Parasite Eve – On The Sixth Day of Parasites, My True Love Gave To Me…

 

When would you say the golden age for Squaresoft was? Some might say it was the Super Nintendo era, when Final Fantasy really came into its own, and when the Seiken Densetsu series was put on the map with the excellent Secret of Mana, as well as the pretty good follow-up Seiken Densetsu 3, now known as Trials of Mana. The era also saw such interesting games as Super Mario RPG, Bahamut Lagoon, Rudra no Hihou, Live a Live and a humble little title known as Chrono Trigger. Granted, many of these weren’t released outside of Japan, but they can still be enjoyed by all thanks to the efforts of fans who translated them.

Some might say it was the PlayStation era, when Final Fantasy VII made the RPG genre mainstream and introduced the world to Cloud Strife. The era continued with Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, Final Fantasy VIII, Saga Frontier and more, and eventually culminated in the Summer of Adventure, when Squaresoft released several games over the course of a few short months including Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, Threads of Fate, Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy IX.

Why can’t it be both? The company basically released ten years of amazing games and didn’t even stop with the Summer of Adventure. The PlayStation 2 came in like a lion with the release of Final Fantasy X, and Kingdom Hearts continued that trend a year later. The only thing I can think of that almost killed the company in this time was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and that was only because it was so expensive to make.

In fact, because Squaresoft’s efforts to make amazing games likely inspired other companies to do the same, one could argue that this golden era of the RPG continued well into the PlayStation 2 generation and lasted even beyond that, what with games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey being released on the Xbox 360, as well as a number of decent titles appearing on the DS and PSP.

One of the biggest indications that you’re living in a golden age of something is that companies are willing to take chances on smaller, more niche sounding titles. It’s hard to believe now, but Chrono Trigger was at one point considered a niche game that Square was taking a chance on, and now it’s considered one of, if not the greatest RPG ever.

When brainstorming ideas for Final Fantasy VII, the company came up with many elements that influenced other titles. Early villain Edea from Final Fantasy VIII was originally created for Final Fantasy VII, and an early version of Xenogears was pitched as well. The game might also at one point have become a detective story set in New York City following a police officer attempting to track down the game’s villain. This is the idea that eventually became Parasite Eve.

Parasite Eve was living proof that no idea was bad. A good piece of advice to follow: if your idea doesn’t work for one story, set it aside and save it for something else, or develop it to be its own thing. It likely might’ve been very strange, after six games of exploring a fantasy world in an effort to defeat great evil, to suddenly be confined to New York City in a Final Fantasy game. The idea definitely worked better in a game with a smaller scope like Parasite Eve. Final Fantasy typically ran from thirty to fifty hours per game, and Parasite Eve confined its narrative to six days in December, with a total run time of maybe ten to fifteen hours, and that’s being generous. Over the Christmas holiday this year, I played the game “in real time” so to speak (playing each day on the actual date, so day one on December 24, and so on), and in total, I spent about ten hours and fifty eight minutes according to the in game clock. Well, I probably spent a little bit longer than that, but I’ll get into that later.

Also, it should be noted that if they did develop their detective story into a full Final Fantasy game, it might have ended up working similar to what we did get in Final Fantasy VII. Cloud and company spent several hours in Midgar, then wandered the world for most of the rest of the game’s run time. We probably wouldn’t have been confined to New York City, and likely would’ve ended up venturing out into the world to try to catch the game’s villain. Square definitely took chances during this period of their history, but I don’t think they would’ve wanted to deviate too much from the winning Final Fantasy formula at that point in time.

So instead, Parasite Eve was born. As the sequel to a Japanese novel that most people in the west likely didn’t read, myself included, the game did a good job of making sure you don’t need to, since late on Christmas Day, a Japanese scientist arrived in New York City to fill the detectives in on what happened in Japan and that it could be happening again.

Parasite Eve was an odd duck, in my opinion. At the end of Day One, Aya’s partner showed up and punched a reporter who was asking her questions about what happened inside the concert hall. It’s funny how we used to look at examples of police brutality like this as moments of comedy but 2020 has changed the context entirely.

It’s sort of like how there was an episode of Numb3rs where one of the FBI agents called out to a fleeing suspect, “Stop or I’ll shot you in the back!” So the suspect crumpled to the ground and begged not to be shot. “I’m not gonna shoot you,” the agent responded. “I just didn’t feel like running today.” Hilarious, right? …not anymore.

Anyway, Day One of Parasite Eve seemingly adopted a pro-cop, anti-media stance like most pro-police propaganda over the years (no, really: from Blue Bloods to Law & Order and even Sue Thomas F.B.Eye, you can find episodes where various forms of so-called left wing media were demonized for no real reason), but then day two introduced the rest of the game’s supporting police cast, and included an officer who supplied your weapons but who also lectured you about gun control and why the police are part of the problem. So… was this game right wing police propaganda or left wing anti-gun propaganda? I think the answer was that the game was a JRPG, so was written by someone who didn’t soak themselves in a bath of American politics in their every waking moment. Plus, even if they did, the country was less divided in the mid to late 1990s than it is now. Nowadays, even the idea of wearing a mask to protect the health of yourself and those around you and slow the spread of a deadly virus in order to not overwhelm the hospitals… even that has become a political issue.

And yet, even though the game was written by someone in Japan, Parasite Eve had an air of American exceptionalism to it. In fact, I’d say it was pretty similar to Independence Day in that regard, a movie which happened to release just two years prior to Parasite Eve. Who did the aliens mainly attack on screen? The United States. Who flew in to save the day? The United States. In fact, the movie was centered around the July 4th holiday known in the United States as Independence Day, hence the title. It deliberately invoked an American symbol of liberty and of their own exceptionalism in order to sell the movie. It was basically a fight for the fate of all humanity framed as a statement that America’ll save all of you.

Parasite Eve took place over the Christmas holiday, but deliberately invoked several elements of its New York setting which have become American symbols in their own right. The majority of the second day took place in Central Park, which itself was the setting for a lot of iconic pieces of Americana. And not only did the Statue of Liberty appear as the very first thing you saw in the opening cinematic, seemingly crying tears of ice due to the weather, Day Five saw the statue toppled over by Eve as a symbol of the impending doom of humanity. The fallen Statue of Liberty in media such as Parasite Eve has always been a powerful symbol of the idea that even the so-called “most powerful nation in the world” could still disappear someday. It was arguably the most powerful when it was seen toppled over on a beach at the end of Planet of the Apes, and we the audience realized that the entire movie actually took place on Earth. Since then, having the Statue fall was a good indication that something huge was going to happen. It was a symbol that humanity did fall in Planet of the Apes, and it was a symbol that humanity was about to fall in Parasite Eve, and the only person standing in her way was an American police officer.

So after all that rambling, was the game itself any good? I’d say so. The game was a hybrid between menu-based and action RPGs that seemed to mostly work for the PlayStation.

There’s a certain expectation with action-based RPGs that you can reasonably navigate the area and dodge enemy attacks. While that wasn’t always the case (for example, there were some areas of the sewers on Day Five that were rather narrow and had a perspective that was oddly placed, and thus it was hard to dodge the sonic screams of a bat), Aya was able to dodge attacks if they were telegraphed well enough and had a generous enough window to be able to dodge. Sometimes she did require Haste and sometimes enemies were a bit too unfairly fast to dodge, but typically, Aya was able to hold onto most of her HP in battle.

There’s a certain expectation with menu-based RPGs that, unless action stops when you’re selecting your moves, the pace of battle isn’t so frantic that you feel too overwhelmed as you go. Final Fantasy IV was the very first game Squaresoft released with battles that progressed in real time while actions were being selected in the menu, although they understood this would be too much for some and allowed an option for the passage of time to be turned off completely during menu selection. Parasite Eve turned time off automatically when Aya took her turn, but time resumed flowing after she used an item or her Parasite Energy. Time also resumed when she started firing her gun, which meant it was possible that her physical attacks could be delayed by enemy attacks. One snake biting her before she could finish her turn would quickly lead to all of the other snakes biting her and she would lose a lot of health before she could kill even one of them. If she were poisoned, her health would drop steadily from there and she’d need healing, which would eat up more turns. This meant that players needed to pay attention to their enemies and time their attacks, they couldn’t just attack and hope for the best. Even as far back as in Secret of Mana, players couldn’t just attack carelessly. After one swing of the sword, the main character was done and had to recharge, so to speak.

Another thing that occasionally annoyed, and this would come up in most aspects of the game, was that everything controlled with the left analog stick unless that function was turned off on the controller, in which case everything controlled with the D-pad instead. This doesn’t sound bad? Okay, imagine trying to rename Aya using an overly sensitive analog stick, or move her in a 3-D environment using a D-pad. I get that this was unavoidable since some players might’ve purchased an original model PlayStation and those came with a version of the controller that didn’t have analog sticks. This was exactly why Final Fantasy VII controlled as horribly as it did (except in menus, its menus were amazing). It was released with the original controller in mind, but the revised controller was out by the time Parasite Eve was being developed. I don’t see why they couldn’t have made it so that having Analog mode on would only affect controlling Aya, but I guess they didn’t know how, or they didn’t realize how frustrating menus would get as a result. Maybe they were expecting people would toggle it on and off as needed. Or maybe this was the step needed to inform modern game design, since now developers know to reserve the D-pad for menu control and the left analog stick for moving the character.

I’m not going to mention the speed at which Aya moved, since it didn’t bother me and I never actually noticed it. She moved about as fast as she needed to, I guess. The only part of the game that I wished she could’ve been faster was at the very, very end. You see, after defeating the final boss of the game on Day 6, the boss started chasing her down and trying to kill her anyway, despite being defeated. Like, how is that fair? Suddenly, Aya had to run through the ship she was on, trying to get away from the defeated boss that was chasing her. The player was meant to do something in the engine room, but if they didn’t realize this, the creature would overtake her in the final screen and kill her without mercy. That would be game over and the player would have to redo the four stage final boss all over again unless they took the time to save afterwards… except why would you stop and save with a creature chasing you? Instead, players had to set the ship to explode in the engine room and then make their way out and somehow the alarms ringing or maybe the heat being generated or something like that would stun the creature and slow it down and Aya would actually be able to escape as the creature was blown to bits. Yeah, this part killed me over and over again until I finally managed to remember what I was expected to do.

Come to think of it, the PlayStation was full of these really obtuse, unexpected final boss mechanics. Defeat the final boss, then play an ocarina or you die. Use elements in a specific order during the final battle or you get the bad ending. And so on. Why couldn’t a final boss have just been a final boss?

Your mileage may vary when it comes to the game’s inventory management. Something which I’m glad is mostly absent from games now is having a hard limit on a player’s inventory. Aside from the hack and slash genre (think of games like Diablo and Torchlight, Path of Exile and Titan Quest) and the MMO genre (Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft), inventories are basically nearly infinite. In reality, they’re merely large enough that players don’t actually notice if they’re running out of room, or are only as large as the game’s total item count. The moment Square realized that they had enough space on their cartridge to let players hold 99 of everything (Final Fantasy V) was a game changer, and similar to when Enix realized that having a bag to carry stuff in wouldn’t ruin the balance of Dragon Quest. Parasite Eve tried to go for a more realistic approach, I guess, by not having Aya be able to carry a lot of stuff around at first. In fact, by the end of the game, she still wouldn’t be able to carry a lot of stuff around, even if all of the bonus points she gained upon leveling up were pumped into her item carrying capacity. Enemies constantly dropped healing items and junk, necessitating either copious amounts of back-tracking in order to store it all at the precinct, or throwing most of what you didn’t want away, since Aya also needed to have weapons and armour in her inventory, as well as any keys she might temporarily need for navigation.

Throughout all of this gameplay, an excellent soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura was playing, one which I don’t feel like I’m knowledgeable enough to really appreciate beyond thinking, “Wow, this music is amazing.” I’m beginning to think that a piano is her trademark, since it factors into a lot of the main themes she composes. She also knew when silence was the best for a scene. This game was such a joy to listen to.

It was also such a joy to play. I enjoyed it immensely, which is good because I was worried that I was looking upon my memories of my first playthrough over a decade ago through rose coloured glasses and that it would somehow turn out to be kind of awful. Like when you think back on those cartoons you used to like as a child, only to find out that they were actually rather ridiculous and you think to yourself, “I can’t believe I used to watch Alvin & the Chipmunks. What was I thinking?” There were a few aspects of the game, detailed above, that may give you pause but for the most part, Parasite Eve was a worthy addition to the Squaresoft catalog. It was also successful enough to spawn an immediate sequel a couple years later, and then eventually a third game on the PSP, although neither game would go on to be rated as highly as this one.

Parasite Eve, despite a few missteps, should be considered a classic of the golden age of the RPG. At the very least, it’s a classic of Square’s own golden age and a worthy title in any gamer’s library.