Parasite Eve
It seems that I finish video games in bunches… I recently finished Parasite Eve for the PS1 and I had… a way better time than I thought I would!
Parasite Eve was one of those games that I had heard about for a long time, I always knew it as one of those classic PS1 games that people really liked and now I can confirm it’s for good reason. I had initially avoided playing it because I am terrible with horror games, like need a friend in a call with me terrible. But I decided that I really wanted to try Parasite Eve because of .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, the new game from the VA-11 Hall-A (I confess I had to google the spelling) devs. The game looks really cool, and when I saw that the gameplay was inspired partly by Parasite Eve I decided I wanted to give it a shot eventually!
Well, that eventually was over the past couple months or so, though more accurately I started it a long time ago, then really sat down to play it over the past week. I had played the Resident Evil games so I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with these style of PS1 games, but I was surprised at how… different? It was.
Namely, I think my impression that it was a survival horror game in the same line of Resident Evil was COMPLETELY wrong. I don’t know where I got that impression now, but it’s more sci-fi JRPG than it is survival horror. There was some body horror and some creepy looking monsters, but nothing that really scared me so that was a nice assurance to myself.
It taking place in New York City was also pretty fun since I’ve been a few times. Always find it fun to go “hey I’ve been there!” when it came to media I experience.
The story and characters were… okay though to me. I honestly couldn’t get over myself going “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” anytime they mentioned the mitochondria so I admit that I was already not entirely taking the story seriously. Eve and Aya were highlights though, I liked their dynamic and Aya especially as a main character was good. Watching Aya survive her ordeals and unravel the mysteries was great!
The real highlight of the game, and this usually isn’t the case for me and JRPGs, is I really, really liked the gameplay. Now granted full disclosure, I have not done the NG+ stuff so I’m strictly talking about the main core experience (I’m aware of the post game dungeon but it’s a lot to go through and I’ve got a lot of games to play haha…). There were a lot of elements that I really enjoyed, the first one is I really liked how the battles took place on the actual map you’re exploring. It’s a bit of a small thing, but I liked how battles started and Aya positioned herself on the map (smart thinking by the devs to make sure you were in a “battle” zone) to begin fighting enemies. It feels better than seeing a loading screen than a transition to a generic battle area, and it helps each battle not feel so repetitive when you’re fighting enemies in different maps. The camera angles being fixed also added to the unique feeling between maps. It felt cool to fight in some maps where the camera angle was close to the ground, and then some where the camera angle was top down.
Additionally, the enemy encounter rate felt juuuuust right. I could be wrong, but it felt like each transitioned map had its own encounter and no more than that. This helped battles feel fresh, and that combined with there not being too many encounters made the game not feel super grindy. With one exception, that being the museum where I got lost and ran into multiple encounters that I didn’t need to, but that one’s partially on me.
Also! The combat itself was fun too! Because you’re constantly moving around along with the enemies, you can dodge enemy attacks and positioning becomes important when you’re doing your own attacks. That combined with different guns having different properties like different charge rates, different ranges, meant I could find the playstyle that suited me the best.
And speaking of, one of the best and coolest things about Parasite Eve is how weapon upgrades and enhancements worked. Because you could so freely transfer properties of guns, whether it be the stat upgrades or bonus modifiers like rate of fire/element/double action, it meant that even when I found a new gun that I liked, it didn’t feel like all the time I put in my old gun felt wasted. I’m sure I also only barely scratched the surface of possible combinations of effects and guns, and I imagine there was so much I missed in terms of items/enhancements.
If there was one complaint I’d make about the gameplay is that I felt some of the parasite abilities felt a little lacking. Part of this could be again, I didn’t do NG+ or I wasn’t using them effectively but a lot of the status effects didn’t feel particularly useful and I ended up using mostly Haste, heals, and Liberate.
Overall, I had a really good time with the game. I’m glad it wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be! I’m thinking about playing the second game, though I’ve heard it’s quite different from the first so maybe I’ll give it some time.