This is a game a close friend of mine has talked to me about on several occasions as a game she remembered being just awful to control and a rough experience all around. Therefore, when I saw a copy at Book Off for the low low price of 500 yen, I knew I had to jump at the chance to play through it with her at some point x3. She watched me play through it over the course of two Twitch streams. I played the Japanese version on real hardware on my PS2 (it just wouldn’t work at ALL on the PS3), and it took me about 6.5 hours in total with the best ending.

Now a cursory glance at the English title would give the very reasonable impression that this is based on the film of the same name, but this game actually beat the film to release by a good few months. There are enough narrative differences outside what could be considered gameplay convenience to the point that I believe it’s simply based on the same source material from the VHD books, rather than being an adaptation that happened to beat the movie to launch (which does genuinely happen from time to time). The story is all about our titular vampire hunter, D, and his post-apocalyptic quest to save the daughter of a wealthy man from the vampire lord who kidnapped her. Being a classic-style Resident Evil clone, this game doesn’t exactly have an incredible story, but it’s pretty good and fun and campy for what it is. It doesn’t quite hit the levels of campy fun that the original RE did, but it’s not too far away, and manages to be a nice adaptation of the source material at any rate~.

The gameplay, as mentioned, is very much a survival horror game in the making of the original PS1 RE games, with tank controls, fixed camera angles, and resource management. There are, however, some important differences though that makes this a lot more palatable than the classic RE games to someone like me who doesn’t get on too well with those. For starters, this game cuts a lot of the fat in terms of puzzle solving or player inconvenience. While there are indeed items to collect, rooms to explore, and puzzles to solves in the giant Mirelurk Castle, where to go next is always signposted very well, and I was never stuck on where to go next (only using a guide to reference how to get the best ending). You also have no limit on your inventory, so you need not mess around with inventory boxes and such, and you even have the ability to save anywhere even more generously than in Ocarina of Time! Just save where you are, and when you reload, you’ll be put right back at the start of the room you left off at. It’s a really well put together experience for someone like me who doesn’t really get on with survival horror games that well.

All that said, there are some other things that don’t exactly add good things to the overall experience. You don’t really have different weapons like you do in RE games. D just has his sword that he can melee monsters with. You have a limited amount of consumable items you can find and use, but I almost never used any of them as most enemies can and should just be run past, as there’s no benefit to fighting them. I ended up burning through literally all of my consumables against the final boss, but that was more down to poor preparation and conservation of healing items on my part than anything. The bosses are relatively well designed, or at least as well as they can be for a game that controls like this one does. There is a bit of a weird focus on the melee combat though, with the ability to strafe and backstep by the use of a lock-on to your enemies. It’s almost never REALLY needed, save for against the harder bosses, and the weird focus on melee combat is easily the most awkward part of this game’s design.

Touching back on my friend’s comments about the controls, I don’t think it really controls any better or worse than other tank control horror games of the era, though this game DOES have some amount of platforming in it, as our boy D can jump! Upon first starting the game, this was something I was understandably quite worried about, as platforming is 1000% NOT what RE games needed to make them more fun, but I was pleasantly surprised at how its implemented in this game. While it is indeed nice to have the option to not just run past but also leap over enemies to avoid them, there are very few genuine platforming puzzles in this game, and the ones that are here are super forgiving even if they aren’t super easy. This is another case where I’m not sure the addition of this mechanic to the formula exactly makes the game better, per se, but I also wouldn’t say it really makes it meaningfully worse either.

The presentation of the game is very budget 1999 PS1 flair in many ways. It’s hardly the nicest looking PS1 game for the time, but I also wouldn’t call it ugly either. The VA is well done and fun, and character models in particular have that old low-polygon charm that so many games from that era still have. Mirelurk Castle is hardly the Spencer Mansion when it comes to how distinctive it looks, and the soundtrack isn’t exactly particularly memorable either, but on all counts the presentation is very solidly adequate either way.

Verdict: Recommended. If you’re someone who really likes PS1 survival horror games, you’ll likely enjoy your time with this pretty well, but if you aren’t into the genre, this isn’t really one to track down (or more likely emulate, given how hideously expensive the English version is these days). While this certainly wouldn’t’ve been blowing anyone’s socks off in 1999 compared to the RE games of the period, I think the hate this game got upon its release was totally unjustified. While perhaps not worth most folks’ time, it’s a perfectly fine game and a nice survival horror hidden gem of sorts on the PS1.

uma tentativa de algo diferente, esse jogo seria bem mais aproveitado caso fosse lançado para ps2, é evidente a tentativa de fazer um jogo de ação frenética.

o jogo tem uma construção de cenário muito boa, a ambientação também nem se fala.

mas em algumas questões o jogo pena demais..., talvez por ter sido feito por uma empresa pequena?, ou talvez por ter sido ambicioso demais para epoca?(1999), nunca saberemos.

a câmera chega a ser cansativa, travada e muda de ângulos toda hora, e sempre que muda de ângulo o jogo da uma travádinha para mudar o ângulo, o combate é simples e fácil de pegar(por mais travado que seja, muitos bosses são macetáveis).

o jogo irá lembrar muitos jogos, como devil may cry e até mesmo alguns souls likes, a inspiração que esse jogo teve de resident evil clássico é gritante também.