The first level in the game is the best part, but it slowly gets worse. Three of the four levels are great, and each one is a bit different. Escaping from a hospital, exploring your home and finding out who you were, and being a detective in a hotel following a string of murders using your psychic powers. The main issue with the game comes from half the boss fights; they're trial-and-error bullshit that wouldn't be hard at all if it weren't for the fact that this game utilizes tank controls. These controls are fine for the majority of the game; it's just those sections where you feel like grinding your teeth with a belt sander. The final level also decided to mostly focus on combat and is just a tower where you fight a few enemies on each floor before reaching the top, when the game before hand never focused intensely on combat. There are a lot of good ideas, especially in the story and atmosphere, but they fall flat in areas that just make it an okay PlayStation 1 game.

One of my favorite survival horror games with enough flaws to make it one of the hardest things to replay.

You play as Rion Steiner, a recently awoken patient in a lab who's lost his memory and is on a psychic powered path of vengeance to find your memory, save your childhood friend, and stop an evil supercomputer from ruling your world.

Visually, this game whips. The environments perfectly match each stage from the run-down hotel with out of date electric/piping, to Rion's abandoned childhood house and its desolate emptiness, and even the starting lab's hyper-sterile, uncanny hallways. The character models themselves are nicely detailed for how low resolution they're rendered, being distinctive and decently animated. Out of everything the CG cutscenes have aged fairly poorly with very stiff animation and poor lighting.

At least if there's anything, the sound design (voice acting aside) is absolutely incredible. One of the best soundtracks on the console with banging industrial hip-hop, electronic noise, gross undulating vibes, and just ambience galore to match every occasion and run-in you'll have with the mutilated experiments and scarred townsfolk. Really if there's one thing holding this game's audio back, its the voice acting sounding immensely amateur for the most part, and laughably unfitting at its worst. There's a charm to it, but it doesn't feel right for this game.

Lastly, the game itself controls very much akin to Resident Evil with its tank control scheme and very stiff turn radius. On top of the controls, attacks require charging and proiper resource management so you don't run out of psychic power or let your character "short circuit" leading to rapid health draining. This plus tight rooms where you'll be forced to fight, make this game quit difficult. Almost unfairly so in some cases.

It's a rough game on its edges and its core is definitely half-baked, but what's here is one hell of an experimental horror game that really stands out as one of the weirdest screwball titles on the PS1. And I think that's worth a look at least once.

Really loved the atmosphere, music (when I could hear it), style, etc. I loved everything but the boss fights. The Rita boss fight made me want to break my controller over my knee. Apparently, Dr. Lem is the hardest boss fight in the game, but since I didn't know that running around charged up your AP until late game, I reduced him to atoms so quickly the game skipped a cutscene. My celebration was short-lived though, as I looked up a guide not too long after and found out that method doesn't kill any of the other bosses.

Anyway, besides the boss fights, I get the feeling they wanted to do something more with this game, considering the exposition slowly reveals itself in the first level but dumps all of it on you in Rion's house. That, and the fact that the game is 3 discs despite being only 5 hours long. I'm probably just making shit up though.


All in all, one of my favorite games ever and a very underrated survival horror that unfortunately faded to obscurity, as was the fate of many other survival horror games in the PS1/PS2 era. I have yet to play Ash, but whenever Galerians is discussed (once in a blue moon), people don't really bring up Ash. Maybe one day. 1 star off for the boss fights.

Can you imagine a game with touches of survival horror / psychological terror and also with a premise similar to Stranger Things, but that is well done? Well, this title is the closest thing to what a video game with these characteristics could be. Being a survival horror, this game has many similarities with Resident Evil, as well as many other games that tried to emulate the successful formula of the famous zombie saga, however, despite certain similarities, the game that I am going to tell you about Let's talk next, it's a really good title that stands out from other survival horrors due to its "original" premise and some of the game's own characteristics.

This game has graphic similarities with games like Resident Evil, however the graphic quality of Galerians is a little below what we can see in the zombie saga, since it does not have a level of detail as high as other survival horror, but even so, due to its aesthetics and artistic style it does not look bad, even if we compare it today, it is not a game that has aged too graphically so that it cannot be played and enjoyed, quite the opposite in fact.

In essence, the gameplay of Galerians is very similar to the mechanics of the old games of the Resident Evil saga, we will have the uncomfortable and old-fashioned "tank control" that at that time was part of the immersion in the game itself, since at having little control over our character's mobility increases tension in a certain way and in this type of game it is very important, but this is an aspect that is not used today and it is a type of movement control that is quite uncomfortable and frustrating.

Galerians is an excellent game, a little forgotten over the years despite the fact that when it comes to video games of the Survival Horror genre, it is a title that stands out a lot due to its interesting plot and game mechanics that are quite good and well thought.

"Where did your true self go? You are now nothing but an empty vessel pretending to be human. "

There's a pounding in my head it hurts its screaming its crying my heart is beating too fast way too fast it's gonna burst my hands are cold my skin is cold my skin is hot its too hot too hot too hot too hot too-

The Delmeter finally kicks in, and the splitting headache fades. The world stops spinning and I can finally feel my own two feet. There's a corpse by feet, it's face a gnarled mess barely recognizable as human. There's blood pooling beneath my shoes, and I can feel the Delmeter fading already.

Galerians is a 2000's survival horror game about Rion, a young boy who wakes up in a hospital, with no memories of his past and a sudden batch of psychic powers, who's only motivation is to locate the girl who's been contacting him telepathically. In doing so, he unravels a conspiracy surrounding the sentient supercomputer running the city that wants to replace humanity with a race of psychic superhumans known as the Galerians, and how the girl he's looking for is the key to stopping the AI's ascension to godhood.

As Rion, you have to manage your limited psychic powers via the multiple types of drugs you will inject and ingest over the course of your adventure. Rion can switch between different types of psychic attacks by injecting himself with three different types of drugs, and each attack used will slowly drain your drug meter until you need your next fix. Compounding your limited usage of Rion's psychic powers is the AP meter. By attacking, taking damage, or even simply running around, the AP Meter will fill, and if it hits max and Rion tries to use a psychic attack, he will Short, making him a walking death trap that will instantly kill all enemies that come near, but will slowly drain Rion's HP until he either dies or takes another drug called Delmeter (of which there is only a finite amount of in the whole game) to reset the gauge to 0. The limited resources, alongside the ticking time bomb that is the AP Meter heavily discourages combat in Galerians. Outside of a few forced encounters, combat is completely optional and provides no tangible benefits for Rion, meaning that in true survival horror fashion, hoofing it is usually your best option in any given situation.

The puzzle solving is fairly simple, usually consisting of key hunting and very basic fact recollection. Rion can use his psychic powers to gain hints for item locations and puzzle solutions, which means that it's very hard to get truly stumped. While the puzzle solving is basic, the moment-to-moment gameplay is mind-numbing and the combat is rather clunky when you're forced into it, Galerians' aesthetic is what really makes it stand out. The story is a wild ride full of insane plot twists and heady themes that aren't really tackled in a very deep or clever manner, but this alongside the sparse moments of Scanners-esque ultraviolence and beautifully rendered early 2000's CGI cyberpunk landscapes full of alien architecture and that glorious Y2K technological aesthetic elevate Galerians from a mediocre Resident Evil clone to an absolute standout hidden gem of the survival horror genre.

Galerians almost immediately starts with you, Rion, in a "Short" state where you can kill any enemy in one hit by just getting near them and also where your health dips by the second. there are some lore documents that could help you figure out what to do, but you know you're playing a survival horror, famous for it's limited resources, so this is definitely scripted right? i'm not gonna waste any resources this early into the game. this meant that 4 out the 4 people (including me) who have recently played it died in this beginning sequence without ever saving, having to restart it's short 3 minute sequence all over again until you figure out the solution. a powerful way to set the stage i think.

Galerians' industrial noise pipe banging, steel ball clacking, radiator recording, air conditioner infused soundtrack will perpetually aggrieve you all the way to the end (this is a good thing). while not really a scary game, it doesn't actually feature any jumpscares and some places, while creepy, are not so gross or otherwordly to inspire any sense of disgust, it does invoke a very specific sense of dread, of something wrong. the hospital features no windows and feels much more like a research facility, your house seems to be stuck in time, the standard hotel still runs a boiler room with terrible piping even though the city seems to be very well developed. "it is what it is", is probably what the citizens of this megalopolis think to themselves. and Rion, being a kid with a mission and no real agency, has no time to think about that. but the player certainly has.

also Babylon Hotel. this game is not very subtle in any of it's themes or imagery (last boss is straight up an H.R. Gieger painting), but this stage. this stage could have it's own entire game made around it (actually now that i think about it someone kinda did it's called hotel dusk play it). not that I do not enjoy the rest of Galerians' stages, the fact that it cut out it's survival horror narrative in several stages is very cool!! but the hotel goes a step beyond. here you have several characters with their own stories and developments and all of them with voiced cutscenes (it's no wonder the hotel is disc 2 by itself). while all of these characters are just a means for Rion to progress the story, most if not all of them have nothing to do with him or each other even. they're living their own feverish personal dramas, each one with their own ambitions, be them good or bad. it paints the picture of a horrible world, one that seems to be crumbling and finding it's denizens progressively more unhinged. and Rion, who has been mostly on a (justified) murderous rampage, seems like the most normal one there. he's just a kid after all, what can he do to emotionally reach these adults even if he has psychic murder powers?

Galerians' ambitious cinematic take on the survival horror genre created a very very short game chock-full of very cool FMVs which makes me think that the fact that it ended up getting a CGI-based OVA retelling of the game's story was it's only logical conclusion (it also has a PS2 sequel that seems to change the vibe completely, looks pretty fun!). i'm gonna watch it someday, but until then, i'm still very glad games like this exist and that people were able to make them in the first place

Has a good grasp on the fusion of biohorror and Gothic gloom that made Resident Evil so unique and leverages that to attempt more emotional and thematic ambition than its B-movie inspiration. Flirts juuust enough with "chuunibyou mommy issues" that it's all the more satisfying when the game ultimately refuses the player-by-proxy power fantasy. It's schematic - one level to establish the tone, one to generate a human core, one to flesh out the setting, and one to tie it all with a neat little bow - but that keeps it focused even when it's indulging in the kind of conceptual excess that Resident Evil rarely allowed itself. Babylon Hotel didn't have to be populated with a bunch of freaks, but I'm glad it was.

The tank controls and janky survival horror combat are to be expected, but what I really can't countenance are the boss fights. Damage sponges with minuscule vulnerability windows, every one of them! Seriously, how many survival horror bosses have ever been good? I can think of maybe three that are even tolerable.

Born in the rich field of Resident Evil clones, Galerians offers an interesting cyberpunk take on survival horror, mainly focused on humanity's clash with technology, but especially on psychic powers and mysterious drug tests, heavily inspired by Akira.
The overall concept is definitely interesting and cleverly developed, with good design choices that integrate the use of different psychic powers in the form of resources to be managed in the optimal way: from this point of view, Galerians is a textbook survival horror that puts a good amount of pressure and also features some touches of uniqueness.
However, the execution is not excellent: the level design is rather generic and the writing appears rather mediocre at times, but making up for its flaws there is a great setting, a fairly insane soundtrack, an artistic direction with a good visual identity, and a rather short duration that allows the game to be enjoyed without its limitations weighing too heavily.

so on paper galerians goes so fucking hard, man. the CLEARLY akira-influenced plot and character designs go a long way to sell this game in the charm factor - a deliciously grim cybercity type affair with drug-addled teenagers edgily brooding over their Dark And Mysterious Pasts and what it means to be human or machine, all the while the feds and mad scientists watch from afar thanks to the supreme powers of the mommy supercomputer they've programmed to keep everyone's shit perpetually rocked? awesome.

in execution, the game's a damn mess. its experimental and interesting combat system, which seeks to replace guns and knives with psychic powers charged up and swapped around lest you awaken a psychokinetic overdose and blow heads off elfen lied style, that's all super dope in concept. however, thanks in no small part to abysmal controls, boss design and enemy a.i., the entire experience strays a little too close to kusoge for galerians' own good. the level design is fine, nothing all too special, but the fact that crucial item and FMV placement has next to no indication of their locations is pretty unforgivable. the english voice is downright fucking hilarious; terrible not in a corny 90s anime way but more in the "i genuinely cannot take these moments seriously god help them" way.

galerians is dope and i really do suggest checking out the fmvs or something. apparently the ova (which exists???) got an english dub on mtv with fucking korn and disturbed on the soundtrack?????? i know what I'M doing tonight oh my lord