The most Hot Topic 2000’s game I’ve ever played. But I’m finally playing it now because Rebirth is coming out soon, and VII Remake’s Intermission had elements directly pulled from this game. In light of that and Crisis Core getting a remaster, it’s clear all the FFVII compilation material will factor in going forward.

It’s not a great game, but overall it’s fine. Right when I was settling into the Kusoge qualities of it, the latter third design-wise simply gets annoying rather than challenging because the mechanics of this are so rudimentary that annoyance is all they can raise the stakes with.

Expect endless fan service of “remember this on the PS1? We’ll here it is in full 3D on the PS2!” which in 2023 will only take you so far. Story and dialog is your boilerplate anime standard of shadowy orgs and characters that talk in obtuse circles, even in quiet character-focused moments, all never not in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS emotionally. I couldn’t tell you much about the Tsviets despite all my time with them. Or, disappointingly, Lucrecia, who we DO get a decent amount of time with but somehow not enough for me to feel like I learned a whole about her as a consequence of this game’s approach to character writing.

Anyway. If you played VII Remake Intermission and had no idea what Deepground was or who Nero was, this will illuminate you. But maybe not more than what a YouTube summary could accomplish.

By being a quirky low budget minigame collection, this game is destined to be a very uneven experience. Some of these minigames are dreadful (weighing groceries to swap for a golden treasure with an impossible amount of items to weigh up with and barely any time, snowboarding away from snowmobiles by having to constantly, rapidly tap left and right on the D-pad, pedaling on a bike by alternatingly, rapidly pressing triangle and X while dodging objects for a few minutes) and the occasional instance of minigame repeats really sticks out in a bad way (did we really have to do that get water out of a boat with a bucket minigame THREE times?) AND the game peaks in its first quarter with Taneo. But this game charmed the pants off me and I love revisiting it every so often, especially when I’ve got an unsuspecting friend over who has no idea what they’re in for.

I didn’t have Resident Evil as a kid, so this got a LOT of play. So much so that I hadn’t played it in 28 years but still knew it so well I blasted through it and got the good ending on my first try.

It’s slow and plodding, but I can’t hold that against it because it’s SO deliberately so and is crucial in setting the mood. And BOY what a mood this game strikes. J-horror has long surpassed this in the interactive space, but as a game from ‘95 it’s such an interesting title, and framing it as a product of its time it’s still interesting to come back to even today. I’ve always loved Kenji Eno’s experimental approach and wish he were still around today.