Parasite Eve Review

Parasite Eve is a game I have a soft spot for. It was one of the first PS1 games I went out of my way to try out back when I was first looking into them. It's short length, the designs, and the battle system were all things that brought me to it. I played it a few times, I technically beat it twice but the first time I quit because the epsxe emulator version I used didn't let me switch discs so I had to stop on Day 5. I came back and used a different version of the same emu and finished. It's been a few years, beat many games later and Duckstation has become a thing which is a far superior emulator to espxe in every way. I decided to have one Duckstation playthrough of PE since changing discs no longer means it's going to crash the game. It's a game I remember really liking and I still do now but there are some weird issues and quirks with it that can get in the way. As a whole, the game is interesting for what it pulled off for it's time and is endearing now.

The story in Parasite Eve is really impressive for how well presented it is especially back in the late 90s. Everything about it follows action movie and thriller logic. The game was marketed as a cinematic RPG but it can be shown in how it's pacing works. The game has a quick section where Aya and her boyfriend is watching an opera play and right away, it doesn't take too long for action to start and establishes that right away how fearless and to the point she is. Most of the game is paced this way. There will be decent stretches of gameplay then cutscenes while arguably a little too lengthy does feel earned since all the gameplay you had to go through to get there. The characters are also very compelling and it seems that writer knows what he is doing with how Daniel is introduced. A pestering reporter talks to Aya and he smacks him in the face. It's a great way to introduce a character. There are exposition sequences but there are entertaining character interactions, the script has it's moments letting the viewer to come to conclusions and everything goes by a lightning fast rate to reflect the fact that the story is taking place over the course of a few days.

One could criticize the lack of voice acting but it was not of high quality for console games at the time, you could run the risk of having narmy voice acting getting in the way of a good story like this. The soundtrack often does much of the heavy lifting

  
It is rather unfortunate the game fumbles hard on Day 5. Things were already off to a bad start where you are supposed to go a location called Chinatown but it's actually a sewer level...which is ultimately pointless since there was just a random explosion in the Museum rather than Aya herself finding the clue on top of lots of nothing during the sewer exploration. Making it worse. This is the longest chapter in the game and it can feel the most padded because of this. Outside of this, the story mostly hits the mark.

The gameplay is also just as interesting. It has elements of Resident Evil with backtracking and inventory management but the combat is turn based in real time. When first starting up the game, it surprisingly feels pretty simple to grasp. Sure you wait your turn but you can also avoid attacks in real time meaning there is some control you have during combat.

There are your regular fodder enemies during random battles but bosses require a little more thinking and you need to attack different weak points to effectively manage them. This keeps the puzzle element of turn based combat intact.

There is weapon customization and stats too but I mainly went for which did the most damage and there were too many tools I got which weren't really useful since mod permits are needed to effectively use them and I got two the whole game.

Dungeon design is also solid if at times the places can look too copy and pasted. Central Park and the Sewers being prime examples. The Hospital was the best one due to the routes and being slowly led around it.

There is one major problem however and that is Aya's very slow run speed. During the early game, it's fine but when the challenge ramps up with more and more enemies and bosses that various inflict status aliments, having no evade and her moving so ungodly slow isn't ideal. Haste helps but you get that on late into Day 3 and it's ridiculous to cast a buff just to have an ideal run speed to reliably dodge enemies attacks. It can get hard to reliably cast haste when dealing with status aliaments and regular enemy attacks when the buff wears off. 

The game also gets boring at around the 2nd visit to the Museum. Fodder enemies become too easy to takedown and there is overwhelming amounts of random encounters. It feels like it never stops. Just to have a fight with Eve who is much much harder than everything before her which can feel jarring. Eve is a massive damage sponge who almost felt immortal.

Final boss is okay but the hardest part is a weird scripted escape sequence.

Overall, despite some stumbles PE is still very good.