For years, P.N.03 sat as the only remaining piece of Shinji Mikami's directorial output I'd yet to play. Usually regarded as his weakest, I went in with an open mind but with expectations in check. I found myself far more frustrated than expected, not because P.N.03 is Mikami's weakest game, but because it shouldn't be.

Far from the creative stagnation of The Evil Within, a weird mish-mash of Mikami's most beloved game and then-ubiquitous design trends, P.N.03's core gameplay is strong and unique. Before Mikami would set the standard for the third-person shooter with his next release, there wasn't much of a consensus on how one ought to play. P.N.03 comes up with answers which are a world away from where we ended up, focusing less on aiming and more about positioning and dodging. There's a rhythm to combat that marks P.N.03 as a third-person shooter more in the lineage of melee-oriented action games such as Devil May Cry than any other shooter; although attacks directed at the player character are projectiles, they give clear tells for the player to read and to react with the an evasive maneuver.

This 'rhythm' was clearly picked up on by Mikami and his team, evident in their effort to make music and dance a theme expressed through the protagonist. Her opening cutscene reveals that she wears headphones, fighting to the music. In gameplay her head can be seen nodding to the beat, and when performing attacks she pulls off poses and dances.

So incredibly promising, all of it. It should have been fantastic. But the whole thing was rushed through in a matter of months, giving no time to develop what's here into something that feels remotely finished. What few environments are here fail to bring enough variety to the game's 11 missions, let alone enough to sustain the "trial missions" which form a practically-required grind to upgrade your equipment into something acceptable for the late-game difficulty spike.

It's so undercooked, and what we're left with is a prototype of many things: the protagonist with her sexually charged dance-fighting is a clear influence on Bayonetta, expressing the rhythm of action in diegetic music formed the basis of Tango Gamework's Hi-Fi Rush, and some aesthetic and gameplay elements were revisited in Mikami's own Vanquish. All these were more developed and better realised than P.N.03, but they don't replace it. P.N.03 is its own thing, and with more time in the oven I'm confident it would be remembered extremely fondly. Its status as Mikami's worst is deserved, but because of circumstance rather than a lack of vision, and that's the most frustrating thing about it.

Pretty naff. The only one of the infamous Capcom Five that actually stayed on the GameCube, and I'm not surprised as to why. The art style is slick, VERY much leaning on the Y2K side of things, and it has a similar sort of control scheme to Resident Evil 4 in a sense - you can't move while shooting.

However, what makes this game so frustrating is a few things: firstly, the lack of checkpoints coupled with enemies that can kill you in two (or even just one) hit means you'll be replaying the same parts over and over again.

Secondly, there's an interesting combo system where you have to kill enemies in a chain within a time limit to get points, which you can exchange for upgraded suits. However, given the control scheme, this is easier said than done.

It's simply too frustrating to warrant trying to see its short runtime through.

So I wanted to check out PN03 mainly out of curiosity. I didn't expect to find some hidden gem or whatever, I just wanted to poke around and see what went wrong. I did end up learning that, but it actually turned out to be a pretty decent game!

So, PN03 is extremely simple. You run and you shoot, and not both at once (people got mad at this at the time, but it works, honestly given that Mikami would go on to help with RE4 I wouldn't be surprised if that's where that came from). The emphasis is on the defensive side, Vanessa aims on her own, your task is to dodge around attacks. You have a dodge roll (more of a twirl really), a jump and tank controls to do so, and the result is surprisingly swift most of the time. Vanessa is dancing and moving to the beat (kinda, not all songs sync to it) all the time and well-executed fights end up looking like a ballet of weaving through enemy attacks. You also have invincible super moves executed with fighting game-style motion inputs which depend on the suits, more about that in a bit.

What really ties the game together is the scoring system, in all of its simplicity. When you kill an enemy, a timer pops up. Kill another enemy, the timer renews and you start a combo. When the combo ends, multiply points by its value. Simple stuff, but pretty addictive, especially because score = currency so you're definitely gonna want to focus on it. It turns what would have been a slow, defensive game into a rapid-fire series of small choices in every fight. Frankly anything even lightly grazed by Hideki Kamiya might just be destined to have a great combat loop, because when it comes to core gameplay loop, PN03's really great. However, this game was rushed like hell- It was developed in seven months and quite literally every corner had to be cut to push it out that fast. It's a miracle that what works works, but there's a lot that doesn't, so here's a bunch of thoughts (most negative):

-I think Vanessa is supposed to be a Dante-style wise-cracking too cool for school badass mixed with a femme fatale, but she never really gets to show off in cutscenes and only has two voiced scenes, so unfortunately her character doesn't really carry across too well.
-Enemies are really simple (both in design and function) and kinda erratic, which kinda ruins the flow sometimes.
-Almost all of the dialogue is carried across radio conversations, styled like MGS codecs except without VA, just text. It's all really bland too, it'd honestly have been better to just make it a completely mute game and shoot for a more abstract style. There's exactly one actual story beat, and it's a "my arm was my wife"-tier ending twist.
-All of the game takes place in pristine white sci-fi corridors, with the exception of one mission and a couple rooms that are on the outside of a desolate planet. It's very repetitive, but mixed with the OST it manages to gain a weird, oniric feel at the best of times. I kinda dig it, though more variation would have been nice.
-Music is REALLY good.
-Plenty of enemies have charged OHKO attacks and that is really annoying to deal with.
-There's a continue system. I wish it wasn't there.
-While I praised the scoring system, things are way too expensive. Throughout my playthrough I could only buy one of the many armors offered to me, and I had to grind to upgrade it into actually being better than the default one (which I had also maxed out).
EDIT: Apparently store prices were a lot lower in the JP version which... sounds better. You're not really missing out on the story at all so maybe just play that.
-Special moves are also tied to armor, which means that through one playthrough you'll get to see 3 or 4 at best, which is a shame since there's a dozen or so.
-The game is way more fun with autofire but to get that you need to buy the few armors that have it and purchase it as an upgrade for them.
-Bosses suck. Not a single one is good and the final boss is both spongey and trial and error.

So despite all that, the fact that I rate PN03 as an overall pretty good action game should really emphasize just how good that core gameplay is. I recommend playing it on Easy, I played on Normal and that was really punishing (save states may have been used sparingly in place of continues), unfair at times. But I do recommend it, which surprised me. It's only some three hours long, extremely linear and overall quite fun. It's also just interesting as a piece of history, especially with how both Vanquish and Bayonetta would pick up on some of its ideas, and pull them off better than it did.

this game is just pure style to me

i kinda pity this game for clearly not having a bigger budget and being short and limited, but i personally loved it's style and everything about it and it's a pretty sweet and unique experience and game on its own

vanessa serves so much cunt

P.N.03 was the first of Capcom’s GameCube exclusive ‘Capcom FIve’ to see release and, due to receiving much worse critical and commercial reception than the three games that would follow it, is the only one to actually remain exclusive. Capcom has seen fit to let the game languish on the purple lunchbox and ignore it entirely, which is a fate it absolutely does not deserve. Once I got over its less-than-perfect controls I found myself having an absolute blast with P.N.03. The game has a sense of style that I completely vibed with, thanks in large part to its main character Vanessa Z. Schneider, who is voiced by Jennifer Hale, one of my favorite voice actors. Vanessa feels a lot like a prototype of Bayonetta, and feeling like a prototype is unfortunately P.N.03‘s biggest flaw.

P.N.03 was developed on an extremely tight schedule, with the Capcom Five being announced in November 2002 and P.N.03 seeing release in March 2003, just a 4-month turnaround if even that. This rushed development rears its ugly head in P.N.03’s repetitive environments and severe lack of content, being over in just 2 hours and offering little replay value. Many of the ideas Shinji Mikami had for P.N.03 would be put to use years later in Vanquish, a much better game. Really, when I look at Vanquish I think of all the potential P.N.03 had that it might’ve been able to achieve had it not fallen victim to such a strict deadline, and since a sequel is about as likely as pigs flying, that potential will forever remain unrealized. P.N.03 won’t vibe with everyone, but it’s a game I think everyone should try at least once.

I wish I could've enjoyed this game, I really do, but I think the controls are so abysmal that it's impossible for me to continue playing it to completion. The graphics look nice, the music is cool, and I love the game's cyber style, but the gameplay is just so damn bad. You stand, rapidly shoot, sometimes dodge or jump, rinse and repeat. When Vanessa gets shot by literally anything, she gets slammed to the ground and a chunk of your health just disappears. Aside from that, this game was a part of the Capcom Five for the Gamecube, where there would be five exclusive games for the Gamecube to show off its potential, which featured:
- P.N.03
- Viewtiful Joe
- Dead Phoenix (never released)
- Resident Evil 4
- Killer 7

Nearly all of these games got PS2 releases so the whole Capcom Five thing didn't last long, plus Dead Phoenix was canceled so technically it's the Capcom Four. Regardless, P.N.03 is a truly unique game for the Gamecube system, but it fails to feel enjoyable in my eyes.

Nintendo Power made this seem like such a big deal but it's like a proto-Bayonetta vertical slice. At sub-2h, even then, it manages to reuse entire levels and bosses 2, 3 times in alternating order.

I thought it was unvoiced but no, the two cutscenes it has, have ... voices? But there's all these interspersed dialogue sessions that are just silent?

It feels like it needs just a touch more polish to feel really good — as it stands it feels clunky, tank-like, with occasional moments of grace. The animations are amazing. There is also almost a story. That is PN03. Now I can go tell 13 year old me.