Rent-A-Hero is the most distinguished of Sega's trilogy of RPGs built on the Sword of Vermilion engine, the others being Phantasy Star III and - well, Sword of Vermilion. Both of those games are victims of the engine's limitations and the pre-Sonic development environment that SEGA's console studios were stuck in: They're sluggish, disorienting, lack basic qol and mechanical nuance, and all around suck.

Rent-A-Hero is most of those things too, but I find these limitations work greatly to its narrative conceit. To put it succinctly, this is The Doordash RPG: Do mini odd-jobs for cash while the never-ending torrent of rent, groceries and bills (in this case, health items and energy for your suit) eat away at you. It's extremely repetitive, sorely lacks in variety, has extremely shoddy programming in the 2D combat sections, completely fails to waypoint you in lots of really obnoxious missions, all among other issues. It's 30 hours of 'get a job -> run around -> talk to identical-looking npcs -> run around -> beat someone up -> run around -> inspect a nondescript tile for plot reasons -> run around -> take the train to the one store with full heals and D batteries -> run around -> finish the job -> get paid -> deposit cash to your bank -> run home -> get another job'. It's the textbook monotony of the part-time lifestyle, which makes for an exhausting moment-to-moment experience, but has a hook and prose squarely ahead of its time. What kept me going was the comfort of the grind, and getting spoonfed those little bits of quirky human interactions - seeing a couple break up over their vomiting cat, helping a kid through her hospital surgery, being an actor for a live toku show, and more.Even with how much this game's structure makes you feel like a cog in the capitalist machine, there's enough of that good shonen hero meat to make you feel like you're getting somewhere meaningful through all the hum-drum.

Could've been a lot better, but I couldn't imagine this being anything other than a low-budget B-tier diamond in the rough. Adding even a little more spitshine would've drastically changed the feel - which is why I'm extremely intrigued by the DC remake. Is it gonna have that slimy jank I need, or will they make it - shudder shudder - good???

Here's to 1500 games!

Pretty good, but not $3000 good, y'know? There's a lot to like - a good weapon system, some decent tunes, lots of menu customization, - but there's very prevalent slowdown across the whole game. That's fine for stuff like TF or Gradius, fast games that you want a fighting chance at, but this is generally easy/middling. Just makes you feel like you're playing underwater. Moves shockingly slow, and even though it has a lot of fun parodius-esque visual beats, none of the levels are as densely packed as that game is.

And then there's the elephant in the room: Do Not Put Children In Playboy Costumes, Stupid! Use the robes from the intro! God!

Played with C_F. A lot better than Sengoku 1 and 2 - it has actual gameplay this time!

That said, SNK's new art production pipeline of semi-rotoscoped models with super high-frame animations means they couldn't offer the same variety in locales and enemy types the original games do, so you spend about an hour beating up on the same spearguys and undead kunoichi. Mind you, you do this while flexing a great interweaving combo system, but it's the usual hang-up of systems-focused game design over context-focused game design.

It's awful, but I had some fun. Nothing in this game is individually 'favorable', but the parts come together mostly fine.

I think the point of contention is how striking and powerful the bio-distorted woman on the box art is. It sets this expectation for a certain kind of visual language and pathos, and then you turn it on and get a 30fps kusoge sludgefest, with designs right out of a C-tier PC shooter. The version of this that actually tries to commit to its cover would be worthy of a lot more respect.

The prose of Ecco and the same sensation of taking realistic animal controls through a vivid and surrealist world, now bound to a hummingbird with gameplay more akin to the Amiga shmup scene - Apidya and Agony come to mind. There's a lot of clash in the visuals and audio, they use a lot of stock effects for the bullets that I swear I heard in stuff as loony as Backyard Baseball, but I'd say the panoramic art direction still wins out; Jenny and I were comparing it to some hallway paintings in our family's houses, the really detailed watercolors of flowers and pollinating fauna. Very odd soundtrack for a 32X game too, it feels like they're using the PCM for full instrument samples instead of just drums - very SNES-like.

The struggle comes from the divide between the strictness of its shmup design and the unruliness of the controls. There's lots of odd quirks and movement influxes that occur with the slightest tap in an attempt to replicate the buzzing movement of real hummingbirds. With such limited health, it's all too common to make one wrong tap and run right into a bullet. Bad hitboxes exacerbate this further. Really is a 'have your cake and eat it situation', can't commit to phenomenalism and make an idealized shooter.

It was worth experiencing for its artistic and historical significance but I don't anticipate myself returning to it soon. Shmup Junkie was on some shit for putting this in that shmup list of his.