The best way of describing Binary Domain is what if you combined aspects of various sci fi action movies with the pleathora of cyberpunk anime and OVA series while having the cover based gameplay of Gears of War with Vanquish's robot enemies and Dead Space's dismemberment system? You'd get this charming game. "Charm" is the key word here while the gameplay can feel derivative in areas and undercooked in others, it always manages to maintain that. This was also the first RGG game I have ever played years before touching the Yakuza franchise.
Binary Domain's story has the moment to moment pacing, character dynamics and over the top cheese of action movies while having the wacky yet philosophical you'd find in cyberpunk fiction particularly the anime and OVA series released in the 80s-00s.One thing the game does extremely well is with the moment to moment dialogue with the "rest crew" combined with the cutscene animations. The character interactions particularly between Dan and Botang are so hilarious and entertaining that you just want to see what they'll talk about next. The rest of the cast are also entertaing like Charlie, Cain, and Shindo. Racheal manages to be memorable with her whole "speaks with a few words but makes up for in explosions" approach.
Dan and Faye's relationship is moderately fleshed out to care on what happens later.
Lines like "this is some philosophical bullshit" is so awesome, hilarious and dumb that it's hard for me to quote from time to time.
The story manages to be thought provoking with the idea of who is a "hollow child" and how even hollow children themselves believe they are human while they don't even know that they are machines.
Only big compliants I can make with the story is that it can get hard to follow towards the end with double crosses that can feel weirdly out of nowhere so a final boss can happen. There also a fake out death with Botang just for him to die for real at the end which made me wonder why they had the fake out death at all. I also don't like choosing responses for Dan when he already has a defined personality to begin with.
Gameplay is solid but can feel underbaked in places. One big example is that the game has a "social links" system in place but the various characters aren't going to be with you for the whole game. You can upgrade the damage of teammate firearms but why would I do that when I'm better off just firing my own bullets and killing enemies myself? You can give squad commands like having them squadmates charge but there's no real use for this. There's a swimming section that only happens once. There's an RPG system with buffs but they don't really seem to make much of a difference in the moment.
To go on some positives, remember how I mentioned Dead Space earlier? You have robotic enemies but there is a multiple hitzone system where you can damage different parts of an enemy. Shoot them in the head and that'll mess up their programming. Shoot them in the legs? They'll be crawling on the ground? Shoot them in the arms and they might lose the ability to hold their weapons. You also have enemies flying in by drones and you can shoot them down for a fast kill. It's all permeated by excellect sound design hearing the explosions when destroying enemy limbs and destroying the robots completely.
Boss fights are also interesting in that there are different ways of defeating depending on what hitzones you damage them in allowing for different approaches. An early game boss can have you jump from on top of a building or shoot it in the head with rockets. One thing that lets these fights down is how the framerate can bearly keep up during the intense explosions and carnage.
Many of the moment to moment firefights on normal can be easy to breeze by due to overwhelming amount of healing stims. The player can hold 4 and each squad mate can hold up to 3 so you're going to have to delibrately try to even get a game over. The levels also 2 or 3 lying right around that is easy to fine.
The big challenge of Binary Domain are the scripted sequences. This could be me trying to do this on a third party controller but due to strict timing of these sections especially speedboat chase halfway through the game can be hard to how stiff left stick movement can feel. You also don't get any stims for revives here either.
There's also the occasional and stupidly put together QTEs where instead of pressing on screen button it's a timed rythmn game styled button press.
Shotgun can be pretty overpowered but the game seems to know and doesn't spawn much ammo for it.
The final boss can also be cheap in how it can one shot you with it's underbarrel shotgun and could even get a friendly npc game over which was hard to get prior to that.
It's also jarring that Cain has the acrobatic and fast movement in cutscenes but not in gameplay.
Overall, Binary Domain is a charming game throughout. There are problems here and there but they can be looked past.
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