Parasite Eve's DEEPLY Unwell Evolution in Review
Вставка
- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
- looks like mitochondria's back on the menu boys
full series spoilers btw
Where to start - Parasite Eve was voted for by patrons months ago, so I'm finally covering it, and right after Vagrant Story. That's wild - they're the only 2 games I know that play somewhat like each other. [un]fortunately for me, the two sequel entries diverge drastically in genre. What happens when you blast a series back to back when they're offering 3 different gameplay frameworks?
I don't rank games ever, but the first entry is strongest to me - just unique and interesting enough to be worth the play. The sequel is largely derivative of resident evil, though not without its own quirks and rpg mechanics, but it's an interesting play specifically for asking for that sort of controller mastery in a series that hardly cared prior, and presumably chasing trends. Third birthday is a video game you can play, and spits directly at fans in the strangest twist yet conceived.
If you're looking for more classic PSX title coverage, I did Vagrant Story recently, Valkyrie Profile too, and Chrono Cross years ago. If you're look for rpgs in general, check my work on Xenoblade.
If you'd like to help support the show, I'm here! / kbash
Here's my latest on Samurai Shodown: • A Samurai Shodown Retr...
0:00 Game [ON]
1:39 Parasite Eve
15:32 Parasite Evil
27:34 some weird smelly thing
#kbash #parasiteeve #retrospective - Ігри
One time in a college biology class I had to write an essay about mitochondria, and instead of reading the boring ass textbook, I skimmed it, re-played Parasite Eve, and wrote my paper about all the scientific inaccuracies in the game's narrative.
I got an A.
truly one of mitochondria moment of all time
I remember some kid wrote into...I think it was EGM...that or Gamepro....that his biology teacher was offering free points on a test depending on the facts their students wrote down and this kid apparently wrote down a bunch of things from the game, amazing his teacher.
KBash has become the mitochondria of the video game analysis genre
KBash is the powerhouse of the UA-cam.
@Gravity Queen the dude produces better content than most gaming tubers in my opinion. He's just built different.
Couldn't agree more
All the mitochondria (plural). Soon he will activate inside us all.
Did u learn a new word 😂 what a stupid place to use it 😮
The premise of "Person A goes into the past in B's body to save them but in the process loses their memory and thinks they're A" is actually a really interesting one, and that could have been a really plot warping twist...if the actual characterization of Aya and Eve was strong enough to carry it.
I was about to try to sell you 999 but it doesn't have the "thinks they're A" part. Foiled again!
Which is why the Memory thing shouldn’t have lasted for so long. Cause only at the End does Aya and her Actual Character come back, only to completely divorce herself from the Series by the end with a point Blank bullet to the Heart!
What a fucking Betrayal!
To hear The Third Birthday categorized as "some weird smelly thing" on the timestamps brings me to primeval laughter
Still got the 8+ year old (Me) memories of my dad playing this and freaking out by the melting and flying baby...
I find it kinda funny how every single retrospective look at the 3rd Birthday ALWAYS neglect to mention one of the biggest slaps in the face. The unlockable "Confidential File" cutscene that sequel baits.
Hi there.
Please elaborate?
I've not ever heard of this.
I’ve heard The 3rd Birthday get compared to Metroid Other M a lot and, frankly, I think the comparison is completely fair.
Seriously, 2010s Action Girl Humiliation was such an unnecessary fad
"Get To Know this awesome female character you've loved for a decade! By finding out that she was actually a sniveling coward this whole time!"
@@Densoro I can only think of Lara Croft going through that as well, not sure I'd call it a fad.
I actually think I disagree. Other M, despite its narrative flaws, managed to maintain a tense atmosphere in a variable space, and used its gameplay to great effect in conveying the feelings of dread and isolation. I could easilly imagine someone not caring for the story, but staying for everything else.
Or, to put another way; Other M is a fairly well-made game, whose biggest flaw is that it is overwritten, choosing to repeatedly exposit the lead's thoughts and feelings instead of just conveying it through the cinematography. If the game cut out 80% of Samus' dIalogue, most complaints would go away. 3rd Birthday actively tries to not be a PE game, and even insults tne player for wanting it to do so. It doesn't weaken its lead by over-dramaticising her like Other M did, but instead beat her with a lead pipe, and put the gun in your hand to deliver the killing blow.
The sheer disrespect is what makes it all so agregious. Other M can be written off as a bad day and moved on from, albeit with the occasional mockery. There is no coming back with 3rd Birthday, the whome thing is rotted out from top to bottom, and that just hurts all the more.
@@GambeTama Other M was meant to "Break" Samus. Show her as a giant pussy who is subservient to her father figure as a good japanese broodmare should. Why else have her break down after seeing Ridley despite killing him every Tuesday? And not being allowed to use her own weapons despite being literally part of her body? Adam tells her when to breath shit and blink. It's ridiculous. It's like having Doomslayer suck a fucking pacifier while shitting his pants after looking at an Imp.
@@GambeTamaWell, you'd be wrong.
I thought the twist in the original Nier was twisted and F*cked, but this is on another level. I’d actually marvel at it, if it wasn’t the franchise conclusion.
Parasite Eve is one of my favorite games of all time.
I'm so glad Square never ruined it with any sequels.
@Meat Head They never made a sequel.
@Meat Head
It's a great sequel.
Imagine thinking a sequel would ruin an already finished product. Delusional. A sequel doesnt magically make the first game unenjoyable if you already enjoyed it. Grow up.
@@AgentSephiroth Calm down
I actually like PE2, great that they stopped at 2 and let the series rest.
It's strange. After the section about PE2, the video became multiple minutes of tortured souls screaming into the darkness, and then the outro
I still remember that rat transformation scene straight up made me quit the game and haunted me as a kid, PE1 was one of the first few games I played on PSX and that scene looked so real at the time lol
That scene and twisted metal's clown car haunted kid me for a long, long time. I actually like PE1 tho.
You know the terminus to this path. Lesser known and overshadowed Square-Enix games will only lead you to SaGa, and then you will know true mechanical despair.
But if one perseveres, holding to noble ambitions, they shall be graced by the incandescent radiance of a scarlet sun.
That fandom identity commentary hits so much
-I like how Aya's Japanese voice actress in Third Birthday actually somehow sounds much LESS like a hentai doujin heroine compared to the English one. It's a really rare and bizarre case.-
her eng voice is Yvonne Stahovski who was also Miranda in Mass Effect 2
@@ZerosGameInn
Yeah, I know. Her Jap voice on the other hand is Maaya Sakamoto, which made me drop my jaw on the floor when I found out.
No wonder, her performance as Aya felt more believable and less submissive-fetish fueled compared to Yvonne. I guess Square Enix gave her more freedom when it came to the choice of emotions for the character because they knew how famous and respectable seiyuu she is in the industry.
Square Enix in general seems to give their Jap voice actors a lot more freedom compared to their English ones. I remember that Vanille's English VA in FFXIII was forced by the voice director to give her a really cutesy moe voice, while the Jap VA was allowed to voice the character in whatever way she liked.
@@ZerosGameInn So she is a hentai doujin protagnonist.
@@Samm815 no idea what that means
@@ZerosGameInn I don't believe you
What they did to Aya in the 3rd game was criminal
I didn’t even know they made a third game
Technically not Aya. It was clones
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271 The real Aya walks past Eve in ending. Aya either body jumped like Eve or regened a new body through mitochondria control.
the spoiler is that isn't Aya its her clone Eve from the 2nd game who was a girly girl college student so it makes sense she wouldn't be a tough tomboy like Aya.
That final twist and ending in 3rd Birthday, is so insane, so bizarre, and so deeply troubling to me as a writer, that I really struggle to imagine a mentally sane person could come up with it. It may just be the worst plot twist I've seen in any video game.
So basically, third birthday is the Other M of the series
Yes pretty much, I can't even figure out which is worse in that regard.
@@ShadowWolfRising The 3rd Birthday is WAY worse. Other M is bad, but 3rd Birthday literally destroys everything the previous games build up irreparably, only way you can continue Parasite Eve after that is straight up a hard reboot. Imagine if Other M actually forced the player to kill off Samus themselves, that's what The 3rd Birthday did
@@Nk3ATR damn, i liked it.
Both games had decent gameplay in terms of action, but in turn, excluded their roots of what they originally are in their respective genre.
@@Nk3ATR third birthday is nothing but Aya clones. The director of third birthday made sure to state it wasn't parasite Eve 3, it was just the third game
Playing The 3rd Birthday as a kid before even knowing it had 2 prequels prior is a completely different expirience, cuz by itself, The 3rd Birthday, storywise almost feels like it’s a one off
I’ll play devil’s advocate for the text dumps in PE1. Part of the appeal of the horror was the scientific sounding grounding to the events, and they serve to try to buoy the plausibility of them.
It… Doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but it is a cool idea and was probably a bit more convincing in the 90’s.
It was also more in line with the original novel writing style. It made a weird horror novel where you have pages dedicated to medical writing on the subject of cellular division or surgery. After all, Sena was a pharmacologist before he became a writer.
I love Parasite Eve. To the music, Yoko said that her compositions were experimental in PE. I love the soundtrack. Too bad that she doesn't do a lot of techno tracks like she done in the past. Since she became the lead composer for the Kingdom Heart series, shes been pretty much stuck with orchestrated soundtracks.
Also, always have two different armors when playing the first game. PE regeneration is slow if you use it too many times in battle. But when you switch your armor, you can regain PE regeneration at its normal rate.
The game is pretty difficult if you're not paying attention.
Yep, much like Michiru Yamane for Lament of Innocence, in isolating the compositions to instruments available in the 11th century mostly.
Harry Gregson Williams had a neat interview to that end when working on Kingdom of Heaven.
Also the jank exp chart that soft-capped you at level 38 unless you ground your ass off xD
41:55 I really appreciated you bringing this up. The fandom behavior thing is ultimately wasted effort because when the dust settles, an IP is the name a corporation gets to try and sell us again after artists have done their thing. Franchises really only have the weight we give them. I disagree with one point though. You saying these companies "will eventually ruin the thing you love". I feel that original work will always exist no matter how many bad sequels it gets. I don't care about the health of a brand so these corporations aren't hurting me, just their bottom line. Even if they piggyback off a work I like to do it. Good video overall though as per usual.
Yep, that “eventually” part was more fatalistic than late stage capitalism critique, but still interesting.
Conspicuous consumption is still with us as a relic of the Cold War, yet in our ever shrinking modern world (globalism/globalization) people make this zombie concept persist through fandoms.
My favorite running KBash joke is definitely "tic tac toe" games on people's forehead.
Okay, so I've never played 3rd Birthday. I played PE2 first when my mom bought it on a whim when I was like 12, and beat it at least ten times. I knew _everything_ about that game. (You can beat the slider puzzle in three moves.) I played PE1 as an adult, which was a fantastic game from start to finish and blew my mind.
I've watched several videos on 3rd Birthday. I knew it was bad. I did not know it was a direct insult. Now I know why it's not just disliked as a disappointment, it's overtly reviled as a deliberate slap in the face.
If Aya actually acted like Aya, then those costumes wouldn't be saucy fanservice, they would be comedy. The clothing degradation would go from "oh no my clothes are falling apart uwu" to *_"I don't need pants to kill you."_*
Parasite eve is one of my favorite games of all time.I still have revisit it to do the extra content with all those floors.I dread the sewer level tho.
yeah, ive never truely "beaten" the game, i get too the last part and have no idea what im doing.
Even though I know that needle isn't real I still get squimish at the injection scene
That closing statement about corps not being your friends and how they will inevitably let you down, not only hits so hard but is a message more people need to internalize.
I myself am coming to the terms that I need to stop making excuses for nintendo. Thier games shaped so much of who I am today, but they don't actually care about me or any of thier other Fandom, and we as fans need to stop buying the bullshit everytime they fuckup or do something fucked up.
It really bothers me that Nintendo wears this mask of being the family friendly nostalgic company of your childhood and in reality they're one of the most anti-consumer companies out there.
41:55 Damn, KBash just dropping a gigantic unilateral truth bomb at the end of a review of a niche series
I know, that hurt so much 😢
I know there's no Parasite Eve 3, but suppose some creepy guy somewhere wrote a fanfiction sequel where he constantly strips Aya of half naked, dresses her in sexy outfits, has her constantly sensually moaning, and dumbed down her mentality to that of an amnesiac child, making the twist that she isn't actually Aya, but Eve a literal child that swapped bodies into an adult, then proceed to marry her to a grown man (Kyle) in the games ending, and said grown man reveals he knows it's Eve in Ayas body by flashing the 2 engagement rings like it's some kind of Flex, (one for Eve and one for Aya) somehow does not make the context of all the creepy shit in the game better..
It makes things definitively worse
ALOT WORSE!!
That's not a flex Kyle, that's a crime
Third birthday still isn't parasite eve 3 so at least there's that
While i’m getting sick and tired of remakes, I couldn’t think of a game more deserving than PE1! Imagine seeing Aya in New York on current hardware, it would be so awesome! ❤️
Consider the setting of the game Yakuza like a Dragon and it could totally work. That game even had a full on RPG style combat system.
SE would 100% screw it up.
Okay NOW the bunny ears make sense for the final game!
Who would've thought that the discount Hojo from 3rd Birthday was a bad guy.
What a twisted twist
The music in the first game was incredible.
The music for both Parasite Eve games were incredible.
The opening to PE1 is still beautiful and disturbing to this day, the FMV was impressive for the time(this is 1998 PS1 horror and RPG games we're talking about). I legitimately said "Oh shit!" when Melissa then turned Mitochondria Eve showed up at the opera in this review; and Aya was such a badass, since Parasite Eve was titled as "The Cinematic RPG". Arise Within You will always be one of my favorite battle themes in any RPG. Parasite Eve 2 was okay, but we could definitely see the character designer giving up with Nomura taking his place when getting to the Burner boss fight. But in the beginning of PE2, an innocent woman getting transformed into a grotesque monster known as ANMC still haunts me to this day. Quite the squick in body horror, I know. Then there's The 3rd Birthday; it was so mediocre that the franchise remained dormant from there. 3rd Birthday is where Parasite Eve went through 'Kingdom Hearts syndrome', because time travel in Square Enix IPs, except it didn't work here unlike NEO TWEWY. And no, Symbiogenesis isn't an NFT oriented PE spinoff.
Just imagine how Hideo Kojima could write a fourth Parasite Eve game. It would be absolutely bonkers!
I would pay money for a Parasite Eve by Hideo Kojima.
I am glad that youtube recommended your channel to me
Damn you and I Finished A Video Game are releasing Parasite Eve retrospectives around the same time. Gonna be interesting to see their approaches on talking about the franchise.
You glossed over Motomu Toriyama's involvement in the story for 3rd Birthday. The plot and treatment of Aya(and Eve) makes a lot more sense when you realize it's the partial brain child of the waifumaster himself.
And immediately demonstrates the problem of designing a waifu before a decent character, especially when you realize what creepy taste some developers have the moment they can work on a girl character.
Toriyama really needs someone to share his directorial and writing duties. Everytime they've let the man handle it solo we all suffer for it.
Wow, Third Birthday must've been erased from my memory. Completely forgot it existed 'til now.
Believe it or not that is the right thing to do.
Lucky you.
HELL YEA Parasite Eve! I would love to see a video on Legacy Of Kain!
Really love Parasite Eve 2 now but as a kid I hated it, took me like five attempts just to get to the second No.9 boss.
The turning point was stopping trying to play it like Resident Evil and seeing it more as some DnD hybrid thing - it's all about positioning yourself correctly and taking pride in clearing an area, like you're some kind of magic rentokil agent. The multiple storylines are pretty good as well.
Would y'all accept a reboot of the series but kojima putting his weird hands on it
I feel like Kojima would naturally be the one to handle a series this bananas.
Yes? It probably would be better than it ever was.
"Aya is running around almost completely naked because she breathes through her skin. Also Mitochondria for some reason"
I’d take a reboot but no not from Kojima
If I had to choose between Kojima or Motomu Toriyama..........yeah, I'd take Kojima.
Kojima might do some cracked out ideas with it, maybe creating a Squad/Army of Mitochondria Soldiers and base building.
I remember the lead-up to 3rd Birthday's release. They hyped 38 year old Aya Brea up as their oldest female character, and said they wanted to 'explore the lifestyle of an older woman.'
Except there is no 'lifestyle' because the plot floors the apocalypse pedal the whole time, and she's an immortal 25 year old bikini model with the mind of a 3 year old teenager. And the game wants you to salivate over her.
They don't even do anything interesting with the time travel element, because everyone you try to 'save' is a shaggy dog story. The game could've been interesting if you unlocked different plot routes depending on which characters you managed to rescue, and witnessed the knock-on effects -- but no, they're just ceremonially sacrificed to give you a totally unscientific power-up.
Man, 2010s Action Girl Humiliation was such an embarrassing genre shift. Lara, Samus, and most of all Aya deserved better.
I spent an entire high school summer running PE2 and Vagrant Story countless times maxing out everything. Fond memories.
TWO ENTRIES , I REFUSE THAT 3rd BIRTHDAY is the sequel to the series. NEVER
Parasite Eve 1 and 2 are fantastic games that should be fondly remembered and I highly recommend both
I love this duology!
Ok now that's just mean 😂😂😂
Parasite Eve set a very high bar for zombie-like mutant gore that neither Resident Evil or Deadspace were ever able to meet.
I saw Einhander referenced. The day is getting closer to its own video.
41:54 - man, I relate to this so much. Don't think there's been a single series that hasn't at some point let me down, and I don't feel like being major fan of any franchise or company where there will be a shitty or cynical product added at some point. Tenchu is the series that went downhill and left a real bitter taste in my mouth.
AHHH 😫
My Heart man! Tenchu, it still stings at what they did to my Boy!
New Kbash video and new Tekken trailers? Today is def a good day.
Also can you explain mitochondria to me? I don't think I've heard it enough
“The mitochondria is the powe-“
You and IFAV both putting out a Parasite Eve megavideo in the same week was legit a dream come true.
I really enjoyed seeing how yall both discussed the content and... controversy in your own ways.
Fun fact on PE1; the primary reason it came to exist at all was for it to be a tech demo for the engine that would be used to develop Final Fantasy 8. Hence it's short completion time and experimental gameplay.
I hate that they didn't consult the original author. He better have at least gotten royalties.
I would say that Parasite Eve is a good candidate for this era of horror remakes, but then I remember Square Enix would have to make it...
i love your videos and humor so much kbash, so glad you covered these games.
Good job on the video, I felt like they had good ideas with this series but never knew what direction to go with it.
Well no, it's worse than that. Good ideas and 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee, good ideas bad execution equals every bad piece of art ever. Parasite Eve 1 had good ideas, great music, great art direction, and great characterization. They HAD a direction and just kept going in different directions with every sequel.
Hot take, but 2's story sucks because it's just a bunch of cliches overlapping each other and Aya is super out of character.
Holy shit I was literally hoping you'd do a vid on Parasite Eve while I was jamming to the police theme from PE 1 and doing the dishes.
Jo, my father is currently watching this video, he dosnt understand a single word you are saying, but he is a loooooooooong time Fan of this franchise.
Hope he never finds out that I do speak English or I have to translate a ton of you videos
Damn this series had a ton of potential. Thank you for the review it's given me a lot of inspiration for creative works.
I’ve never clicked on a vid so fast. Parasite eve 1 and 2 are great I’ve sunk so many hours in them. 3rd birthday is kind of meh though.
i was so excited for the third birthday when i was a kid i got it after i got out of the hospital as a present and well yea imagine how that felt.
While I don’t so much think the 3rd Birthday is a good game (especially its completely unengaging narrative outside the twist), the idea that of the game not being true to its series’ nature is misleading.
It’s funny, because Parasite Eve as a franchise has always had a sense of deception in its marketing. Like “mature sexual themes” as a key part of the ESRB rating. It’s front and center when you see the rating, causing the mind to come to inappropriate places, especially for the teenage mind. The people who see the sexualized imagery in the ads, are they wrong to think that will be the standard expectations? Instead of a disturbing plot about genetically modified sperm and impregnating unwilling victims like Melissa?
And “could only come from the minds behind Final Fantasy VII”? That’s not only a dubious concept designed to drum up sales for a game about as close to VII as Vagrant Story is to FF Tactics, but it’s also lowest common denominator what with pretending that VII was revolutionary in any way beyond getting people to FINALLY notice the quality of Final Fantasy...
The staff behind Parasite Eve were veterans, and claiming that VII was their crowning achievement is selling their talent short. As for II, so many odd design decisions (much as you mentioned) that aside from the bonus unlockables, it really does a lot derivatively overall, causing debatably the worst identity crisis in the franchise. Especially the ambient music; ugh.
To me, the only question is which is duller? The environments or the music? That’s worthy of debate for sure.
The 3rd Birthday is too a product of its time, and just meh in so many ways, that its plot isn’t worth defending, even from a mechanical point of view. I was more “huh” upon the ending’s revelation, and yet, like a lot of classic misdirection moments in the history of media, is it truly right to dismiss it as “bad” rather than “different”?
The terms are used interchangeably often, and really shouldn’t be.
I still don't get the dislike that PE2 gets. I definitely played it when I was older (got REALLY lucky finding for sale after being donated) so there's not really any nostalgia bias here.
Sure it doesn't have the PURE ATMOSPHERE that 1 has. But it does its own thing in ways I really like. I'll also admit to being kind of awestruck by the final section of the game.
One negative though is that BOY is the hidden stuff hidden as FUCK! You can beat a secret boss and still not get the powerful reward from it because it's REALLY not obvious or all that visible.
Oh this is going to be painful. My first parasite eve game was The Third Birthday. I was just a teenager, had no idea what it was about, but an apocalypse of monsters sounded cool. It was honestly really fun (minus the absolutely creepy ending), but I never knew how much of a Butchered Legacy it left. Looking at the older games, I can't help but feel that while I personally enjoyed 3rd, it's such a step in a misdirection.
Can't wait to watch the video though, love your content.
Here to drop a bomb for PE1 *spoilers*: After level 37 it only takes about 4000 exp to level up anytime after that. You can level up from 37 To 99 in a couple good hours farming mobs in the museum. Have fun destroying EX game and the Chrysler Building :3
You know, it's kinda funny how a series that started with the premise of cells are basically filled with literal magic, and that's the bit that of the series that remained grounded as it descended further into madness. Really glad I never played the third game. Let's me keep the memories of enjoying 1 and 2 without the bad oftertaste.
I play pe2 (an actual copy no less) at least once a year and due to how things are unlocked in new game+ I dont think ive ever played it the same way twice, which is one of the many things I enjoy about it, my biggest pet peeve would be that the new game + is easier than the main game and I dont mean in a you start with better stuff way, the enemies are actually weaker in new game+, upgrading pe costs less exp, etc...its like gee thanks for making it easy now that I start the game with an AR lol.
I became obsessed with the second one, replaying it to the point where I was pretty much speedrunning it.
I don't really mind Square's Japanese "not really role-playing" games in any way shape or form but games like Vagrant Story and Front Mission 2 are the real gems.
Whether you love or hate Sony, it's probably because of how many unique and interesting franchises they've turned into household names. I kinda miss those early Playstation days, where Sony would pretty much sign anything and countless amazing releases flew completely under the radar.
1 and 2 are absolute legends.
You left out the fact that after you kill Aya, they make Kyle marry Eve/Aya! And he KNOWS THEY BOTH KNOW. God 3rd birthday was disgustingly bad lol. Christ.
15:24 has to be the best out of context clip from Parasite
still have yet to play any of these but the 1st game at least looks great
great video dude
Honestly I just hope we get a sequel or remake based on FF7R’s gameplay. Maybe headhunt a Capcom dev for a third to get some of the horror vibes thrown in.
I remember how popular almost naked Aya was in the 3rd birthday. The 2 people I know that played it also enjoyed it.
The 3rd Birthday was my first introduction to Parasite Eve. I did had my fun. I thought it was all cool that it pushed the limits of the PSP at the time.
I was entertained until I got to later half of the game. Defeating the final boss with the power of friendship was funny. Those bizarre plot twists. That memorable silly awful ending. For me, it was like I was in a roller coaster that went up and went straight down for an hour.
It’s unfortunate how this game pushed me away from trying the other two games. At the time, it made me think Aya Brea was not a cool character.
Besides just seeing your reaction to the 3rd Birthday 😂 The whole video made me reconsider giving Parasite Eve another chance. I am grateful you gave some insight about the series and the importance about Aya Brea as a character. Also I do appreciate that it gave a bit understanding who wrote the stories for this series. (I did not know that 3rd Birthday story was written by some guy who worked on other anime)
Thanks for being entertaining as always. You deserve a rest Kbash.
I hope the mitochondria doesn't demonetize this, it's so good
I have played 3rd Birthday 7 times just to try to figure out the plot.
I didn't understand it until you explained it here.
For anyone wondering, *that's* how poorly-told and convoluted that plot is.
Thanks though, Kbash.
Big help
I played 3rd birthday before I knew what parasite eve even was and I played the entire thing and I cant remember much of the story so I must not have payed much attention to it lol but I remember really enjoying the gameplay
Parasite Eve 1&2 are both great. PE1 has a very scientific story that I love and it has some good charm. PE1 is kind of like a Bullet Hell RPG. PE2 has this RE3 vibe, but with RPG elements. PE2 is kind of like what if Jill or Claire had some super powers. And I like the puzzles in PE2. I hate the Fandom is split between PE 1&2 when they're both good in their own way.
I agree. The haters of PE2 need to stfu already
PE was really good, the FMV were amazing for the ti,e, the opera sequence for my 10 year old brain made me love the horror genre, the music, the creature design, and Aya was my first VG crush. A remake will hopefully be made one day.
A friend got me into the first game a couple years ago, and it really saddened me that by the time we both went through the game together I knew by then that this was arguably the only one either of us would care to play. Thankfully the narrative does wrap itself up nicely so you can treat PE1 like a one-off. But I do sometimes wonder what an alternate timeline would have looked like if they stuck to their guns and decided to keep the originals gameplay + style for a sequel. If anyone knows a game that even has the same combat style as PE1 I'd be down with a cursory look into it - as broken as it got with the magic system.
Well, there's Vagrant Story.
@@Biouke I might check that out then and thanks!
More recently, Resonance of Fate/End of Eternity (US/PAL respectively) doesn't use the wire frames, but it _is_ a sort of 'time-stop turn-based shooter RPG' that expands on the encounter design and gun customization, but skimps on environmental design.
It also makes plot armor an actual game mechanic lmao So you can either fly through the air shooting double uzis like the Matrix, or hide behind cover and take potshots.
@@Densoro I'll check that one out too, thanks for bringing it up!
@@Densoro Oh I forgot this one, excellent game ! :D
As someone who's first exposure to this franchise was playing the 3rd Birthday and kinda liking it while not even knowing it was part of a greater franchise until years later, I'm excited to hear the history of this series despite what I know about how 3rd Birthday was recieved.
I really like the wireframe combat system's look and feel. They were jank as ps1 titles, but could seriously compete if they ever got a shot at modern systems.
I hope we get to see a Parasite Eve 3 one day.
And conceptually, there's just so much you can do with 'real-time combat, but time stops when you make your attack.' Games like Fallout and Transistor use it to laughably noclip the action economy, but if it's tuned correctly, it can give you this feeling of vulnerability and self-awareness.
Like imagine seeing polar bear teeth closing around your head, and pulling the trigger _just in time._
probably Wont happen due to a dispute between the books author and square
Honestly I find PE2's controls harder to grasp when you do have a Resident Evil background. The auto aim is sluggish and requires pre-emptive target switching to be effective, while RE's is more contextual and allows for manual adjustment if your character locks on to the wrong target in the hyper specific scenario where it may be a problem.
Yakuza Like a Dragon had a full on RPG combat system with the character running around a modern city. Get the crew of that game to do a Parasite Eve remake but specifically get a writer or lead designer like Junji Ito who won't shy away from making you have nightmares with the body horror. Next thing you know you have a RPG in a modern city with body horror. Don't want it to be an RPG? There are other crews out there. But the fact remains that if someone could body slam Square Enix hard enough to get Parasite Eve a remake could not only happen but be absolutely amazing.
not with its license problem with the books author it wont.
Ah, yes. I was just thinking about this game, recently. The climax scene of the first game still stands out in my memories.
PE1 and PE2 are not as polished as RE games or even Final fantasy but they are so fun and for science geek like myself i love the lore. The pre rendered backgrounds are always nice to see and the combat system is very unique. And the soundtrack is top tier.
I actually love Parasite eve 2 as well as 1. Never played Third Birthday tho.
Wait, hold up - What is mitochondria? And what is its relationship to the cell?
Naoshi Mizuta gave a really bad first impression with Parasite Eve II. Go and listen to his songs from Final Fantasy XI,XIII-2,XIV,XV Episode Prompto and Stranger of Paradise and i'm surprised he didn't get fired after PE2...but tbh i don't know what you have to do to get fired from Square Enix.
His work in PE2 is actually pretty great, which is why they trusted him to go on to other projects.
I was like....8 or something when PE1 and PE2 came out and remember learning about mitochondria and spontaneuous combustion freaking me out
I’ve never heard someone complain about PE 2 and then the praise 3rd birthday as fun. That has got to be the most baffling thing I’ve ever heard
Tbh, could be an unpopular opinion but I feel the story ended after the first PE, i enjoyed it much more than PE2 and never played 3rd birthday, both of the sequels just felt like spin-offs or alternate realities set for the main character. Mainly because they ditched all the characters to give you new ones you never see almost ever, nor are they ever brought up in the story as if they never existed.
All in all i still enjoy doing play throughs of PE the character movement might be a bit on the slow side when moving from screen to screen but was still good in it's own unique way, while the other 2 just tried to be something the original never wanted to be.
this.. and also Ayas original model should have been left alone ..her long hair design was always the best.
@@scuff4094 True, I also enjoyed they somewhat fleshed out side characters if you went back to talk to them from time to time. Like Torres refused to fire guns because of a gun accident with his "now" deceased daughter, Baker and his K9 partner Sheva who protected Daniels kid Ben. When eve hit the police station until she (Sheva) finally succumbed to the parasite cells, and Baker having to shoot his long time partner.
The other games almost barely gave a reason to care about anyone in the game but Aya. Not to mention least in PE2 you didn't see any forboding enemies. Example - Going to the 9th floor to the sperm sample at the hospital in PE, if your in the dark hallway, run towards the camera, and it switches to show a window. Running up to the window it cuts to outside the window showing a building having an isolated thunderstorm, with lightning constantly striking the roof.
Seeing that you get a sense that something else is going on in the background while your chasing down eve. Had PE stayed with the original story and combat system i feel we would have seen a lot better games from the series, and much better received.
God damn it, I had _just_ gotten that BMTH song out of my head
3rd Birthday's not called Parasite Eve for a reason.
finally, someone who had an idea
I love parasite Eve, and I cry every time I remember that.
That joke at 3:17 was too on spot for that scene.
One thing I would love is a remake , Parasite Eve but with FF7 Remake combat , it would be so good.
The other games are meh , I liked the 3rd game but it got boring , confusing and just plainly bulletspongy , I've been stuck in the same stage for 3 hours and after I beat it i just got stuck again.
'I'msupportingkbashbecauseIwantedtomakethispartofthevideolonger' What a madlad 😂
When I first discovered Parasite Eve. I had a rude thought, "does the writer just picked the the most recognizable term in biology?"
...it's based on a sci-fi book which is pretty damn good. So no. What's with these brain dead takes?
@@jplayer073 wow, such hostility from fellow fans. Is it brain dead to make poke fun at things you love or attack someone for making fun of it?
Fun fact: the Japanese word for integrity is sessou (節操).
The More You Know 🌈 ⭐️
I'm one of those weirdos that LOVES PE2. It has so many weird systems and cool little secrets. I got a gunblade one time I beat the game, lol. I think PE1 is the game to play if you want to sample the series, but I will always have a place in my...er, Playstation console for PE2.
Nothing weird about it, PE2 trumps the first game on many levels. It's people that don't get it that are weird.
The general consensus is that 3rd Birthday Doesn't exist and if it was lost forever no one would give a shit.
PE 2 is is the only I played it and like it but never beat it.
funny names for funny final part good review my guy
in pe3, aya is not physically on the field. just hopping around in ppls minds. yet her clothes get ripped....