Overall Score: 4.6/5
A
Parasite Eve came out in 1998, during SquareSoft's golden age that gave us games like Tobal No.1, Front Mission 3, Bushido Blade and Einhander (one of the reasons I remember the 32-bit era so fondly). PE introduced a unique RPG battle system in that it focused on modern firearms rather than swords, staves and mythical weapons. A battle system that unfortunately for what ever reason Square-Einx has not opted to bring back, be it in another entry in the series or implemented in another RPG.
In a general sense, Parasite Eve's gameplay is rather typical of SquareSoft RPGs of the era. The battles occur in real time and player action is dictated by an Active Time Bar (the blue AT bar) that determines how often the player can act. The player is given both a set number of Hit Points (health) and "Parasite Energy" (basically magic) that increase as Aya level's up.
Where the gameplay deviates from other SquareSoft RPG's like the Final Fantasies and Xenogears is in two elements. The first is the player is able to move Aya around on a 2D plain. The player can maneuver her to dodge enemy attacks or place her in a more tactically advantageous position, such as moving around a corner to filter in and engage monsters one at a time, or moving to a position where you can hit multiple targets at once with a shotgun.
Second is the focus on gunplay. Unlike many RPGs where the weapons are more fantasy oriented, the gameplay here is focused on modern firearms, ranging from handguns, to rifles, to shotguns, sub-machine guns and even explosives like grenade launchers and rocket launchers. The the AT bar is filled and the player hits the action button a green hemisphere will appear that shows Aya's attack range with that particular weapon. From here the player can attack with their equipped gear, use an item or access Aya's superhuman "Parasite" abilities (spell casting). You'll also see a box that shows the number of shots the player can fire on a given turn, each shot can be independently targeted. However for balancing reasons, the total damage each gun does is an aggregate of all the shots, in other words the more shots you have, the less damage each individual shot will do, and you will also be locked in a shoot animation where the player is unable to move Aya about. But on the same token the more shots you have, is the more enemies you can attack.
Handguns are your basic weapon, Aya starts out with a Beretta M-84F (though official art has her depicted with a Beretta M-92, same handgun STARS carry in Resident Evil, as well as the weapon of choice for another detective, John McLane). Later on Aya will also have access to rifles, which naturally have greater range, and sub-machine guns which can attack more targets. These three all fire bullets that one hit one target. Aya will eventually also have access to shotguns and rocket launchers, which attacks have an Area of Effect (AoE) and can strike multiple targets in a single shot. There are also grenade launchers with have status effect attributes.
Each of the firearms in the game use ammunition, so it is possible (though very unlikely, the game isn't as stingy with providing the player ammo, as Resident Evil or Silent Hill are) to run out of ammo. In that event, police clubs, aka "nightsticks" make an appearnce and can be equipped as a last resort. However they are generally weak, have short range, and are slow, with Aya having to take a second to wind up her strike.
To further add depth, the player will come across weapons with special effects, such as Cyanide, which acts like inflicting poison on the target, or Dual Action where the player can act twice per turn without having to wait for the AT meter to fill to act again. Though, SquareSoft didn't stop there. The player is also able to customize their weapons by using Tools and Super Tools to move attributes from one weapon to another. For example, if you find a relatively weak handgun that has the Dual Action attribute, you can use a tool to move that attribute to your current weapon of choice, However if you use the basic Tool, the weapon you're moving the attributes from will be destroyed and you can only move one thing. In contrast, using the more rare Super Tool, the weapon with the attributes being moved from will be preserved. As I mentioned Aya has her form of "magic", however these largely come in the form of support spells, such as health recover spells, or spells boosting defense or offense stats. Aya's primary form of attack are her firearms.
Where the game does fall short though is there is a very limited number of places to explore. Instead of a world map, the player is warped to various parts of the city via a menu system. However while the game is short on exploration, it makes up for this to an extent with an EX Mode. In EX Mode the weapon and armor you had equipped in the last battle are carried over, though the biggest addition is access to the Chrysler Building. The floors of the building are randomly generated, the layout is maze like and all the areas look the same so it's very easy to get lost (I generally use graphing paper to make a map to keep from getting lost). Every 10 levels there is a boss encounter and a an express elevator the player can use to avoid having to trudge though the maze. At the top of the building is the true final boss and defeating this monster will lead to the canon ending.
I'd slam this point on more, but I can see what SquareSoft was doing with this. They wanted to put a bigger emphasis on storytelling. This ended up with a nice side effect of the player having to do next to no grinding. As long as the player is wise about their weapon upgrades, then just playing though the dungeon areas will net enough experience points to get though the boss at the end without too much trouble. In fact, only time I really did any grinding was gathering up the 300 pieces of "junk" needed to give to Wayne to get the one of several super-weapons in the game from him.
Stability: 5
I've played both the original PS1 disks and the digital version, and I've never had any sort of stability issues. No freezes, no crashes, no areas failing to load resulting in a can't advance. Nor have I had any memory card related issues. Never had data fail to load or fail to save (as long as you didn't open the trey or shut the system off when you're not supposed to), nor have I had any memory card data disappear for no reason.
Plot:4
The plot is centered around Asian-American (Japanese mother, American father) Detective Aya Brea of the New York Police Dept. and follows a bizarre occurrence in NYC during the 1997 holidays. The plot is something of a sequel/based on the book of the same name (the book's author Hideaki Sena even gave his approval of the game). The game makes references to the events in the book, and the scientist Maeda Kunihiko is specifically in NYC because the similarities between the on goings in NYC (the game) and the incident in Japan (the book) and is conducting an investigation of his own.The plot to the book and the game follow the theory that the mitochondria in cells had once been a separate independent organism, but over time had been absorbed though a symbiotic relationship. Here the plot begins when in one individual, be it though a mutation or evolution, the mitochondria had once again become an independent organism and began controlling the it's surroundings, this entity being refereed to as "Eve" in reference to Mitochondrial Eve. This individual, a woman named Kiyomi Nagashima, was rendered brain dead in a car accident. Following the accident, her organs were harvested as she was a donor. Her liver was harvested and the cells within caused the events of the book were cultured from her liver. Her kidneys were donated to a woman named Mariko, who would eventually move to the United States and marry an American...
There is some time discrepancies, but it is implied that Mariko from the book is Aya's mother. Chalk up the discrepancies to "retconning" when the events happened.
Mariko would have two daughters, Maya and Aya (seriously...?), unfortunately Mariko and Maya were involved in a fatal car accident, leaving Aya to be raised by her father. Mariko had listed herself and her daughters as donors (something very familiar about all this...), Maya's kidney went to a girl named Melissa Pierce while her cornea went to Aya to cure a defect in her eye.
Fast forward twenty something years...
Eve once again awakens, this time within Melissa and sets out to do what she attempted to do in Japan decades prior. Standing in her way is Aya Brea, who's own mitochondria had evolved in a different direction, granting her immunity to Eve's cellular manipulations and super-human abilities. As Eve carries out her machinations, Aya is hot on her heels, determined to stop her. Though the course of the game, as with the book, Eve sets out to birth the "Ultimate Being", a creature to supplant humanity.
As a police officer, she had a strong sense of duty, and when things go side-ways, while everyone is running away, she's running in the opposite direction. Aya is certainly not someone who needs to be saved when things go wrong. Her personality is also quite down to Earth and she doesn't go around with an inflated ego. She doesn't claim to be a hero or anything of the sort. While it is mentioned in the instruction booklet (yeah remember those?) that she can be stubborn, we don't see her being a bitch.
We also see a softer side of her when it comes to children or people in need. She's always warm and kind towards Daniel's son Ben, coming off as a sort of big sister figure to him, and she always tries to aid those she comes across in need, even if their injuries are undoubtedly fatal. On the same token she can also be sarcastic, especially towards people that show any romantic interest in her. Though whether this is just her way of shooting down advances or her being too thick headed to noticed the interest isn't really elaborated on.
Graphics and Visuals: 4
The in game graphics and visuals are certainly some of the best on the original PlayStation. Taking cues from Resident Evil, that backgrounds are all prerendered, allowing the developers to have a very detailed setting. However, for better or for worse, this gives Aya's on field model and objects to interact with a strange sort of glow, or brightness that cause them to stand out. On one hand it looks a bit strange, but on the other hand, it helps the player in that they're less likely to miss items, especially key items, and they'll never lose track of where Aya is on the screen. Aya's animation on screen though isn't quite as smooth as we see later on in Final Fantasy VIII or even in the earlier Resident Evil. In some instances the distance she moves doesn't quite match the strides she takes in her animations, resulting in making her look like she's running on ice or something.
As with Final Fantasy VII, Parasite Eve makes pretty extensive use of CGI movie cut scenes. The visuals in these cut scenes is somewhere between FFVII and FFVIII's movies. While not as detailed as FFVIII's it was certainly some of the best at the time the game came out. Though the actual animation though is pretty smooth. It doesn't get fuzzy and low res looking, nor is the animation choppy, like what you would see on those FMV "games" we saw on the Sega CD. Speaking of the FMV cut scenes there was one that was kind of odd. We see an F-15E Strike Eagle taking off from an aircraft carrier and being escorted by a pair of AV-8B Harrier IIs. For those who don't know, the F-15E is a US Air Force fighter and not capable of operating from a US Navy carrier and the Harrier is operated by the US Marine Corp from amphibious assault ships. Would have made more sense if it was a flight USN F/A-18C Hornets. I suppose I should leave this one alone since not everyone reads up on military history and weapons systems as I do, but on the same token Metal Gear Solid came out around the same time and Hideo Kojima damn sure did his homework on military gear in that game. I mean hell was it that hard to find a book in the library, find a picture of some random USN aircraft carrier and look at what planes are sitting on it's deck? Especially with parts of the development staff here in the US?
Art and Music: 5
Aya's character design is one of my favorite heroine designs. While promo art has her in some risque poses, being in topless or nude (but still tasteful) positions, in game she's not presented in any sexual sort of way. Which tells me that was more of a decision of marketing rather than the developers and their intentions for the character. Sex sells after all so lets make Aya sexy in the promo materials.
She's often seen in art wearing an evening dress, but that's because when she first appears in the game she's going to an opera on a date. For most of the game though she wears a very practical outfit consisting of a black leather jacket, a white shirt, jeans and black boots. She doesn't go around showing off cleavage, or in a very short mini-skirt. On that note, the other appeal of her character design is that she has a more realistic proportions, she doesn't have huge D+ sized boobs, nor does she have an exaggerated butt. She's probably about as far as you can get from Tetsuya Nomura's other heroine design, Tifa Lockhart. This comes together to make a very believable and realistic design. She looks like how you'd expect a plain-clothes police detective might look. In a sense without exaggerated proportions or flashy outfits, Aya's design is kind of an "everywoman" sort of design, she looks like someone you could (and probably have encountered someone who looks a bit like her) run into in the streets.
The soundtrack to Parasite Eve has more of a dark and brooding tone to it. Opera style singing is often used in music and scenes associated with Eve, while the battle themes are faster paced more electronic sounding, which according to composer Yoko Shimomura, were influenced by American nightclub music, when her and game's development staff visited several. The result is a soundtrack that has a tone that's like something between SquareSoft's flagship title Final Fantasy, and Einhander. Given that several of the tracks were influenced by nightclub music, the soundtrack is certainly a product of it's time (the late '90s), but I wouldn't call that a bad thing given that the music really fits the game.
Often games from the 16 and 32-bit era would be pointed out as needing an HD remake. Re-released with graphical updates, but leaving the gameplay alone. Parasite Eve is easily one of those games deserving such treatment.
The firearms based RPG battle system certainly brings something unique to the table. Nothing really seen before it and nothing really seen again since. This is one I highly recommend, the game can be had digitally from the PlayStation Store for $5.99
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