I streamed this a while back, but I had played it many times before and I wanted to share this fairly unknown classic with my friends.

Both myself and a friend saw a certain badass character as appearance goals and I thought I was the only one...

Anyway, enough of my identity crisis there.

I bought my physical copy from a shop when I was returning from a school trip to France and wanted it purely for the anime cover.

The story is about an evil witch who wishes to destroy the universe... I think. Memory and translation was a little spotty at times.

Since everyone wants to battle with her for their own reasons, either to save the world or take her power or even something more personal, they come from a wide variety of backgrounds with a school girl who is also a touch tomboy martial arts fighter, a magician, a warrior dressed like he comes straight out of Power Rangers or Ultraman, a psychopath possessed by an evil blade and more.

There are a few fully animated scenes in the intro and the epilogue of every character, but, not as much as what was in Ghost in the Shell for the PS1.

The game has massive replayability as you get a different story and each opening and ending to a match plays like a anime series from light-hearted magical girl to gritty and depressed shows of the 90s, minus the gore beyond the red pixels. Even the final boss, when you unlock her, has her own story that adds more character to her than you'd see in most fighting games made at around this time.

I only mark it a little lower because the hitboxes can be a little buggy at times, often leading to BS moments. Especially with the final boss who has high damaging moves that leave little room for error, but they're not impossible and still a lot of fun.

Stream + gameplay

Been a little bit since my last PS1 game. It's almost been a whole month actually, apologies for me being slow on playing PS1 games. This one was actually a recommendation for me to play, usually I don't prioritizes fighting games unless I have a reason to but I was told I would love it for the wrong reasons. It sure is something...

Evil Zone is a one on one fighter and a very simple game at that. You fight with only two buttons for attack and block and I'm not kidding it's really that simple. You can do multiple modes like a story mode, vs, or even a survival mode to see how many you can beat without being defeated.

So how is the gameplay? Well what if I told you pretty much everyone plays the same? Sure they have different animations for attacks but for the characters I tried they all use the same inputs for the type of moves they are for. They also don't require any complicate inputs whatsoever. One of your most powerful attacks is just back back attack. So yeah I basically just chose the characters that appealled to me the most. So yeah I only picked girls I'm sorry...Everytime I pick females in fighting games I'm expecting to get shamed for being boring.

The game just feels rigid to me. There's no flow and if there are combos then I must suck at doing them. Half the time you're both just in a blocking war hoping one of you just screws up. Most of my wins were just from charging up by holding attack and then using my powerful attack. Some moves I swear I can never hit with too and I'm guessing I just suck but I could rarely ever get grabs working. It all makes for a fighting game that just isn't good and was already outdated by the time it came out. I wouldn't even blame anyone for thinking this was some early PS1 game that just got a late localization but nope both were released in 1999.

So you might be wondering if it's so bad then why is it not a 4/10 or lower? Because despite all I've said, this game is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. The localization is just some of the worst I've seen in an official product. It's not the worst because I've seen worse for sure but good lord there's so much wrong. You got lines that don't even come close to matching the lip syncing, many lines that sound awkward or badly voice directed, and voice acting that almost made me think they got people who never did voice acting in my life. Should have seen my face when I learn freaking Lani Minella voiced 3 characters in this game.

There's also just the story in general. I may have called the gameplay not good but yet the story feels like they were really trying. Everything is themed like it's a different type of Japanese show. They even have stuff like eyecatches and episode previews and even episode titles. It's actually quite admirable. The game even has an encyclopedia for bios and descriptions for many of the moves which is hard to hate on. This isn't just a random generic fighting game here. Whether or not you think it's good is up to you but I love the attempt.

The game graphically is...ok I have to confess I don't think this game was emulating properly for me. All the models had this problem of like clipping through each other. Like stuff like ribbons every second just clipping into the clothing or even stuff like hair just looking odd. Even the areas have this weird warped look to them like they're just moving a bit in motion on their own. But even disregarding that the game is not remarkable in anyway and I really wish the game had more 2D animation for cutscenes but there's like almost nothing there. I'm sure there were better looking fighting games by 1999 but guess I'll just have to see. The music has some nice tunes like my favorite being Setsuna's theme. The voice compression though at times is horrific, again maybe it was emulation but they weren't all like that, it seems to never happen on in game cutscenes so maybe it really is just that bad.

What a game this was, it's something I won't forget that's for sure. I really do like and laugh at some of the things but it does get a bit old after a while. It's got heart albeit probably in the wrong areas but it's kind of hard to just truly hate it? Honestly you might be better off just watching cutscenes on Youtube. At least Yuke's would continue to be making video games to this day. Though it's mostly just wrestling games it seems, still can't believe the first thing I ever think about with this company is them publishing the Japanese version of Finding Nemo the game. but yeah there's worse fighting games out there but this is far from good if you're looking at gameplay. Will I ever replay this game someday? Probably not.

meu apego ao estético sempre caiu fácil com jogo de luta, é bem óbvio né? escolher um personagem por causa do visual dele, por causa do estilo dos golpes, por causa da música. mas evil zone eleva a outro nível isso, ele transforma cada história dos personagens num anime de um gênero diferente, colorindo as telas de loading, músicas, diálogos e lista de episódios conforme o personagem que está sendo jogado. arcade de jogo de luta se integrando a experiência narrativa muito além do comum. um dos jogos mais eu que existem.


vi que tinha gente na página comentando que o jogo é esperto por encurtar animações de golpes na segunda vez que você usa na luta. vocês não merecem falar de nada se não conseguem perceber que as mudanças estão é nos floreios cinematográficos dos golpes, coisa que esse jogo adora fazer.