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Last Topic's Ratings:
Big Ol Bass 2 - GGG - 100% (3)
Ridegear Guybrave 2 - AA - 50% (2)
Sexy Parodius - GGGG - 100% (4)
Starwinder - BG - 50% (2)
Super Hero Sakusen - AA - 50% (2)
Thrill Kill - AAGG - 75% (4)
Actually an extremely well-reviewed topic, especially compared to the much more divisive GBC topic. The fact that the two Ridegear Guybrave games got the exact same score despite being drastically different games is also kind of hilarious.
Games for this topic:
Davis Cup Complete Tennis
Dragon Quest 4
Game of Life, The
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
Puzzle Action: Ganba no Bouken
Tenchu 2
I feel like it's been a long time since we've covered a Dragon Quest game. In any case, though there's no translation for this version, it's very similar to the localized DS version, so guides for that version should suffice just fine.
Davis Cup Complete Tennis - G
ReplyDeleteDragon Quest 4 - A
Game of Life, The - B
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - B
Puzzle Action: Ganba no Bouken - G
Tenchu 2 - B
Colour me shocked, but Davis Cup Complete Tennis is actually pretty good. I've mentioned a ton of times that almost all Tennis games predating Mario Tennis are almost unplayable, due to a mixture of stiffness and poor shot control, so my hopes for this early PS1 Tennis title weren't high, but it actually manages to get pretty much everything right. If you hold left when hitting the ball, you hit towards the top left corner, if you hold right, you hit towards top right. This is not rocket science, but almost no early Tennis games do this correctly, so imagine my surprise when it works absolutely perfectly here. You can actually return a serve up the line in this game! When it comes to actually swinging the racket, it's a touch more stiff than Mario Tennis, as swinging does lock you in place throughout the animation, but the animations are fairly fast and they can contact the ball at pretty much any time during the entire animation, so although you have to be a little more precise with your positioning it still feels totally fine. You have different shots mapped to different buttons and there's even a lunge if you're running for a ball you can't reach. Even beyond getting the basics right, this game's gameplay tuning is also quite well done. While your player control is pretty quick and snappy, the ball travels quite fast in this game, which actually makes serves somewhat dangerous as Aces can happen reasonably often. This is actually something it does somewhat better than Mario Tennis, where serves are almost trivial to return and thus the service advantage (which is a major part of the real sport) is minimal in that game, but it does matter here. In any case, the core gameplay here is actually quite good and as a result the game is fun, which is not something you can say about 99% of other games in this genre. Unfortunately, the rest of the package is not quite as strong. There's a decent number of characters, but there's nothing to unlock and the options are pretty thin. Notably, you cannot play 2 game sets here, so matches tend to be long. Doubles is present and works pretty well thanks to the solid mechanics, there's no slowdown and you can of course play co-op against the AI or with up to 4 human players. Visuals are decent, but there's no commentary and the announcer doesn't even say the character's names. So even though Mario Tennis is clearly better, this is still a pretty good early option, it might actually be the best Tennis game on PS1 period.
Dragon Quest 4 is a difficult game to rate because it's a game that's difficult to separate from its historical context. DQ4, along with Mother 1 and Final Fantasy 4 were among the first JRPGs to focus on character-driven narrative storytelling, as opposed to the less story-focused pen-and-paper inspired games that came before them. Compared to previous games, they have noticeably lesser customization and mechanical depth, as the characters are no longer yours to freely mold as you see fit and instead have a preset selection of abilities. This comparison is particularly stark in the case of DQ4 when comparing it to the excellent DQ3, which featured a job system that was way ahead of its time. However, it also must be noted that for a very early story-based game, the storytelling in DQ4 is actually quite ambitious, telling 4 separate mini stories which then converge at the end rather than a single linear narrative. When playing the NES version, even though DQ3 is still clearly superior, it's not hard to see how it could have been impressive in its own right when it was new. However, we're not playing the NES version. This version of DQ4 came out many years later, long after masterpieces of the genre like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7. To their credit, Enix actually did make an admirable effort to update the game. This is not a simple port of the NES game like the PS1 versions of the SNES FF titles, but instead a full 3D remake of game with completely redone graphics and a fair amount of new content. While by no means a strong competitor to the top PS1 RPGs in the looks department, it's still a pretty decent looking game with a fair amount of charm. Gameplay-wise, not much has changed, which is kind of a shame. Notably, one of the biggest problems with DQ4 is that it's significantly easier compared to past entries in the series, which causes its later chapters to kind of drag. While the idea of having various mini plotlines is interesting, the story and characters are still not particularly strong, and this causes the chapters to feel fairly similar to each other, save for Torneko's chapter, which pretty much everyone agrees is the highlight of the game. This version of the game adds a 6th chapter at the end, but I feel like I would rather added more content and personality to the existing chapters instead, as the bonus chapter kind of just makes the game drag on even more. When this game was re-released on DS, I was quite unimpressed by it and I would easily give that version a B. By that time the 3D graphics had completely lost their luster, and that version also looks and sounds worse than this version (it's somewhat stretched vertically and the loss of the CD-quality audio is very noticeable), while also featuring content cuts and one of the worst english localizations ever written. This version, while still kind of mediocre, is at least not nearly as aggressively bad and the charm comes through a bit better. I still probably wouldn't recommend this except to the most diehard DQ fans, as most others are better served playing the NES version, or just playing FF4 or Mother 1 since those are both significantly better games in my opinion, but at least the effort is there.
DeleteI knew nothing about The Game of Life coming in (except that it's very popular in Japan, albeit apparently this is a slightly different game), but it turns out I didn't need to because it's the most simplistic game imaginable. The basic gist of the game is that players take turn rolling numbers and moving along the board. At various key points in the game certain major life events happen, like getting married or having kids, though most spaces involve minor mishaps or boons like getting a flat tire or winning a marathon, which either lose or gain some money. Certain key spaces award a life tile, which is basically just money that you cash in at the end of the game. Very occasionally you can choose a path from two options, notably, one of these is right at the beginning of the game based on whether you choose to go to college or not. Of all the choices you make in the game, this one is the most significant, going to college starts you in debt, however you get to choose from 3 careers and salaries instead of one. Careers have minor advantages tied to certain spaces on the board and a couple have a special power (ie, the police officer gains $5k every time someone rolls a 10), but none of them occur often. There is also the option to buy insurance and a stock certificate. Insurance protects you from the negative effects of certain spaces and is always worth it unless you're way behind. The stock certificate awards money whenever anyone rolls the listed number. This is pretty much all you need to know about the game. You just keep rolling and gaining or losing money until you reach the end of the board and retire, and after everyone retires at the end the person with the most money wins. There's effectively no strategy whatsoever, the only appeal comes from the nature of the game, where it essentially predicts a life outcome for you, but it doesn't do this particularly well as your life will go almost the exact same way every time (ie, you always get married and have 2-3 kids), and the minor events don't have any meaningful effect on the outcome, really only your starting salary and a handful of lucky spaces matter. In terms of presentation, it's ok, but also kind of weird. Whenever you land on a space, you'll see a prerendered cutscene or cartoon, though these are not linked to your chosen character and after playing once or twice you'll have seen them all. The game also offers an "enhanced" version of the game where every time you get to a life event you can play a simple minigame or steal money from the other players, which IMO just makes the game slower. I think there is some appeal to the concept, but it's something that only stays interesting for maybe 20 minutes. It needed either more depth or some more variety to your potential life outcomes to spice things up.
DeleteRugrats in Paris is slightly better on PS1 compared to N64, but it's still not very fun. As before, this is a minigame collection with a massive but boring hub world. The goal is to win 16 golden tickets spread across a handful of different minigames, with many minigames requiring you to buy access by collecting red tickets from wandering the hub world and farming them through the other games. Of the minigames, there is only a single standout, which is minigolf. The game's implementation of mini golf is actually one of the best digital representations of the sport ever, it actually feels like playing real minigolf in terms of the course design and physics and I even like that you have to walk to your ball after each shot. However, it only has 9 holes so it can't carry the game on its own, and none of the rest of the minigames are anywhere near this level of quality. Compared to the N64 version, there's more voice clips, which helps somewhat, but otherwise it plays the same and the hub world is just as empty and boring as before. It's a shame this game wasn't just Rugrats minigolf, as if they axed everything except minigolf and made like 6 different courses this actually might be a G-level game.
Puzzle Action: Ganba no Bouken is sort of hard to rate. The basic gist of it is that each stage takes place on a grid-like playing area, similar to Bomberman or Pengo, though you can move freely in all directions. The stages are littered with various items like barrels and bottles that you can pick up and throw to defeat enemies. Sometimes when you pick up an object there'll be an item underneath it that you can take for points. If you throw an object into another object, it'll launch that object, allowing you to hit enemies "through walls", and you can also create combos of enemies this way which earns extra points. On each stage, there's a goal to achieve, either to defeat enough of a certain enemy type or collect all the hidden items. There are also bosses, which can be surprisingly tough, though thankfully they can't take many hits. After each set of 3 stages, you get to view a couple comic-style scenes showing the game's story, which involves a group of 7 friends going on an adventure. Speaking of, you can also play as any of the 7 characters and they actually do have differences, as some are faster than others. I'm not sure if the slower ones throw objects faster, if they do the effect is minor, but in any case they also act as your lives, when one is defeated you need to pick another one to keep playing, though they're all revived after each set of 3 stages so it's not too taxing. Levels have some decent variety, with later worlds introducing new enemy types and various hazards, like how the second world has deep water which makes you move really slow and the fourth has waves that can stun you. Overall, while it's very simple, it's actually pretty fun. It's very fast-paced and cute and the story sequences are actually surprisingly decent for this kind of title. It can get a little repetitive, but it lets you save after every group of stages so you're not forced to do it in one sitting, and there's also co-op. There's nothing here that couldn't easily have been done on SNES or even NES with diminished graphics, but it's still a reasonably decent game. Probably one of the better titles in the Simple Characters series.
DeleteI wasn't really impressed at all by the original Tenchu, owing mostly to its clumsy controls, poorly-implemented stealth, and awful draw distance. It has some cool mechanics, like the grappling hook, but the implementation of everything is so clunky that it doesn't really come together. I had hoped that Tenchu 2 would have received some much-needed polish, but it actually has almost no improvements whatsoever from the original game, maintaining all of its issues while arguably being even clunkier in many ways.
(cont'd)
(Tenchu 2 cont'd)
DeleteYou can get a good grasp of almost all of the game's problems in the tutorial stage. For starters, this is a huge outdoor stage that takes place in the daytime, yet 90% of the stage is pitch black all the time because the draw distance is still complete garbage. It's actually pretty embarrassing how bad this looks, the first game had the sense to generally try to keep the areas small and block sight lines with walls so this problem was slightly less obvious, but it just looks awful here. Your goal is to find 4 signs and do some training, which is way harder than it should be because you can barely see 10 feet in front of your face. The movement control introduces you to a ton of unnecessary movement mechanics that are clunky to use, though it doesn't matter because you'll never bother with most of them. Swimming mostly works, except it's too easy to do the big jump out of the water when you don't want to. Combat remains terrible. You have a meter that shows how aware enemies are of you, but even if you're totally silent they're always like at least 50% aware of you because they're psychic or something. This does not really matter, you will deal with every enemy by simply running up behind them and pressing square. The crouch doesn't really do anything useful and neither does shimmying (which frequently gets stuck), just get behind them then run up and hit square and they die. Finally you have to find the elder's house, which is the true greatest challenge of the training. There is a house with a guy lying down that looks like the house from the cutscene, and he wakes up when you get close, but this isn't it. I was so lost here I had to look up a walkthrough to find the proper house is actually up on a nondescript cliff that you have to grapple to. Maybe this wouldn't be a huge problem if there was a map or if the camera wasn't totally awful, but good luck finding this on your own. You are then tossed into a small gauntlet of enemies. The second enemy is way below you and you might think "Aha! This will be a good time for Shurikens!" but you'd be wrong, as Shurikens are totally useless in this game. It takes 3 of them to kill even the weakest of enemies and he will spot you immediately the second you throw one. No, the correct play is just to drop into the pit and then run up to him and press square, because apparently he doesn't hear you dropping behind him since he's an idiot. Later in the stage I also accidentally did a big jump out of the water right behind a guy and he didn't hear me either, these guys are not smart. Later on on the first stage you have some sleeping guards. Despite being conceptually trivial, you cannot stealth kill people who are asleep. You have to get behind them, swing your sword randomly so they wake up, then stealth kill them as soon as they wake up. This stage also really highlights how awful the camera is, as it's constantly pointed at the ground so you can only see a few feet in front of you, you have to hold L1 and constantly adjust it, but of course this means you can't move and you'll get spotted by guys who are actually right next to them but you can't see them due to the awful camera work. Should you get into a real fight by not stealth killing someone or fighting a boss, the controls for this are also terrible, as they are very stiff and pressing a direction while attacking (because you're trying to reposition or what not) changes the attacks you do, even though this game is basically just a button masher and this is in no way necessary. Oh, and unlike like the original, this game also has almost no music, it's just ambience, which is a shame because the music in the original was actually pretty good. In any case, this is a perfect example of a bad sequel that doesn't improve anything and I think the original is actually better even though it's still bad. I feel like this series is a strong contender for the title of "worst series on the platform that you've probably heard of", it's actually kind of insane just how terrible the engine for these games is.