Has all the indulgent poeticism of a Squaresoft game from this era - characters will take literally any opportunity they can get to stare into the neon mid-distance and pontificate about systems and societies and self, often with only the most tangential relation to cars and car-racing. The writing (vis-a-vis this wonderful fan translation) is meaningfully mature, but becomes almost comical when placed within the material confines and context of a street-racing JRPG where you drive a tiny Hot Wheels Toyota around a chibi overworld in order to race ambulances and milk trucks, much in the same way certain serious scenes from the original Final Fantasy VII strike an odd tone when delivered by chunky Lego figurines. To get yourself in the right headspace for this, imagine a racing-jacketed Sephiroth monologuing about the nature of the industrial universe with a steering wheel in his hands instead of a katana.
The novelty of this scenario sustains the game for at least six hours, but not only is the game written and painted by Squaresoft, it's also programmed by them too - and as you can probably imagine, the programmers behind the precise, methodical War of the Lions and Bahamut Lagoon (why all the lagoons?) aren't exactly a natural transplant to the tactile, meditative world of high-octane street racing. The cars handle too stiffly for too long, and this awkward gamefeel was compounded by me playing Forza Horizon 5 and OutRun 2 SP at the same time; when the main character talks about the rush of the road, it's hard not to mentally transplant yourself beyond this pixel-grained lagoon of digital-binary inputs and instead see yourself hitting a big smooth drift on a distant sun-soaked coast, your girlfriend in the passenger seat instead of being creepily longed for from a Yokohama high-rise window.
This problem is exacerbated by some truly chronic load times - random encounters will hit you with a quadruple whammy of different loading screens, including a few that are required just to facilitate a mandatory parts-swapping menu at the end of every race. Imagine if Final Fantasy VII had a few seconds of darkness and ten seconds of NOW LOADING... before and after every battle, and then you had to unpick and reconfigure your materia setup every time you slam-dunked a tonberry - that's the essential gameplay loop here, and it kinda sucks! Gearheads might enjoy the precise methodology behind taking your engine apart after every race, but I really just wanted to go fast and read more poetry about this speedy Squall's perception of wings, windscreen wipers and women. Nothing stings harder than spending a few minutes deciding on the right muzzle for your engine, only to have your material goods and personal time stolen away in the very next race by a boy racer with a ride that outclasses you on pure numbers alone. Why doesn't Sho Akasaki write a haiku about that pain?
Racing Lagoon's dichotomy between its espoused mood and practical nature is ultimately what lead to me shelving it - I can't in good conscience play a racing game that moves with the pace and finesse of a busted Ford Pinto with a wheel clamp, even if it does have some of the richest, most stylish textures of any game from its era. Sadly, Square's spectacular street style simply can't sustain such sluggish substance. There's no doubt a way to mod around all the standing around here, but I don't know what it is - this is perhaps another 90s JRPG that would benefit from the 1/2/3x speed slider that Square love putting in their rereleases, and a lazy mood-chaser like me would love all the automotive engineering stuff to be handled by some mindless "auto" option. Until video game developers and modders start catering to my very specific impatiences, you can count me out of this particular race.
The novelty of this scenario sustains the game for at least six hours, but not only is the game written and painted by Squaresoft, it's also programmed by them too - and as you can probably imagine, the programmers behind the precise, methodical War of the Lions and Bahamut Lagoon (why all the lagoons?) aren't exactly a natural transplant to the tactile, meditative world of high-octane street racing. The cars handle too stiffly for too long, and this awkward gamefeel was compounded by me playing Forza Horizon 5 and OutRun 2 SP at the same time; when the main character talks about the rush of the road, it's hard not to mentally transplant yourself beyond this pixel-grained lagoon of digital-binary inputs and instead see yourself hitting a big smooth drift on a distant sun-soaked coast, your girlfriend in the passenger seat instead of being creepily longed for from a Yokohama high-rise window.
This problem is exacerbated by some truly chronic load times - random encounters will hit you with a quadruple whammy of different loading screens, including a few that are required just to facilitate a mandatory parts-swapping menu at the end of every race. Imagine if Final Fantasy VII had a few seconds of darkness and ten seconds of NOW LOADING... before and after every battle, and then you had to unpick and reconfigure your materia setup every time you slam-dunked a tonberry - that's the essential gameplay loop here, and it kinda sucks! Gearheads might enjoy the precise methodology behind taking your engine apart after every race, but I really just wanted to go fast and read more poetry about this speedy Squall's perception of wings, windscreen wipers and women. Nothing stings harder than spending a few minutes deciding on the right muzzle for your engine, only to have your material goods and personal time stolen away in the very next race by a boy racer with a ride that outclasses you on pure numbers alone. Why doesn't Sho Akasaki write a haiku about that pain?
Racing Lagoon's dichotomy between its espoused mood and practical nature is ultimately what lead to me shelving it - I can't in good conscience play a racing game that moves with the pace and finesse of a busted Ford Pinto with a wheel clamp, even if it does have some of the richest, most stylish textures of any game from its era. Sadly, Square's spectacular street style simply can't sustain such sluggish substance. There's no doubt a way to mod around all the standing around here, but I don't know what it is - this is perhaps another 90s JRPG that would benefit from the 1/2/3x speed slider that Square love putting in their rereleases, and a lazy mood-chaser like me would love all the automotive engineering stuff to be handled by some mindless "auto" option. Until video game developers and modders start catering to my very specific impatiences, you can count me out of this particular race.