Parasite Eve

Developer: Squaresoft
Year of release: 1998
Platform: Playstation
Official website: http://na.square-enix.com/games/pe/

Yes, this game is already more than 10 years old! I started playing this game this November, why?.... well in November I was google-ing for a new background wallpaper to put on my desktop. I was looking at some nice anime or game related images and I saw this interesting image:

It only mentioned ‘3rd birthday’ and some Japanese phone company so I thought it would be some mobile game. After searching some more I found out that it was an image from Parasite Eve 3. Years ago I always wanted to play the Parasite Eve series, but couldn’t find the time to do so, even though I had the game for the PSX. After a while I just forgot about it. Reading about Parasite Eve 3, which is planned to be released on PSP in 2009, made me think about it again. Since part 3 is going to be released next year, I have to play the first 2 parts.

The good:

• Combat system. The combat is partly turn-based as in most FF games and partly real time. To perform a combat action you need to wait for your action bar to fill up, but during that time you can still run around and doge the attacks of your opponent. When you choose to attack, the range is important; the guns/rifles have different attack range. So it is best to attack an enemy when it is in range. Next to standard attack Eve can also use PE powers. These are special powers, like ‘Magic’ in the FF series. During combat the PE bar will fill up slowly. Other combat actions that can be performed are the use of items and switching weapons.

• Leveling up system. You get experience for each creature that you defeat. When you have enough experience you level up. With the level up you also get a certain amount of upgrade points that you can spend on improving certain abilities (e.g. I spend a lot of my upgrade points to let the action bar fill up faster), weapon and armour. You get more upgrade points when you have lost fewer health points during that level.

• Weapon and Armour customization. Weapons and armour have there own stats and usually an additional effect, like fire multiple times for a weapon and prevent poison for armour. In the game you can find a lot of different weapons/armour. You can tweak and improve them by using upgrade points and by taking either the stats or effect from another weapon/armour and add it to another weapon/armour. This will destroy the weapon/armour where you take the stats or effect from. The interesting part is that you can only take stats or effect and not both.

The bad:

• Not challenging enough. There is only 1 difficulty setting. The game is too easy if you ask me. I finished the game in 11 hours and I probably died only 5 or 6 times from which 4 times from the last end boss, during the last mini game where you die instantly when the end boss catches you. I did spend some effort in tweaking my weapons and armour to get the best stats and for regular creatures it didn’t really matter anymore if I would dodge their attacks. That did take the tension away from combat and made it slightly boring.

Overall I did enjoy playing the game. Especially at the beginning I was really impressed by the combat, upgrade points, weapon and armour customization system.

7.6/10