)

One of Parasite Eve's greatest qualities is the game play. Blending action with traditional RPG elements, it makes for a great battle system. You walk around and explore "dungeons" and enter battles just as you would in Chrono Trigger or Breath of Fire III. But once in the battles, you have to dodge attacks and run around manually. You can still select spells (called parasite energy) and use items like in most RPGs, but that small blend of action really makes it something. This also makes for harder bosses and battles, well, compared to most of Square's games. On the down side, the game took me less than nine hours to complete.. That's what I'd be saying if I haven't thought over. Does it matter if it's short? No! It's better than drawing the game out to twenty or thirty hours, adding in boring plot details and making you tired of it. Games like Breath of Fire III and Tales of Destiny bored me to death simply because the developers thought it was what gamers wanted. Well I guess most gamers feel this way, but I'm not most gamers. Anyway, the tools system was another great option. You could take elements from other armor or weapons that you don't need and transfer them to the ones you're using. For instance, you could transfer the defensive attributes of a vest to some armor, making the armor slightly stronger in protection. Or you could take a rifle that fires off three shots per turn, remove the three shots per turn action, and put them on a more powerful pistol that only fires one shot per round. However, using a tool on the item that you're not using will destroy the item, but that doesn't matter since you can't sell it (no shops).

On top of good story and game play, this game brings you nice music and graphics. The music sounds like something in a Halloween movie, setting the mood for horror. This game is more science-fiction than horror, but it does have some horror. Nothing to make you jump out of your seat or anything but.anyway, on to the graphics. Any fan of Final Fantasy 7's graphics will enjoy these. The same technology for FF7's cut-scenes and the same pre-rendered backgrounds are used here, with a few touch ups.

The characters look more like real people instead of deformed midgets. And, in a way, they are real characters. Unlike most RPGs, these used realistic characters in a realistic environment. The United States Airforce, New York City, police, Central Park. and many more familiar landmarks.

Well in the end, this was a great game. It's better than FF7 in my opinion (Then again, there are many RPGs that I like more than FF7). This may even be a good game to get hard core action fans into the genre, because it's best quality is game play. It also has the graphics that they crave. So if you haven't played this game but don't have a whole lot of cash, rent it! It won't take too long to beat, and you can always rent it again for the EX mode (A lot like Chrono Trigger's New Game + feature, but slightly different. Read WanderingProphet's Parasite Eve Review for further details, I'm getting lazy at my old age).

Black's Reviews
Parasite Eve Reviews


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