US Saturn Release #013 - Virtual Hydlide
Played on a real American Sega Saturn with the Fenrir ODE
I played this game for 1 hour, which is definitely longer than anybody should be playing Virtual Hydlide. This game does practically everything wrong when it comes to action RPGs. Firstly, there's a clear over-emphasis on FMVs and digitized sprites which all look horrendous in-game. Second, the game absolutely chugs to a point where it's barely playable in literally every environment. Third, the combat is horrible in every way. It's hard to tell when you're close enough to attack an enemy and because you get put in a lot of tight corridors in the game, rotating yourself to attack your foes ends up getting the camera stuck in awkward positions where you can't quite see what you want to see. Even worse, your rotation speed is insanely slow, so it's easy for enemies to get pot shots at you while you're trying to rotate in the enemies direction. Forth, the controls are pretty awkward. Your player controls moreso like a tank rather than a person, so movement generally sucks. It's very easy to overshoot things both due to running speed and the horrendous framerate.
Evidently, the game runs into an infinite sum of problems that combine just right to make one of the worst playing games I've ever played, certainly the worst game I've played so far on the Saturn.
Onto specifics of my playthrough, I firstly appreciate that there's a unique world generator, but I have to admit it doesn't really matter much. You'll always get a compass pointing you directly to the next item/dungeon, so their locations don't really matter. Speaking of not mattering, I found out later on in my playthrough that you don't have to interact with any of the enemies because you only get points from them.
I stopped playing once I applied a cursed item by accident and it prevented me from putting on the spectacles which are required for the ruins level. Not necessarily a softlock, as I'm pretty sure there's a shop for me to purchase an item to remove the cursed item, but this shouldn't even be a problem in the first place. The idea of not knowing what an item is when you find it and it possibly being a cursed item you can't remove is immensely annoying.
Don't play this game. Just watch the GDQ run and have a laugh that way. Don't actually play it.
2/10
Played on a real American Sega Saturn with the Fenrir ODE
I played this game for 1 hour, which is definitely longer than anybody should be playing Virtual Hydlide. This game does practically everything wrong when it comes to action RPGs. Firstly, there's a clear over-emphasis on FMVs and digitized sprites which all look horrendous in-game. Second, the game absolutely chugs to a point where it's barely playable in literally every environment. Third, the combat is horrible in every way. It's hard to tell when you're close enough to attack an enemy and because you get put in a lot of tight corridors in the game, rotating yourself to attack your foes ends up getting the camera stuck in awkward positions where you can't quite see what you want to see. Even worse, your rotation speed is insanely slow, so it's easy for enemies to get pot shots at you while you're trying to rotate in the enemies direction. Forth, the controls are pretty awkward. Your player controls moreso like a tank rather than a person, so movement generally sucks. It's very easy to overshoot things both due to running speed and the horrendous framerate.
Evidently, the game runs into an infinite sum of problems that combine just right to make one of the worst playing games I've ever played, certainly the worst game I've played so far on the Saturn.
Onto specifics of my playthrough, I firstly appreciate that there's a unique world generator, but I have to admit it doesn't really matter much. You'll always get a compass pointing you directly to the next item/dungeon, so their locations don't really matter. Speaking of not mattering, I found out later on in my playthrough that you don't have to interact with any of the enemies because you only get points from them.
I stopped playing once I applied a cursed item by accident and it prevented me from putting on the spectacles which are required for the ruins level. Not necessarily a softlock, as I'm pretty sure there's a shop for me to purchase an item to remove the cursed item, but this shouldn't even be a problem in the first place. The idea of not knowing what an item is when you find it and it possibly being a cursed item you can't remove is immensely annoying.
Don't play this game. Just watch the GDQ run and have a laugh that way. Don't actually play it.
2/10