Parasite Eve 2 Boxart
Parasite Eve 2
Original Release date: September 12th, 2000
Release on PSN: August 23rd, 2011
Price: 5.99
I haven’t been playing very many games lately, and that’s because of one game, Parasite Eve 2. Let me tell you why.
Story
Once again you play as the protagonist from the first game, Aya Brea, formerly at New York City cop, now working for the Feds after the events of Parasite Eve. This time you’re part of a task force that finds strange mutated monsters and shoots them. This takes you all over to different locations in the States, but it also gets rid of the open world and colourful setting of New York City as seen in the first game. Really, I haven’t played all the way through the title so I couldn’t tell you if the story is worth experiencing or not, but you’ll see my problem with it when you look at the next section.
Fun Fact : It seems like this game is funded by Coca Cola. It’s amazing how often you see a great big Coca Cola vending machine just right out of the blue, even shinning bright when the power is off. It was really kind of insulting how this was done. Also you’ll find keys to get to the next section of the game, that just happens to have a Coca Cola keychain on it.
Is that supposed to scare me? Mop top monsters must be scary in Japan...
Gameplay
This is what completely destroys the experience. In the first Parasite Eve game there was an RPG styled shooting system that not only made you strategic but you could use skill by running around the battlefield avoiding enemy attacks, making for a thrilling and fun battle system. Parasite Eve 2 on the other hand decided to shelve that interesting and unique battle system that worked so well and make a Resident Evil tank shooting system.
Parasite Eve 2′s take on the RE style battle system is a little strange though. For instance there’s a lock on button that will snap your gaze to any nearby enemy, even if they’re off screen, which you think would take a lot of hassle out of that system, but it just seems to make it bland, usually playing it safe and firing off screen for 2-3 minutes until Aya doesn’t lock on anymore making the shooting a chore. Also the Midochondrial powers that Aya had from the first game come back, but in a strange way, for instance your magic meter doesn’t charge by itself, you need to kill enemies to get your “magic” points back. So that has you caring for your Magic points as a resource, but whenever you do use it it runs out way too fast, and there’s no way to recharge it unless you finish a conflict. Oh yeah, and if you leave a conflict because you’re out of ammo lets say, they dock experience from you.
Aya seems to be a moron in this one as well, in the last game you could take the weapons you acquired with you onto different missions, but in this game you can’t. There’s even a moment when you’re at your FBI hideout testing out the guns you took in during a mission, and she says something like…
He should have known that Coke restores HP!
“These guns are great, too bad I can’t take them with me”
It seems like the FBI decides that guns are just for show, and that sending an agent into the field to fight mutated monsters is only ok if you give her a handgun instead of the automatic rifle she was using on the last mission. This also takes the whole RPG element of the game and snaps it like a twig. Imagine Cloud in FF7 saying, “Wow, this new Buster sword is the strongest in the world… too bad I can’t take it with me, off to fight Sephiroth!”
The puzzles in the game are frustrating as well. I remember taking 15 minutes to do a puzzle with lifting up a car in a garage just to get by. I understand that she’s not a jumping character, but it seems like it’s impossible for Aya to even roll over the hood of a car instead of wasting a quarter hour playing with buttons to raise it. It makes the whole game feel like work.
Needless to say the gameplay in Parasite Eve 2 killed the game for me.
Graphics
The graphics in Parasite Eve 2 are really typical for the time, but considering that it was released in 2000, I would have expected something better from the guys at Square. Its similar to a RE2 type graphics, but the Art Style is just not there. The colours are bland, and really show little imagination (from what I saw).
The cinematics also aren’t as interesting as they were the first time around, in the first game they almost compelled you forward because you knew you’d see something gruesome and horrible happen, in this one, not so much.
The music made absolutely no impression on me, but hey at this point I was probably a little bitter from all the gameplay flaws.
You kidding me?
Is Parasite Eve 2 worth playing?
In my humble opinion I would say hell no. If you want to see what the Parasite Eve series is about play the first game, it’s a lot more intuitive. Parasite Eve 2 seems to me like a travesty. I had such high hopes for it but the gameplay changes completely ruined it for me as they tried to copy Resident Evil. If you’re a fan of horror games grab Resident Evil 2 instead. Parasite Eve 2 failed at being an RPG and a horror game so take that as it is and don’t buy Parasite Eve 2 it’s not worth your money and especially not worth your time. I’m glad to be removing it from my PSP.
4.5/10
January 28th, 2012 on 10:52 am
PE2 is broken compared to RE2. And I thought it was the other way around. Really, it’s sad the oldschool S-H games have aged as poorly as they have; I find the oldschool RE titles LITERALLY unplayable. The original PE is the only one which has even aged tolerably.
PE2 is, I admit, one of my guilty pleasure games. It’s more a parody of S-H games than one itself, and once you get used to it the engine is ridiculously smooth.
The key phrase being “once you get used to it.” It has a very long, very flat learning curve. Expect playing for twenty to thirty hours before it really “clicks.” Back in the day the market as a whole was anemic and this was a $60 console title. That kind of energy investment made sense. These days? This game is a disposable title sold for a tenth of its original MSRP. Unless you’ve played it before, you should probably avoid it.