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Last Topic's Ratings:
Choro Q Park - GG - 100% (2)
Farland Saga - AAA - 50% (3)
Lupin Sansei: Pyramid no Kenja - GA - 75% (2) (1 SR)
Mechanical Violator Hakaider: Last Judgement - GA - 75% (2)
Virtual On: Cyber Troopers - GGGGGGAG - 94% (8)
Zoop - AAB - 33% (3)
Well, it took 79 topics, but we've finally found the last game on the Saturn ratings list, it's Zoop. There are no games that come after it alphabetically that can take its place at the bottom of the low ratings list. It also currently occupies this spot on the PS1 list, but there are still games that come after it alphabetically left for PS1 that could take its place.
Games for this topic:
BattleSport
Dead or Alive
Dodonpachi
Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei
Trash It
Voice Fantasia S
It's a topic for big sequels this time, though I'm also looking forward to trying out the original Dead or Alive. Even Voice Fantasia seems like kind of an interesting game.
BattleSport - A
ReplyDeleteDead or Alive - G
Dodonpachi - A
Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei - G (SR)
Trash It - B
Voice Fantasia S - A
BattleSport is essentially a far more primitive version of Dodgem Arena. The basic idea of the game is the same, you control a futuristic hovercar armed to the teeth with missiles and lasers, but the goal is not to destroy the other competitors but instead to grab a ball and fling it into the goal. There's definitely some appeal to this concept and Dodgem Arena is an interesting game, but BattleSport is both vastly more primitive and much more poorly balanced. For this type of game, probably the most important aspect is the balance between the combat and the sport gameplay, which is done extremely poorly here. You have a health bar, which is depleted by being shot. If holding the ball, being shot might cause you to drop the ball, but this seems to be random. If your health is entirely depleted, you're out of the game for about 3 seconds. The biggest problem is that the length of time you spend respawning is so short that being hit almost doesn't matter, it takes far longer to track down the ball after killing the rival than it does for the rival to respawn, so unless they have the ball you're basically wasting your time shooting them, and unless your health is very low you can kind of just ignore weapons fire as you try to line up the ball with the goal. This basically just turns the weapons into a nuisance rather than a key part of gameplay. In Dodgem Arena, they had the vastly better idea to make you move slow when you were out of health, and your health does not come back unless you collect a health pack, which worked way better. The general controls are also pretty bad here, and this is part of the problem, tracking down the ball and the goal is cumbersome (there's a constant arrow pointing towards both, which is essential, but it feels like a poor solution to the problem), and when you combine neither of the two core mechanics being great you have a game that gets old pretty fast, particularly because the arenas aren't very interesting either. It does have some occasional moments, landing a good shot while moving fast does feel good, but it definitely needed a lot more work.
It has to be said, Dead or Alive looks absolutely incredible on Saturn. It's actually kinda bonkers how good this game looks, it has easily the most fluid and detailed animation and 3D models of any 3D fighting game this gen, generally looking almost a generation better than any of its competitors, and Saturn somehow runs it at 60fps. It's a technical marvel on the system for sure and you'd be forgiven for mistaking this for a Dreamcast title, especially when put beside something like Virtua Fighter. Gameplay-wise it's a little bit more of a mixed bag. As a 3D fighter, it's certainly not terrible, it's pretty fast paced and accessible and avoids most of the pitfalls that early 3D fighters fell into, there are no overly floaty jumps here for example. The most unique thing about the game is that it's a 3-button fighter, you have punch, kick, and a universal counter button called hold, which puts you into a state that can counter enemy attacks. Simply put, Hold is way too good for an ability that doesn't cost a resource, all you have to do is guess high or low and it will deflect pretty much any attack, and its parry window is very active with almost no recovery. About the only defense against it is throws, but these are early janky 3D fighter throws that have little range and often don't come out properly, and this is also a game that's full of strings that don't properly combo that are just bait for the parry move. The reward for landing one of these parries is not huge, it just does a little damage and resets the fight to neutral, but it definitely discourages offense and getting a couple parries in a row can take off a pretty significant chunk of health. If you actually do land one of your character's handful of good moves (it's important to know what these are, they're usually big single hits that allow juggles afterwards), you can take off a ton of health, and throws also do a ton of damage if you can land them (generally only after blocking a laggy move) so the matches can be quite volatile. Still, pretty much every 3D fighter this game has at least some jank and I would still take this over Virtua Fighter any day even without bringing its visuals into play. There's also a PS1 version of this game, though it looks way worse, it's 30FPS and letterboxed and has less detail. It does have 2 extra characters and slightly better looking stages, but the loss of visual quality is significant and the 8 characters in the Saturn version generally feels like enough given the game's simplicity, so this is almost certainly the version you want.
DeleteI'm not nearly as much of a fan of Dodonpachi as the original Donpachi. This is the game where the franchise's legacy as a bullet hell game begins to take shape, and while I'm not a huge fan of bullet hell, that's not really the problem. The game still controls well, your hitbox is nice and small, and the bullet patterns are pretty readable due to good use of colour, so despite being an early bullet hell it gets the basics right. The Saturn version does have a fair bit of slowdown when things get hectic, and that's not ideal, so you might prefer the largely slowdown-free PS1 version, but that's not the big problem either. The big issue is the game's resolution. In the arcades, Dodonpachi uses a monitor that's about twice as tall as it is wide, and this has not been converted gracefully the console to any degree, with the game generally having about 40% of the screen as solid black bars. Even with this much unused space, the game still has to shrink the image significantly to fit within the screen, leading to a significant loss of detail and the game generally looking worse visually compared to the original, which incidentally occupies far more of the screen. These problems can largely be alleviated if you play in Tate mode, where the game runs full screen and looks and plays way better, but of course this requires you to turn your monitor sideways, which won't be an option for most. Considering this game features horizontal scrolling, it seems obvious to me that what they should have done was simply eliminated this mechanic and made the screen wide enough to display the entire playing field when playing in the vertical mode (it probably would have quite neatly filled the screen). At least the Saturn version does make the smart decision to move some of the UI elements off to the side, allowing a little more space for the visuals (on PS1, the game uses even less of the screen), and it does have an extra level, so I'd probably recommend this version unless playing in Tate mode (where the PS1's lack of slowdown wins out), but what I'd recommend even more is just playing one of Saturn's dozens of other great shmups that made the transition to console more gracefully.
DeleteLike Dead or Alive, Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei is also a technical marvel on Saturn, but perhaps an even more impressive one considering how quickly it came out after the first game. Zwei is an absolutely massive improvement over the first game in every way imaginable, and now easily stands toe to toe with the best games of its type. The first thing worth noting is the immense improvement to the game's technical performance. The first game wasn't the worst-performing 3D title ever, but it was definitely pretty choppy and the draw distance was not great. Zwei not only looks drastically better than the original, with far more detailed environments and better effects, but also runs at a silky smooth framerate and has better draw distance. The impact is not limited solely to the visuals, as this also makes the game play drastically better since aiming is smoother and you have more time to see threats coming at you. The game's overall design has seen improvements too. In the original, I complained about the lack of replay value due to the game lacking a scoring system or any kind of real unlockables, but now both have been added, and the scoring system also allows you to upgrade your dragon during your playthrough as well. Levels also now contain some branching paths, and although you still can't steer your dragon if not facing forwards, pretty much any enemies that you have to fight from this angle now fire projectiles you can shoot down so it's not much of a problem. Oh, and while it doesn't drastically change the gameplay, I do have to call out how cool the transitions between the walking and flying segments are, I imagine the part in the second stage where the dragon takes off from the cliff must have been quite a "wow" moment back in the day. If only Sega had a little more time prior to the Saturn launch to polish the original to this degree, Saturn's fate actually might have been very different, but in any case it's a great game that still holds up very well after all this time.
DeleteTrash It is a weird idea but it's clearly not very fun. The basic gist of the game is that it's focused on demolition, you play as a construction worker with a big hammer and your goal is to destroy as much stuff as possible, then suck up the debris with your vacuum for profit. Early on, pretty much the only thing you have to pay attention to is to not smash things in such a way that you get crushed by the falling debris (though even if you do, this only causes you to lose a little time, it's not fatal), later levels introduce some minor puzzles, typically where you need to avoid breaking some things until you break other things because you might need to use them as a platform to reach something else. Another key mechanic is that breaking certain objects will release these annoying little hammer critters that you can suck up to gain upgrade points, as you will eventually need to buy better hammers, but you can get twice as many points for hammering them first. They run all round the stage and your squish attack is very slow, so hammering them typically just involves standing in one spot and mashing the hammer and hoping they walk into it, which is about as fun as it sounds. Actually, pretty much no part of the game is fun, generally due to poor controls, a lack of any sort of urgency, and the game generally feeling very repetitive. The control scheme is basically just stupid. As the description above indicates, the main things you need to do are hammer, vacuum, and jump. You'd think each of these would be assigned to a button, but no. C button pulls out or puts away one of your tools, which you then use with X. To pull out the hammer, you just press C, but to pull out the Vacuum, you have to press Up + C, which also switches back to the hammer if the vacuum is out, because just pressing C will just put the vacuum away. The physics in the game are also janky, you run bizarrely fast with no tools out, which also makes the platforming feel off, and ducking inside your hat to avoid being squished also feels unresponsive. Still, the game is so easy that you're not really encouraged or required to be optimal so it kind of doesn't matter. There is a co-op mode available, but the game is so dull I can't see anyone wanting to play it for very long. Ultimately, the game's title is probably a pretty good recommendation for what you should do with the game.
DeleteVoice Fantasia S reminds me a lot of Gal Act Heroism, though it's clearly not quite as good. Like that game, this is an extremely story-heavy RPG with very minimal combat, within the first 2 hours I got into a fight exactly once. Obviously then, we need to talk about the story, and it's not too bad. It's a fairly standard Isekai setup where the protagonist is pulled into the world of a video game and needs to find his way home. The twist here is that the game was cancelled because the voice actresses who worked on the game were also trapped inside of it (hence the game's name) and you can interact with them at night when the characters they play are asleep. Beyond this mild aspect of intrigue, the story is pretty standard silly anime faire, for example an early event requires you to rescue the princess who has been kidnapped by the demon army, but after you track her down you find that she has forced the demons to pamper her and is eating a grand meal in a luxurious room and she's like "oh, did you come to rescue me?", much to everyone's shock. As noted before, combat plays an extremely small role in the game and is very simple when it does occur, the focus is mostly on talking to people to advance the plot and some light puzzle solving, as you gain various abilities throughout the game that you can use on the field map to cause certain effects (for example, one power you get lets you create a gust of wind, which you have to use to blow people's clothes off so you can find the demon hiding among the townsfolk). There's also a dating sim element here where you can buy the girls various presents and take them on outings to make them like you more, which probably effects the ending, but things don't seem to go any further than mild fanservice. I definitely feel like compared to Gal Act Heroism it doesn't have quite as much personality and the art also isn't quite as good, but for people who mostly enjoy the story side of RPGs and aren't too big on the combat it could be all right.
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