I'm hoping this review will be of some help to anyone new to this game, or just curious. I'm refusing to put a star rating on this, as i don't think this is one of those games where it's useful.
I wanted to start by talking about the combat, it's one of the things that gets brought up immediately whenever you see this reviewed. I saw many people talking about how bad the combat was in this whenever i looked this up, and most likely, like me, when you read them you assumed this was your standard; "old survival horror games control bad wah wah wah".
When i started playing this, the combat, on first glance, is your standard survival horror stuff, it features silent hill style melee stuff, you hold a trigger and press a button, and your protag swipes left to right.
"Wow, really, this is what people were griping over?" i foolishly said, but all illusions are shattered upon reaching the first boss.
This game, hands down, has some of the worst hitboxes/collision detection i've ever encountered. You often can be hit by enemies facing away from you in this, and to make things worse, your character falls over from 90% of attacks, giving them time to hit you again.
Hearing this, you're probably thinking i hated this game. And i admit, when i encountered moments like this, i really had to fight the urge to give up.
However, i am one of the few people out there who actually owns a physical copy of this, call it weird, or sunk-cost-fallacy but i felt that actually being able to play through this on a physical copy, on the actual PS2 hardware, is a pretty rare thing that not everyone gets to experience. So i played on, and beat it.
This is all immensely helped by the fact that i have a big love for survival horror from this era, and how incredibly unique and interesting the style and story telling in this is, how hard the aesthetic and story telling beats hit. I really don't want to spoil it, and i encourage emulating (save states would really help), or watching a playthrough.
The soundtrack is the most distinctive thing i've ever heard, i've never seen a horror game do this style since, and it's honestly fantastic.
I could go on and on, but my main thrust is this:
This game is a real diamond in the rough. There's something extremely cool and groundbreaking in this, but you really have to persevere through some irritating gameplay to get to it. I don't feel comfortable rating this as some 5/10, or something, as it really doesn't do it justice. Numbers don't really communicate just how high the highs are, and how low the lows are in this.
Anyway, i hope this gets ported some day, with the hitboxes fixed.
I wanted to start by talking about the combat, it's one of the things that gets brought up immediately whenever you see this reviewed. I saw many people talking about how bad the combat was in this whenever i looked this up, and most likely, like me, when you read them you assumed this was your standard; "old survival horror games control bad wah wah wah".
When i started playing this, the combat, on first glance, is your standard survival horror stuff, it features silent hill style melee stuff, you hold a trigger and press a button, and your protag swipes left to right.
"Wow, really, this is what people were griping over?" i foolishly said, but all illusions are shattered upon reaching the first boss.
This game, hands down, has some of the worst hitboxes/collision detection i've ever encountered. You often can be hit by enemies facing away from you in this, and to make things worse, your character falls over from 90% of attacks, giving them time to hit you again.
Hearing this, you're probably thinking i hated this game. And i admit, when i encountered moments like this, i really had to fight the urge to give up.
However, i am one of the few people out there who actually owns a physical copy of this, call it weird, or sunk-cost-fallacy but i felt that actually being able to play through this on a physical copy, on the actual PS2 hardware, is a pretty rare thing that not everyone gets to experience. So i played on, and beat it.
This is all immensely helped by the fact that i have a big love for survival horror from this era, and how incredibly unique and interesting the style and story telling in this is, how hard the aesthetic and story telling beats hit. I really don't want to spoil it, and i encourage emulating (save states would really help), or watching a playthrough.
The soundtrack is the most distinctive thing i've ever heard, i've never seen a horror game do this style since, and it's honestly fantastic.
I could go on and on, but my main thrust is this:
This game is a real diamond in the rough. There's something extremely cool and groundbreaking in this, but you really have to persevere through some irritating gameplay to get to it. I don't feel comfortable rating this as some 5/10, or something, as it really doesn't do it justice. Numbers don't really communicate just how high the highs are, and how low the lows are in this.
Anyway, i hope this gets ported some day, with the hitboxes fixed.