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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Finger Flashing - BB - 0% (2)
GT Kai - BBB - 0% (2)
Johnny Bazookatone - BBBBA - 10% (5)
Q-Bert - AABB - 25% (4)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - GGGGGGGGGG - 100% (10) (2 SR)
Yakiniku Bugyou - GA - 75% (2)
Thank goodness THPS2 was in this topic. I sometimes have some idea of what games will get high scores, but I never really know which ones will score very poorly, so sometimes you end up with topics like this.
Games for this topic:
2Xtreme
EOS: Edge of Skyhigh
Grandia
Hardball 5
Lucky Luke
Virtual Pro Wrestling
I'm curious to see what the consensus is on Grandia, it's been a long time since I first played it, but I had mixed thoughts about it even then. We also have the second game in the ESPN Xtreme Games series, which I'm hoping improves on the original a fair bit since I liked the concept.
2Xtreme - B
ReplyDeleteEOS: Edge of Skyhigh - A
Grandia - A
Hardball 5 - G
Lucky Luke - A
Virtual Pro Wrestling - G
2Xtreme is a pretty big disappointment. I liked the original game, but it had some polishing issues, so I was quite hopeful for the sequel, but the sequel removes many aspects that were good about the original and is actually a much worse game overall. The basics of the game are essentially the same, it's a Road Rash-style game where you ride various vehicles and attempt to finish first and take out your rivals along the way. Everyone knows that Road Rash is fun so the core concept is solid, but there are a number of issues. For starters, the biggest issue is that the game has actually been significantly simplified compared to the first game. There are two major cuts from ESPN Extreme Games, the first is that the concept of earning money and buying vehicle upgrades is gone, and the second is that you can no longer choose which vehicle you want to ride on each track, each track has a preset vehicle. Both of these reduce the depth of the game significantly and I'm baffled as to why they did this. The only new additions are that you now can change your character's stat allotment, but it's very simple and doesn't allow for much customization, and there are also now powerups on the track, but they barely matter. The vehicles also now all play the exact same and have lost the differences they had from the first game. The game also has significant tuning issues. As with all games of this type, it's very heavily rubber-banded, and the courses go on way too long, which means only the very end really matters. This also discourages you from playing in any kind of risky fashion as hitting obstacles is extremely costly. Combat in the game also doesn't really work, largely because the game is too fast, in Road Rash enemies will be going about the same speed that you are so you can pull up alongside them and bash them, but here the speeds vary so much that you'll usually fly right past rivals, and you have so many obstacles on the track to avoid that you could never afford to spend time trying to punch someone. The game's presentation is still pretty good at least, but overall this was just not the right direction for the series. After going back and playing the original again, this is such a downgrade in every way that it pretty much has to be B.
Edge of Skyhigh is essentially a better version of After Burner. It uses a very similar perspective and has similar mechanics, you'll mainly be locking on and firing missiles at endless amounts of enemies as you fly forward into the screen. The game's unique mechanic is that your craft can transform between a plane mode and a mech mode, though they play similarly. The plane moves a little quicker and the mech has a charge attack that can be done by holding X, but generally I wish they felt a little more different from each other. One of the game's biggest issues is that enemy attacks feel difficult to read visually, likely because the distance between enemy fighters and your craft is often fairly short. Coupled with the fact that you cannot take many hits, this makes the game feel somewhat cheap at times, though thankfully there are continues. The game also isn't very long and I feel like there's not a ton going on, even with its short length it still gets somewhat repetitive, it's certainly not on the same level as Starfox 64 or Panzer Dragoon. The music for the first stage rocks though.
Grandia's an incredibly tough one to rate. It's a sprawling JRPG with a neat battle system and a charming cast of characters that legitimately feels epic in terms of scope in a way that few modern games do. It is also a game that drags on for what feels like forever, features very little customization of any kind, and frequently feels tedious to play. Probably Grandia's most defining feature is that it is SLOW. This game was always the game I used as an example when talking about JRPGs that take far too long to get into the first battle, it legitimately takes about 45 minutes to get out of the first town and into the first dungeon area, though actually, the game's story sequences might be its strongest part, as the characters are quite charming and funny and the voice acting is pretty solid. This slowness carries over to the gameplay as well. Areas in the game are huge, especially the dungeons, of which there are tons. You don't move all that fast, and there are fairly lengthy transitions in and out of battles and even when picking up items that slow the experience down further. Speaking of battles, the game has a fairly interesting battle system where the characters move around the field and attack in real time. You can interrupt enemy attacks with your own skills and it helps add strategy to the experience, but it also means that regular battles take a lot longer compared to most other JRPGs. So we've established that it's a slow burn, but there are definitely some things to like here. The game's presentation is great, there's a lot of funny and cool moments throughout the story, and there's a lot of very memorable set pieces throughout the game (the giant wall at the end of the world is a particular highlight). It's also an immensely long game, which has both its pros and cons. This game does have an impressive sense of scale and you really get to see the characters grow over the course of the adventure, but it also requires a tremendous amount of dedication to reach the end. Complaining about the speed of an old JRPG like this probably sounds like the ramblings of an old man, and it's true that my patience for JRPGs has worn thin over the years, but I actually beat this game back when it was new and it feels much the same to me now as it did then. Some parts of the game felt very charming and I was enjoying myself a fair bit, but the moment I got into the dungeons I remembered how tedious the game could be. I think the presentation and story of the game is probably G, but the gameplay is A, resulting in the game feeling fairly borderline, but unfortunately, as the game goes on the dungeons get longer and longer, which results in the game getting worse and worse as it goes on, and it goes on FOREVER. It actually reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy X, which is a game I was tremendously impressed by at first, but the further I got into the game the more and more tedious it became until I had to really push myself to finish it. Grandia too has many of the same problems with excessive linearity, battles that take forever, and very limited character customization / strategy, though at least Grandia doesn't have random encounters, which would absolutely have sunk the game. Overall, it is a charming game, but when I finished the first time I knew I would never want to play through it again and going back to it cemented that in my mind. It's maybe worth a playthrough if you're a huge fan of JRPGs, but I think there's many better games for the era. I also think Grandia 2 is a significantly better game in most ways, but that's a topic for another time.
DeleteHardball 5 isn't a flashy game, but it's solid enough in every regard that I can't really find much fault with it. Compared to other baseball games of the era, this one is more simple, you won't find the fancy batting box controls that some baseball games have here, but it nails all of the basics and provides an enjoyable experience that captures the strategy of the game well. Mechanically, everything is very solid. The pitching control is great, the batting control is great, fielding and running controls well, etc. One thing this game does well that I feel other baseball games sometimes struggle with is that the chance of getting on base feels "right". Fielding is just responsive enough that it always feels fair to field the ball, yet at the same time it's not particularly difficult to drop the ball somewhere the fielders can't reach in time, which mirrors the real sport well, and the pitches feel fair to read without being trivial to do so, and I like the small amount of added strategy in that you can choose to hit for either power or accuracy depending on the situation. When playing the game, I felt that it felt quite realistic in terms of the frequency of hits and runs scored, which is actually a bit rare to see. The pacing of the game and its UI is also good, the game generally feels fast (everyone knows baseball can kind of drag on), and I like how simple the UI is, for example you can easily see the stamina of your pitcher so you know when to bring in a reliever. The announcer is maybe one of the game's lower points, he actually does a decent job of calling what you'd expect them to call, but the voice sounds a bit mechanical. It still does the job but isn't going to wow anyone, and the same goes for the graphics. Still, it's adequate for an early title and the game plays very well, so this would probably have been one of the best early baseball titles of the era.
DeleteLucky Luke is an extremely weird game that's very hard to rate, or even describe for that matter. It's an action title that switches up its styles of gameplay constantly, on one level you might be doing some classic side scrolling, then you might be on a horse chase, then solving puzzles, then having a fistfight, then playing cards, then more platforming, then having an arm wrestle, then a shootout, etc. The level of variety actually hurts the game, as some of these sections are fairly competent, but others not so much, and the game would have been better if it stuck to what it does well. It is quite well-animated throughout, in particular I love Luke's walking animation, it basically establishes his entire character in his walk cycle. I feel like if a few of the especially weak points of the game had been smoothed out (there's a tennis minigame after the first stage that is atrocious, and generally all of the bonus levels are quite bad, and the level to find the moon pearl is bad too), it might have been a candidate for G, but as it stands it's probably A. It has some strong moments for sure, and it's vastly better than previous games based on the franchise, but a little bit more focus on the game's stronger mechanics would have helped a lot.
I figured Virtual Pro Wrestling would be the same as Virtual Pro Wrestling 64, but to my surprise it's actually a completely different and possibly better game. Slightly different mechanics aside, this is clearly still an Aki Wrestling game, with all of the usual nuance that brings, though the system is a little bit different here, possibly because it's a little older. This game has more of a focus on short vs long presses for moves, which I think actually works pretty well, and I like that each wrestler also has a unique attack on R2 (generally a very strong strike attack). Overall, the movesets generally feel very varied, which is cool, and Aki always does a good job with basic mechanics, which I think actually work a little better here than they do on N64 because the PS1 controller is better suited to the game's control scheme. Compared to later Aki games, the main weakness of this game would likely be its graphics. Character models are really quite blocky here, though they still animate fairly well, it definitely does look much more primative by comparison to some of the later titles. The music is great though and it still plays really well so I wouldn't hold this against it to much. Overall, it's still a really solid Wrestling game for PS1 and probably one of my favourites of Aki's titles.
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