This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Champion Wrestler: Jikkyou Live - AAA - 50% (3)
Hebereke's Popoitto - BBBB - 0% (4)
Kart Challenge - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Pandemonium 2 - BAGGGG - 75% (6)
Spec Ops: Covert Assault - AAABB - 30% (5)
Treasure Gear - GGG - 100% (3)
I'm always glad to see more people trying out the import games. One of my primary reasons for wanting to do this GAB was because so much of the PS1 library is essentially unknown in the west.
Games for this topic:
Bounty Sword First
Flintstones, The: Bedrock Bowling
Invasion From Beyond
Rally Cross 2
Rapid Angel
Samurai Shodown 3: Blades of Blood
You might have noticed a significant uptick in unlocalized JRPGs in the PS1 GAB lately. When the PS1 list was originally created (over 8 years ago now), I limited Japanese-only RPGs to those with translations or ones that looked relatively simple to play, because I figured that's mostly what people would be willing to vote on. However, since then translation tools have improved quite a lot and playing unlocalized JRPGs is now more accessible, so a few months back I went back through the PS1's JRPG list and added a bunch more games I originally passed on. However, this means there's now quite a lot of RPGs on the list, and it's going to take a while before the numbers even out again.
Bounty Sword First - A
ReplyDeleteFlintstones, The: Bedrock Bowling - A
Invasion From Beyond - A
Rally Cross 2 - B
Rapid Angel - A
Samurai Shodown 3: Blades of Blood - A
Bounty Sword First is an interesting and ambitious game, but it's not without issues. For starters, this is a remake of a SNES game called Bounty Sword, and you can definitely tell because the presentation of the game is quite basic for a game from this era. There's pretty much no cutscenes or anything like that, virtually all storytelling is told through plain textboxes and the character art and sprites are also fairly basic for their time. The story itself doesn't really seem to be anything to write home about either, it's a fairly basic tale about a gruff mercenary, an evil empire, and a lost princess that feels very similar to many other JRPGs. Luckily, the game is somewhat unique in terms of gameplay. The game uses a real-time battle system where the characters can move in two dimensions on the map, somewhat similar to Ogre Battle but with no battle scene transitions, instead attacking and spellcasting also take place in real time. Characters will move, attack, and use abilities automatically, but you can alter their AI, command them to move to or target a specific location, or command them to use their skills and set the targeting of those abilities (and thankfully time pauses while you access the menu). It's an interesting system and thankfully the game involves a pretty thorough tutorial, though the system is not without some clunk. One big issue is that the game's AI is fairly controlling, even if you command a character to do something specific they'll frequently get distracted from it and do something else instead, like if you command someone to go get a treasure chest, there's a good chance they'll stop to attack an enemy on the way rather than going straight there, or if you command your healer to attack they'll probably pause to heal someone first. It is possible to tweak the AI settings to avoid this, but the game moves so fast you can't really command everyone all the time so you need the AI to make some decisions. Healing is also kind of a pain, allies will heal themselves as they take damage with items and magic, though they do not ask before using items and thus your supply of healing items will be instantly depleted, at which point they will then complain about the lack of healing items every time they get attacked, which is obnoxious. Again, I'm sure there's some AI setting you can adjust to change this behaviour, but it's definitely kind of annoying. The characters' tendency to blow all their SP on heals also means that any character who knows a healing spell will almost never have enough SP to use any of their other spells, which is unfortunate because using these spells is one of the most fun parts of the game, lining up an attack that wipes out a bunch of enemies is pretty satisfying, though you have to be careful as they can usually also hit allies. Equipment in the game is pretty simple (everyone gets exactly one weapon and one piece of armor), though there is a class change system and a decent number of characters to choose from. Still, there's no question that it feels kind basic. Just having your characters dogpile the nearest enemy and heal when necessary is usually good enough to see you through, it never really feels like it involves a lot of strategy. DeviceReign is definitely a significantly better real-time SRPG than this. I imagine this game might have been more impressive on SNES, though apparently that version also had some issues.
The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling is an extremely weird game, and I suppose in a sense that's probably its greatest strength. This is not really a bowling game, instead you're riding inside a half ball through various courses, trying to hit pins and get pickups along the way, it really feels somewhat more like bobsledding except that you're trying to hit stuff. The courses are reasonably diverse and fairly visually interesting, but there aren't many of them, there's only 10 plus one bonus stage and you can complete them all in about 15 minutes. There are difficulty settings that adjust the positions of the pins and pickups which helps some, but in general it feels like the game has very little content, a few different courses of 10 lanes each would have gone a long way here. You can play with other human players for high scores, but I feel like the stages take a little too long and aren't really interesting enough for this to stay appealing for long. Honestly, this game is very close to B, with about the only thing keeping it out of there being the fact that it looks and sounds pretty good and it is kind of unique, but they definitely should have done a bit more with it.
DeleteInvasion From Beyond is another interesting game that has some issues. The basic gist of the game is that it's a mission-based flying game where you shoot down a ton of aliens, kind of like Independence Day but a thousand times more chaotic. Every mission has like 10-15 objectives, during which time all enemies are infinite, then when they're done you typically have to defeat all remaining enemies to win. The objectives are quite varied and often involve the use of the suck-o-matic, a tractor beam that can pick up and drop off various things, from people to equipment. For example, on one mission you have to pick up an engineer and deliver him to various locations to obtain parts to build an oil rig, which you must then deliver to a dropoff point, while being shot at by millions of enemies of course. The suck-o-matic is also used to pick up dropped enemy components and scientists, which you need to create new equipment. A big issue with the suck-o-matic is that it's very inaccurate, it doesn't grab right below your ship, it grabs on kind of a downwards angle and when the terrain isn't flat you'll often miss what you're trying to grab, not helped by the fact that you're always getting shot by a million enemies. Speaking of, one of the game's biggest problems is its completely unreasonable level of difficulty. There's absolutely no way to recover health, you have 3 ships with very limited shields per mission and that's it. If a ship gets shot down while carrying a mission-critical item you instantly lose, and many mission objectives can also be destroyed by the enemy, which is also an instant failure condition. The biggest problem by far though is that your ships have limited energy, and when it runs out you have to return to base to refill it. This is not instant and you'll be shot to pieces while attempting it, like everything else in the game. It's insanely annoying to be doing a mission to protect an ally or something and then run out of ammo, only for them to be destroyed while you're trying to refuel. Even the earliest missions in the game are vastly too hard and it will take many attempts to even barely clear these stages, let along grab downed components as these only remain on the ground for a few seconds and picking up and dropping these off amidst the chaos is nearly impossible. Despite that clearly overtuned difficulty, parts of the game do have some appeal, it does a reasonably good job of making you feel hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, and winning a mission by the skin of your teeth is kind of satisfying. They just really needed to dump the energy mechanic because it's really the straw that broke the camel's back.
Rally Cross 2 is a touch better than the atrocious first game, but not by a ton. Compared to the first game, the biggest improvement is that the camera now somewhat works. In the first game, it oddly fishtails when you turn so it looks at the side of your vehicle, which makes it impossible to see where you're going and basically makes the game unplayable. It still does this to some degree and it's still a problem, but somewhat less so. However, the game's handling and physics engines are still total nonsense, and the game has a new problem where they often put too many trees right on the edge of the course that block your view of turns. Combined with how loose and wonky the handling is and how easy it is to flip your car, the entire game just kind of feels chaotic and sloppy. This is also a 5 lap game and it's way too many for a game that's as messy as this. There is a decent amount of stuff to unlock in this game, but it's just not fun enough for it to be worth doing. If you want to play a game like this, Ford Truck Mania is vastly better.
DeleteRapid Angel is a super weird game that's so hard to rate that I could easily see any of the three letter grades being valid for it. At first glance, it looks like a rather lousy 2D beat-em-up. You have only one attack button and one attack string, plus jumping, running, and crouching attacks, and that's it. There are no grabs or anything and your moves don't combo especially well, and you also can't move into or out of the foreground, this is a purely 2D game. However, it's not really a beat-em-up, it's somewhat more of a 2D platformer with some beat-em-up mechanics. See, the trick here is you don't actually have to fight the enemies, you can just avoid them. The game is called "Rapid" Angel because you are Sanic fast. Your running speed is very high and you have a double jump, with both of these put together you can clear tons of ground and easily blow past most obstacles. The game is timed and you get a ton of points for being fast (and there's even a bonus for how long you stay in the air) so the intended way to play is generally to avoid most things and go fast and only fight when you really need to. There are bosses and you will have to defeat them, but you can generally just pin them into a corner and stunlock them to death with jump attacks into normal combos so they're not generally too hard. The core gameplay is generally kind of fun, and for a game of this type it's surprisingly long. There's 5 characters total and they actually play quite differently, and it's kind of interesting that the character who has a projectile, whom you would probably think would be the best by a mile, is actually probably the worst character except for bosses due to her lack of a proper air attack. It's an interesting game and it's probably kind of close to G, but there are some sections that are kind of annoying and I wish the mid-level cutscenes could be turned off because they interrupt the game's flow.
Samurai Shodown 3 on PS1 is a bit of a downgrade compared to the Saturn version, but due to the specifics of the game it kinda doesn't matter much. As I mentioned when we covered it on Saturn, Samurai Shodown is kind of a weird series. Compared to most other fighters there's very little focus on combos here, characters have limited movesets and there's basically no concept of combos or juggles, instead the game focuses around footsies / poking where single hits do absurd damage, especially if they land as counter hits. It feels kind of unique I guess, though it also feels very basic and I feel like the game does not feel as interesting to explore or as satisfying to play as most other fighters. Compared to the Saturn version, the PS1 version runs somewhat worse, there's noticeably more slowdown (though generally only when moves hit, and it's not like you can really land any follow-ups anyway) and it feels like some frames have also been cut out. One change that I do like is that when your POW meter is full, the game displays the input needed to do your super, though you have only a very short window to perform and supers do surprisingly little damage in this game anyway. At any rate, the game definitely looks and sounds great, the spritework is amazing for its time, but it wouldn't go very high on my list of preferred fighters to play on PS1.
Delete