Parasite Eve 2 review

When Parasite Eve 1 first came out, it was a cutting edge modern day action rpg with elements of Resident Evil gameplay. This formula made it an instant hit. Now the role seems to have reverse itself. Parasite Eve 2 is now a modern day action/adventure game like Resident Evil with elements of rpg gameplay. Unfortunately this is a major step down from the first game. What's wrong with this game is like asking what's wrong with Al Gore as the next president of the U.S. Yes, I'm a Canadian but if I were an American, I would be very afraid of having Al Gore as my president. Ronald Reagan still rule after all these years and George Bush does not suck. Sorry just had to throw in a little politics in an election year for you U.S people. Enough of that and let's move onto the review.

The story begins 3 years after the incident in New York city in Parasite Eve 1. Aya Brea has since resign from the NYPD and join the FBI special forces known as M.I.S.T. Just for your information, NYPD Blue suck and the West Wings rule. Please don't ask me how can a conservative like me enjoy watching a left wing propoganda show like West Wings. I just do, okay. By the way, M.I.S.T stands for Mitochondrion Investigatin and Suppression Team. Agents of M.I.S.T are known as NMC(Neo-Mitochondrion Creature)hunters. Since the incident in New York city, the monsters have slowly moved outside of New York and into other cities. These monsters aren't as threatening but they are enough of them to have a special forces with hunter agents assign to track them down and kill them. The story of Parasite Eve 2 begins with a building under seige with monsters. Now this became a big enough attention to draw Aya and M.I.S.T in cause the monsters are of the new variety kind. Something that Aya has never seen before. Upon further investigation, Aya soon discover where these monster are originally from and decided to investigate who or whom is behind these monsters. Thus this explain the small plotline of Parasite Eve 2. The whole story of Parasite Eve 2 takes place in a span of 2-3 days so you really can't expect too much of a storyline. The whole story quest takes place in 3 big stages with Aya trying to figure out who's behind these new monsters. The story itself isn't really too interesting and doesn't really provide much closure to the monsters and their purpose or how they came about. All we know is that an unknown corporation is behind all this. And in the end of the game, we still don't know much even though we, the gamer, stopped the threat of these monsters. This is more of a game that reply heavy on gameplay then the story hence this is an action/adventure game. The cast surrounding Aya Brea is plain and uninteresting as well. Overrall, I pretty much dull and uninteresting story in my view.

Just like in the first Parasite Eve, the sequel gives us a very small cast of characters surrounding Aya Brea. Unlike the first Parasite Eve, the cast lack real characters behind these characters. You would know more about them by reading the brief description in the instruction book then by playing this game. Most of these so called supporting characters are either faceless voices as in Aya's supervisor or characters that just make brief appearances to sell things or help explain things before disappearing. I just didn't find anything interesting about these characters at all. Sorry but give me the japanese guy and Danial anyday. Good stories have to have good interesting characters. Parasite Eve 2 doesn't have that.

Graphics are the strongest points in this game. There are tons of FMV/CG sequences through the game. I mean lots of it. Some really nice sequences too. If your a FMV fan than you won't be disappointed here. Everything is in a 3-D rendered background here. The characters are in a highly detailed 3-D polygons figures. One of the best out character polygon renders out there. This is done very nicely. You can even say this game's look like early Playstation 2 graphics. The only downside is that the colors are mostly dark and dull but that's the way the environment of Parasite Eve 2 is suppose to be.

Musically it's okay. I personnally don't think it's better than the first one and honestly, there isn't one Parasite Eve 2 musical tune that stick out in my mind to me. The sound of this game is excellently done. It does give you that horror kinda creepy sound. Some of the screaming sound in this game is real creepy to me but then again I'm the kind of guy that can be scared easily. There's a little bit of voice overs. Not much to be worth a mention. A few lines here and there. It's done nicely though but I really can't comment on it too much cause there's not enough voice overs to even consider giving it a grade on. Average music with excellent sounds is the best way to describe it all. 5 points for the music with an extra 2 points for the good sound effects.

And now for the horror. Gameplay is without a doubt the worst part about this game. I don't know what's worst. The difficulty in the puzzles? The very bad camera angles? The extremely bad controls? Or the battle system? Before you get to all of that, let's get to the other stuff first. Parasite Eve 2 plays like an action/adventure game much in the way of Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil. Basically the game is broken up into three huge stages. The building complex, the apartment complex and lastly the science/research area. Base of this, you can tell that the overrall game is pretty short. Disc 1 is dedicated to the first two stages and disc 2 is for the last stage. This ain't no long rpg quest, I can tell you that. Now if you're really good at these adventure/action game then it might take you about 15-20 hours top. Probably less than that. Now if you're like me, who suck at these adventure game, it'll take you over 30 hours. Basically you have a map of the area with a whole bunch of lock doors/gate and stuff like that. Your objective is to open/unlock these gates to help you further into the area of the game. Like with any true adventure game, you have to search every single cabinet, boxes, shelves, and what not for either a stupid clue or for the key/card itself. This is very hard to do cause you literally have to search everything just to get the stupid clue as to where the stupid key item (keys,card,ect)is. And sometimes you have to solve a puzzle to open up a certain area. Some of these puzzles are extremely hard and frustrating. Now if that didn't piss you off then how about the thousands of various camera angles. For every single room/area there is a thousand different camera angle from either different direction or from different zoom in/zoom out. One second you are pressing up to walk straight ahead and the next second you have to press down, left, or right to walk ahead. This is extremely frustrating. Especially during battles as you try and to manuever Aya around. I'll get to that in just a minute. Trying to get Aya to move in a straight line through different areas is extremely difficult. I would say that 90% of the time, Aya is moving in a zig zag line as if she's drunk. With this is mind, trying to get Aya to position herself to pick up or search a shelf is frustrating sometimes. Now the game uses magic, the same magic that Aya had in the first one with the exception of Liberate. Now all of her magic is sealed off at first. In order to unsealed them you have to have enough experience points. Basically each magic requires a certain amount of experience points for you to unseal it. Once you have enough experience points then just choose which of Aya magic spells you want to unlock. Pretty simple stuff. Overrall, magic use is limited to only for cure and healing as gamers will tend to rely on guns as a means of attack. Now unlike the first game, weapons/armour is limited to a certain amount of customization. In the first Parasite Eve, you can customize weapons/armours with different stuff to help boost their effectiveness. Here, each weapons mostly come with one slot where you can assign what ammos you want it to be equip with. All vest comes with a limited number of hole attachments. These hole attachments allow you to equip items or weapons to your vest. The reason for this is cause during battles, you can only use stuff that is equip to your vest and not your inventory. So if you want to change weapons/ammos or use an items, you have to make sure that they are equip to your vest. A pain in the butt cause you can only attachment an average of 4 stuff to your vest. And now for the battle system.
Battle System: Parasite Eve 2 uses a semi random battles. Basically each area will have a monster or monsters. Once you enter the area with a monster, you are immediately put into battle mode. Now battles don't take place on just one screen. In other words the room you have enter usually is so big that it takes several screen to explore. So battle takes place through numerous different screens. This is a piss off pain in the ass. Most of the time when you first enter the room you are in a zoom up close up camera angle of Aya. Then battle mode begins. Problem is that usually the monsters are at different side of the room/area that you can't see. The monster can see you and attack you but you have to run around the room through different screens and camera angles searching for them to attack them. This is a pain in the ass. Half of time you can't even see them. So annoying. If that's not bad enough, how about the fact that battle are in real time meaning the enemy is constantly moving about through different screens. You then have to adjust and move through different screens to find them again. And everytime you move to a different screen, the camera angle changes which in turns screw up your control of Aya. There's a radar at the top left of the battle screen to show where the enemies are but it's mostly useless. You have a lock on ability where you can home in and lock onto your target but that's only good if you're facing in the right direction. And it doesn't help if the camera angles constantly changes. Lastly have I mention the fact it takes a freaking million bullets to kill just one measly little monster?? I do swear, you spend more time reloading then shooting at the monsters. On almost every fight you'll be screaming at the TV screen shouting "I can't see them", "What kind of shitty camera angle is this?", "Would you shoot them! What I gotta reload again? What kind of shitty gun is this???", and "Who's the moron that thought of this great battle system?? I like to shoot him!" This is by far one of the worst battle system out there. Take your pick on what you would hate the most. The millions of different camera angles that screw up the battles, the crappy control, or the fact you have to reload a thousand times. By the end of it all, Parasite Eve 2 gameplay is a major step down from Parasite Eve 1. The first game had smooth gameplay with one battle screen with good camera angles. The sequel however had numerous camera angles with bad controls. Very disappointing. I did not enjoy the gameplay very much. I was more frustrated and pissed off then anything else.

In terms of the game, there's not much extras at all. However you can get a bunch of extra guns including Squall gunblade and items during different gaming mode made available after you finish playing the game the first time around. Replay value is incredible in this game. The game gives you two different endings. A good and bad one. Plus after you finish your first game, you can then make a clear game save and access different gaming mode. If you finish these different gaming modes, you then can get more different gaming modes. Once you finish the first game, replay and bounty mode becomes available. Once you earn enough experience points from these extra modes, you then can get two more gaming modes known as the Scavenger and Nightmare modes. A total of 4 different gaming modes next to the original ones. The question is,"Do you really want to replay this game again?"

On a final note, if you're a big fan of Parasite Eve and just dying to try out the sequel then please rent it first. This game is very different from the first one. While the first one was more of an rpg, this one is more of an adventure game. This game is really a major step down from the original. Don't be planning to buy this game thinking that it's just like the first one. I commend Squaresoft for trying to get their feet wet in a different genre but really they should just stick to what they do best and make rpgs and leave the action/adventure stuff to the pros like Capcom.

Parasite Eve 2: The Return of Aya

Parasite Eve 2:
The Return of Aya