Aya Brea is back in another adventure against mysterious mitochondrial monsters.
What Is It? The original Parasite Eve billed itself as “The Cinematic RPG.” It borrowed from a variety of genres including survival horror, RPG, and action games. The action-RPG combat was a standout feature, allowing you to freely move while awaiting your turn timer to finish. Dodge attacks, position yourself for your attacks, and repeat. It is a fantastic game in no small part due to how it deviates from the tropes of any one genre, choosing to pick a bit from each and create something new.
Parasite Eve II throws most of that out of the window in favor of being a fairly routine Resident Evil clone.
Aya Brea is back on the case, a few years after the events of the first game. This time she is an FBI agent working with the MIST team to investigate Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures. An attack on an L.A. building kicks things off and serves as an intro/tutorial before the bulk of the game shifts to the Mojave Desert. A new threat has emerged and Aya must track it down and stop it before it’s too late. This is a fine setup, although not nearly as cool as a packed operahouse audience spontaneously combusting.
Combat and puzzling are the two main aspects of PE2. Combat strips out the unique action-RPG elements in favor of a more direct action approach. Battles start on the normal terrain, but instead of any sort of turn-based action, it is a simple action combat system. There is a targeting system which is a welcome addition to the RE formula as it allows for a wider range of enemy types; it’s easier to add a bunch of flying enemies when you auto-target them.
Aya will purchase a range of fairly standard guns over the game; pistol, shotgun, machine gun and can equip upgrades and alternative ammo types to spice things up. This is a nice system but is super stripped down from the original game’s emphasis on weapon customization which had a significantly wider range of combinations at your disposal. Aya also retains her Parasite Energy (PE) attacks. These are attacks, buffs, and heals. Put all of this together and you have a pretty fun RE-clone combat system. It can get frustrating when quick enemies attack faster than you can reload or cast a PE attack, but those are mainly limited to a small section of the game.
The boss fights are fun and challenging while many normal enemy types will give you a tough time. The final boss was a bit of a miss for me, but I won’t spoil anything about that here. The game does a really nice job of constantly progressing enemy types. Right when you are strong enough to find the current crop of enemies easy, a new type is thrown at you to start the cycle again.
You control Aya with familiar tank controls. Once you are used to them, you can make it work, but the combat has you dodging projectiles and running from oncoming enemies. This is doable, but a bit clunky, especially when combined with the fixed cameras which often cut off half of the battlefield. You will spend a lot of time in PE2 shooting at enemies not currently on your screen.
Aya’s adventure will take around 10-12 hours, likely with at least a couple of hours used on retries after a Game Over against a tough boss or two. The graphics look good for the era, I’m always a fan of the prerendered backgrounds and they are used to great effect here, creating a few distinct, memorable settings throughout the game.
The Best Part: I absolutely want the old combat system back, but I have to admit that the targeting system in this action combat works extremely well. There is still some clunk due to design decisions, but the concept of being able to target and fire at an enemy really opens up the possibilities. The game can throw a bunch of enemy types that would absolutely not work if you had to manually aim to shoot them.
The Worst Part: The puzzles here seem designed solely for the purpose of selling as many copies of the official strategy guide as possible. They get ridiculously obtuse at times and I have zero shame in having used a guide to get through them (but also, you should never have shame in using a guide; game however you want!) These puzzles are not fun, they only add annoyance and length to the game. But hey, they probably sold a lot of strategy guides!
The Verdict: Parasite Eve II feels way more like a continuation of the PlayStation 1 Resident Evil series than it does a sequel to the original Parasite Eve. This is disappointing because the original was a fantastic game. The up side here is that PE2 is a pretty good Resident Evil clone. If you want more RE2/RE3 style games from this era, PE2 is a wonderful choice. The target-aiming does wonders for minimizing some control jank, the enemy variety and bosses keep the game exciting from start to finish, and it tells a fun, relatively tight story. All of this packed into a weekend as a teenager in 2000 sounds like a great time!
It’s easy to lament what PE2 isn’t, but if your expectations are properly set going in, there is a lot of fun to be had. Parasite Eve II is a very good game, even if it isn’t a very good Parasite Eve sequel.
How to Play: PlayStation 1*
*console played on for this review
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