I must have written a dozen drafts for this review. It's good and I like it but I don't LOVE it. The game has a lot of excellent qualities of which I'll get to in just a bit. There are also a lot of frustrating gameplay elements, some which were admittedly mitigated through the use of an emulator. I used save states for things like instant death or hard bosses because the cutscenes are unskippable and it's a pain to sit through them again and again. Fast forward also helped. It's of course to be expected, it's a product of its time but it is nonetheless frustrating.

Ask anyone on the street and they'll tell you that Parasite Eve is Square Enix's unholy love child of an RPG mixed with Resident Evil. To be honest, the game has nothing to do with Resident Evil save for the horror theme. Just throw that idea out the window. Ammo is plentiful, there are no zombies, the puzzles are serviceable at best. Parasite Eve shines in a lot of other departments.

The story is loosely based on the book by the same name written by Hideaki Sena. The game kinda serves as the book's sequel but Sena had no involvement in the story of the game.
We play as Aya Brea, a NYPD cop with a mysterious past. While attending the opera, Aya witnesses a cast member transform into a monster called Eve. The monster burns the entire crowd to a crisp and Aya pursues Eve into the sewers. Eve eventually escapes and we spend the bulk of the game pursuing Eve.
The story as is, is surprisingly entertaining. Believe me, without spoiling the plot, the story definitely goes places. It can get pretty bizarre and wacky and it's something that you'll have to experience for yourself.

The graphics are great even for today thanks to the use of detailed pre-rendered backgrounds and Square's staple CG cutscenes. I especially love the aforementioned backgrounds. I've always loved this technique because it allows developers to cram much needed fine details into the background. Traversing the world feels like traversing a painting at times and Parasite Eve's version of New York City is no exception. For example, your main base of operations is the police station and it looks like its design is based from cop shows from the 90's like NYPD Blue. The desks are littered with folders and papers, there are phones and dimly lit computer monitors on each desk. It is fantastically designed.

The game has a fantastic eerie and atmospheric soundtrack courtesy of Yoko Shimomura, one of the greatest composers the game industry has and will ever see. The soundtrack and the game's story complement each other beautifully. There's something alien and foreboding about all the tracks and the music really enhances the body horror imagery.

As for the gameplay, I feel that that's the part that can be frustrating at times. I love the overall aesthetics of the game but the gameplay can be kinda hit or miss. Especially when we're talking about combat.

Right off the bat, I like the overworld sections best. You traverse through certain parts of NYC like Central Park, the Natural History Museum and the police station. There are multiple and varied areas in the game. For the most part they don't really overstay their welcome. There are some frustrating parts though. It is not always clear what is interactable in the environment and what is not. Certain crucial key items are hidden in obscure places and these items are necessary for you to progress.
Some areas can get confusing to navigate and the game as a whole would have benefitted from a map system of some sort.

The game uses Final Fantasy's well known ATB-system where you can perform an action once a bar has been completely filled over a certain amount of time. The difference between Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy is that in Parasite Eve, you can move around during battles, potentially dodging enemy attacks. But it doesn't always work. Arenas are cramped, limiting your freedom to move and some attacks from some enemies seem impossible to dodge. This gets extra frustrating late in the game when enemies can annoy you endlessly with adverse status effects like poison, stun and mirroring the controls.

You'll primarily fight with guns: handguns, SMG's, rifles etc. You can use items to patch yourself up and there's a sort of 'magic' system where Aya can use her mitochondria powers to heal or buff herself. There are a few offensive powers but for a JRPG especially they're rather scare, only two. Nonetheless they are rather powerful but the biggest downsize is that they'll drain most of not all of your MP. The result of this is that combat isn't all that varied. There are no enemy weaknesses and almost every battle boils down to shooting your enemies to hell and back. Honestly if this game was any longer I would complain more about this but Parasite Eve is rather short for a JRPG, around ten hours long. For me personally, this isn't a bad thing. I love JRPG'S but the sad thing is that I don't have a lot of time anymore to spend it on these games.

I recommend playing it if you like JRPG's and body horror. Even in this day and age, Parasite Eve has a lot to offer. It has an entertaining story with a great cast of characters, an incredible soundtrack and the overall look and feel is still incredible

It's a game that accomplishes most of what it's trying to do but it never reaches its full potential. The gameplay has its annoyances, admittedly they are products of their time. But if you stick with it and learn to work with the game's quirks, I'm sure you'll have a good time.

A pretty absurd but entertaining story combined with solid RPG/combat mechanics (dodging attacks on the field + recharge meter attacks), and an amazing soundtrack. It's a somewhat overlooked game that deserves a lot more attention, and it's not too long so it doesn't overstay its welcome at all. Boss fights at the end can get a bit challenging, but the game is for the most part quite fair and remains engaging all the way through. One of my favorite oldie games.

Also, the mitochrondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

I'm going to preface this review with a complaint: Any game that finishes on a four phase bossfight and follows that up with a multi-faceted escape sequence that can end in a game over if you move slightly too slowly through its intended sequence deserves a strongly worded letter and discerned frowny face. Parasite Eve, here is your frowny face :(.

Parasite Eve was one of those games that I had been greatly interested in but had long escaped me because I didn't grow up with or embrace the Playstation ecosystem until the PS4 came out so I could jump on the FF7R bandwagon. This means I lost out on a lot of the mid to late 1990's classics and favorites from developers in their golden ages, in this case that was Square Soft and the nearly endless hits it seemed to release. Parasite Eve, a JRPG horror game with much of its development DNA being rooted in Final Fantasy was an immediate piqued interest to me. I knew absolutely nothing about the gameplay going into it, zero as to what the story was about, and again very little about runtime. What I got out of finally playing the 1998 classic was a quick and easy b-movie with a simple (yet enjoyably so) gameplay loop.

Taking place over six days, Parasite Eve's story revolves around a parasitic growth named Eve who is hellbent on creating and perpetrating the reign of the "Ultimate Lifeform." Unfortunately this story does not involve Shadow the Hedgehog's origin story. What begins as an NYPD cop named Aya Brea going on a date to the opera quickly morphs into a race against the clock to save Manhattan, and in turn the world. Aya begins her investigation immediately after the entire opera house is morphed into gloop by the demonic Eve on stage. Collaborating with the lead detective in her NYPD precinct, the military, and a Japanese scientist she embarks on a desperate mission to understand the mystery of Eve's origin and goals so that peace can be restored. I appreciate the limited scope of the story, as I mentioned previously this title only takes place in the one borough in New York, allowing for the story to move at a hastened yet measured pace. There's no moment where you think you should be in a zone longer than you are, and you don't miss out on anything by only hitting a few of the marquis locations within Manhattan. In your investigation you'll visit the zoo, the Museum of Natural History, the Statue of Liberty, and the Chrysler Building should you choose. I've said it before, and as a fan of Metal Gear Rising I'll say it again, games that pace themselves well are a dime a dozen and it's a severely underrated way to craft a solid game.

Gameplay in Parasite Eve is fairly basic, with combat utilizing a classic Final Fantasy ATB system where you can choose to either use special PE powers or simply shoot your gun at the opponent. The PE powers cover all the bases like healing yourself, giving Brea a shield or speed buff, and eventually moves that do devastatingly large amounts of damage to the opposition. These moves are strong and bolster your survival arsenal quick a bit, but need to be built up over time in battle. I liked this balance, forcing you as the player to dish out damage in the random encounters and boss fights while you're PE gauge built up and you could add some survivability into your kit. Because the game stayed at a lower level of difficulty throughout, I never felt like the system of running around in a fight to build up my gauge felt unfair or busy. World encounters (which are random to an extent) are often remedied through simply gunfights, but the bosses will require more planning and usage of the paranormal.

Weapons in Parasite Eve are limited in diversity but do give you an interesting way to complete the game. There's a few categories of guns you get: Pistols, rifles, machine guns, shotguns (I think,) and grenade launchers. Each come with their boons like how rifles have a longer range and machine guns have a higher rate of fire, but also have their cons that seem to balance them out. Rifles with that range have a lower rate of fire and maybe a smaller clip size, whereas machine guns dish out more shots but do less damage per shot and aren't as effective from further away. This leads to a chief complaint I had with PE, and that's how customizing rate of fire on your weapon felt rather... pointless? This is because the more shots you get in your "turn" to attack, the less damage each shot does. I remember upgrading one of my weapons to have seven shots per turn, only to find out I was doing twelve damage per shot. I was mystified and thought I'd reached some random difficulty spike, but I soon discovered that my error lied in trying to do more damage per turn. Though there is some reasoning you could give to have more shots per turn, I felt like the ability to blast through the opposition as quickly as possible with fewer, high damage blasts felt a lot better.

Playing PS1 era games nearly thirty years after they've come out is often a crapshoot because of how far visual fidelity has come. Even within the genre, think about how expansive the differences in Final Fantasy VII and its Remake title are. Even though Parasite Eve shows its age on the polygonal front, the FMV cutscenes that it hangs its laurels upon are to this day still pretty impressive. Many horror games from the 1990's simply don't "feel" scary because they can't impart an actual element of visual horror on the player, but Parasite Eve goes to an incredible extent to make the disgusting transformations, deaths, and general grime of its cinematics feel visceral. Multiple times through my playthrough I made an exhausted uneasy face at what I was seeing, coupled with impressive soundtracking work to make the moment feel eerie. Square since time immemorial has known how to do work in the CGI space and its vindicating to go back and see how great they've always succeeded in that space. Nearing conclusion, I felt like I played a grotesque version of Final Fantasy VIII.

I do want to shoutout the legendary Yoko Shimomura here for her OST. For a game this short, it's filled with certified BOPS and BANGERS that make each area and moment feel distinct right from the opening crawl all the way to the end credits. It may be an interesting take for a lot people to hear but I think this is her best work yet, even in a career that includes Kingdom Hearts, FFXV, Live A Live, and Super Mario RPG.

Before I close, one thing that nearly ruined this game for me is that I named my protagonist "Gherkin." I don't like pickles... as a matter of fact I hate them but for whatever reason when the chance came to name my protagonist I thought of a sloppy, large, green gherkin. I couldn't stop laughing any time her name came on screen, and anytime I told my buddies I was going to go "Gherk" it erupted myself into cacophonous laughter. I guess my lesson here is that most players should probably keep their first name as "Aya" or go with something less abrasive. It reminds me of when I named my Tidus "Chad" in FFX and completely forgot his name wasn't Chad for months after I played.

Parasite Eve is a quick and fun JRPG experience that should not be missed if anyone still has a Playstation 1 around. I recommend this game to anyone with a knack for the golden age of JRPG's or the older Resident Evil title.

"..I know you want to continue living... After all, you were just born. But.. I want to live too ! Like all other human beings !"

Square, I tip my hat to you.
Making FF VII was already a success but to follow with Parasite Eve a mix between Resident Evil and Final Fantasy.
It’s truly like a dream for me. ( RE is like my favorite video game license in terms of number of games i have play and the overall quality time i spend on most of them, and FF is something that I have always wanted to play as a child but unfortunately never got the chance. )

Although I started it late, I could smell the nostalgia from the gameplay. The CGI cinematic, the background, the camera angle and the instrumental/opera music.
This game made me a child again for the entire length of my playthrough.

Also Aya Brea made a straight jump in my top favorite female protagonist, with her unmatched charisma and epicness. With her combo of blue jeans, white shirt and black jacket, she has one of the coolest designs in video games for me.

While Mitochondria was a familiar term for me, I believe that I learn more in those 10 hours than in my entire year of highschool. Because this game is full of passion and I was blown away by how interesting the events are told and adapted to a video game.

Nonetheless, man, this game was hard.
In my opinion, nothing beats the good old fashion game where you had to think strategically, and learn from your mistakes.
I died a lot of times, but I had a really good time.
Isn’t that the essence of a video game ?

I traded Naruto Clash of Ninja 3 for this game years ago at a Con and never played it until now. An always loved trope of mine is JRPGs in modern settings. I loved the premise, though dumb as hell if you analyze it hard enough, it was enough to keep me going until the end. What really stood out to me was the amount of animations within just standard dialogue. For a PS1 game, I didn't expect that much detail.


The battle system was pretty fun once I got the hang of it. Though, it felt limited because of how few of the guns differentiate themselves. My biggest complaint would have to go to the gun customization. It's maddening that it's treated as a one use item with no chance to think about what to use it for. The same could go for BP. I could use the BP to maximize damage on a gun, but then I could just use a tool to bring those BP over to the new gun, or I could take the passives on this gun and bring it over. It was very frustrating trying to plan out my upgrade path, especially on a blind play through because I didn't know when I would find "my" gun.

I think for me from a historical standpoint it's really cool what was done here, but can't see myself going back to this game ever. I hope that the second game rectifies some of these complaints and continues on with an otherwise intriguing story along with even more intriguing gameplay.

At its core, Parasite Eve is experimental, and mostly, proves itself to be one of the most unique entries in Square’s gigantic gaming catalog. Like its famously recognizable siblings in the Final Fantasy franchise, Parasite Eve is another game which defined Square’s tenure as both developers and as a company in making ambitiously cinematic experiences for the PS1 generation. Interestingly, this is a detail that’s advertised more bluntly with the game compared to any of the FF games released at the time, being dubbed by Square as a “cinematic RPG”. But it makes sense because Parasite Eve is clearly a game with a closer focus on fellow underrated Square protagonist, Aya Brea, trying to investigate a mysterious threat which has deeper ties to her own history. The presentation is very cut and dry, there’s almost a grungy Hollywood twist to it, with the story it’s telling and how they built the gameplay around it for players to invest themselves in the horror going on.

The hybridization between the traditional JRPG mechanics Square is renowned for and the survivor horror gameplay that was trendy at the time lends itself towards an interesting experience that’s baked very well. It manages to almost never overstay its own welcome by having a refreshingly limited playtime, solid pacing, and engaging combat which cribs from many turn-based JRPG mechanics together with survival horror design tropes to create what I could only describe is a less refined prototype of FFVII Remake’s combat. If there is one gripe I have with this idea is that the item management and loot system isn’t executed as well as you’d hope. In trying to adhere to survival horror gameplay, there’s naturally supposed to be a scarcity of the resources you can gain throughout the game. You fight enemies primarily with guns, given the more realistic backdrop setting we’re in, and so you have to be careful with the ammo you find to make every shot count. It really pushes you to think just a bit more strategically on the way you customize your equipment and what you’re hoarding (there’s an inventory limit) in order to get the upper-hand in a life-or-death situation. But here’s where trying to also adhere to JRPG mechanics leaves this gameplay concept muddled. You should feel you’re ultimately still a bit helpless and unsure of your absolute protection, encouraging you to get better and smarter while horrific enemies can just randomly appear to fight you. However, in what I assume is a compromise between two different gameplay styles, the game makes every random encounter usually give you way more ammo than you thought you’d ever need. This doesn’t happen right away but as you continue playing, and as you continue to fight more enemies and find hidden loot, you piled enough ammo that you can probably never worry about lucking out hard in the last few days. Also, the game has a tendency to force useless items into your already limited inventory that doesn’t benefit you and becomes annoying because you can’t always get rid of them right away.

Yoko Shimomura’s soundtrack is a stark difference from her career defining work in Kingdom Hearts, and I mean in a wonderful way. It doesn’t quite maintain this in the latter half but her musical stylings were necessary in creating one of the most engrossingly atmospheric settings to be found in the PS1. There’s a stroke of genius in adopting the iconic fixed isometric backgrounds from the PS1 Final Fantasy titles, taking advantage of how visually eerie they already are, and working it through the dark urbanized city setting to really make you feel claustrophobic and unaware of what might happen. It’s worth mentioning that the cinematics in this “cinematic RPG” are still outstanding, even going beyond the purely technical level. There’s a lot of well-done body horror sequences which ironically the dated look of it only adds to make it feel unsettling, and Square still took advantage of making them feel like a big theatrical blockbuster for the PS1. While it feels very grounded in its approach, it does shed away that perfectly chilling atmosphere when the stakes continue to be raised and the plot becomes a bit dumb. It doesn’t ruin the experience, I still enjoy the silly b-movie horror stuff that happens, but the last stretch weakens it enough to prevent me from completely loving it. The level design becomes obtuse to navigate through (the entire Museum section is a very poor example for this), and the last few bosses can be very frustrating if you haven’t built enough endurance or patience to die multiple times while figuring out how to beat them. Even then, it almost becomes a lengthy battle of attrition in running around and spamming Haste/Barrier/Heal if the PE meter fills quickly enough. I have a great suspicion the post-game dungeon to get the second true ending isn’t really worth it for similar reasons so I might save it for another time.

Putting aside my gripes, Parasite Eve is still an all-around banger. I only wish Squeenix would go back to this game and try to bring it back from the ground up, it’s very easy to do the full FFVII Remake treatment here, honestly. There’s a lot of really solid groundwork built here to make it a mainstay franchise today even if it means sidestepping the awkward situation with the sequels which I guess killed this series by making it into just a worse Resident Evil clone.

Parasite Eve innovated a few things that haven't really been replicated in modern RPGs. I love the idea of a short, cinematic RPG. What it lacks in length it makes up for with its great pacing and fun battle system. The writing is a really fun mix of paranormal and psuedoscience and plays out like a great episode of the X-Files. The music is also incredible. Even though it's short there's a really cool New Game Plus mode that includes a huge bonus dungeon. I'd like to see more RPGs like this that just have a simple, 4-5 hour story that's full of memorable scenes and moments with very little fluff and a fun mechanics.

This would be 5 stars but I'm knocking it for its bullshit finale. You move abruptly into the point of no return with absolutely no warning and I could see someone who's unfamiliar with this game getting themselves into an unwinnable position for the final battle. After that final battle you're put into an instakill chase sequence which would require trial and error for anyone not looking at a guide or map. Oh and after you get caught you have to do the final battle all over again. In particular I found myself getting caught on the last hallway despite moving in the right direction at the right time. If you're emulating this will be less of an issue, but it's executed so poorly that often times when I replay the game I just stop at that point.

"The mitochondria is taking over the nucleus!"

If I had a dime for every time someone in this game said mitochondria.

Parasite Eve is an obviously dated but nevertheless very fun time. I can see why fans have clamored for this series to return in some form. There's a lot of great things about it. I think the story is fun, the characters are a bit over the top but also fun, the RPG mechanics are interesting, the soundtrack is great. The cutscenes are pretty top notch as far as PS1 games go. I found the focus on inventory management interesting and how it levels up as you do.

However, a few things hold this back from a higher rating. Movement speed is a little too slow for my taste, especially when the camera angle far away and you're crossing a room. It's not tank controls like Resident Evil, but even those games had sprint buttons so that would've been appreciated here. Some of the systems in the game I felt weren't really explained very well. I thought the trading cards were all but useless until they weren't. The menus are a little clunky but work fine enough. I couldn't have imagined playing this without a guide, but that goes for a lot of games from this time. Also, there were times were this was pretty challenging for me, but that's more of a me problem.

This definitely deserves a remake or follow-up of some sort. Imagining this with more modern game design sounds like a real treat.

10 year old me playing Parasite Eve: This is the most high IQ game ever! I can't wait until I'm old enough to understand all the scientific exposition! 10/10!
23 year old me playing Parasite Eve: Did I really just watch an FMV of a horse running across an entire city while on fire and read 1000 nonsense info dumps about mitochondria? This is the dumbest fucking game ever made. 10/10!

This is the only action RPG/survival horror/puzzle game/quiz game/rougelike/cinematic game where the player can brave through a sperm bank dungeon to save New York with guns they traded for playing cards. I wish there were multiple endings but the final act is so perfect it doesn't need them. The perfect Christmas game.

Parasite Eve is a survival horror cinematic RPG based from a book by Hideaki Sena of the same name. Genre lines have been getting blurrier as the game industry has grown, and Parasite Eve certainly is an early culprit as it is easier to associate it with Capcom's popular franchise Resident Evil then with the Final Fantasy styled titles that Squaresoft were more known for at the time.

The story is a simple premise, yet unique. The protagonist Aya Brea is a rookie cop for the NYPD who unwittingly gets involved in a battle of evolution between humanity and a separate organism in everybody's cells known as mitochondria. Humans have been living in symbiosis with them for all this time, but Mitochondrion Eve has declared war, breaking this necessary truce.

No war would be concluded without epic battles to be waged, while perhaps there is nothing quite of that scale, the fights in Parasite Eve are at least engaging and tactical if lacking somewhat in the drama department. All the battles during the game are in real time and always in the same location on the map you are running through, unfortunately predictable while exploring. During battle Aya becomes confined to the location on the screen to duke it out, and sometimes these areas are very small leading to some frustration in dodging enemy attacks as there is literally no where to run.

To attack Aya uses guns of which she will get a large variety of as the game moves on, starting with a handgun but soon gaining access to machine guns, rifles and even grenade launchers, all of which can be customized at the NYPD's gun shop or later in the field using tools to swap stats from weapon to weapon or even her body armor. Before she can fire a bullet however, Aya has to wait for her ATB (active time bar) to fill up; when this is full she can perform an action.

Sci-fi horror is however nearly always too predictable and Parasite Eve falls right in line with that by giving Aya powers of the surreal sort. Like in the battle for real life, evolution of a species does not always go one way; those best suited to their environment merely survive the harsh challenge of the world. Eve is not the only Mitochondria to have evolved; Aya's have also upgraded themselves with the passing of time helping to give her powers by a burst of generated energy. These surreal abilities range from healing to attack and stat boost, acting essentially as magic spells that once again depend on the inevitable arrival of a full atb bar. Overall it is a fun system.

The lack of a map on certain later points in the game left nothing but puzzlement and frustration at needlessly running around looking for the objective area, the museum being the unfortunate level design I am referring to. The final boss sequence has a point of no return and is surprisingly hard in comparison with the rest of the game which almost resulted in an impassable wall through my experience. Yet the most devastating blow to the game however spawns right at the end of the title with an unnecessary and highly cheap chase scene in which Aya gets the chance to meet her maker if the creature so much as brushes against her, forcing the player to fight all of the last boss forms again, and possibly again with so much as a wrong turn.

Parasite Eve does one thing especially well and that is ooze style. The graphics, music and designs are excellent but the fmv's are what really show the theme of the cinematic RPG. Also, shout out to The amazing OST in this game. It uses a mixture of synth and classical instruments to create a creepy horror vibe but also fast paced and exciting when needed.

Overall the bar Square set for themselves was high and this is obvious in production values and an excellent material source, and while succeeding on many levels in creating a unique and thought provoking experience some minor game and level design flaws unfortunately get in the way of making this a run away experience, however what they did make was a very good game that any RPG or horror enthusiast should at least try.

+ Fantastic atmosphere.
+ Great story idea.
+ Fantastic OST.
+ Combat is fun.

- Final section can be frustrating.

RPGs and Horror Games are my favourite genres and Vagrant Story might just be my favourite game that I played last year. Parasite Eve is a blend of all 3 and to no surprise, I enjoyed every second of it.

Everything about this game slaps. The story is really enjoyable in the same way a B-horror movie is and once I learned to just not take the biological jargon about the mitochondria and sperm too seriously, I had a blast with it. I quite like the characters too, Aya is a badass and a lot of the dialogue feels really natural and compelling, especially the exchanges early on between Baker, Daniel and Aya. The game also bolsters a really cool aesthetic and a lot of CGI cutscenes, with my favourites being the scenes of the animals mutating since they feel like they're ripped straight out of a John Carpenter film.

I also really like the gameplay. The combat is a bit similar to Vagrant Story only with way less menu management and an emphasis on dodging attacks and minimizing an enemies' damage after learning their attack radius was pretty satisfying (even if some attacks feel impossible to dodge). You can also take apart weapons in order to give other weapons a variety of perks so old weapons mostly have a use and experimenting with different setups and abilities was quite enjoyable. The game also has RE style exploration and I enjoy it here more than I usually would since instead of exploring one huge area for the majority of the game, Parasite Eve instead has you exploring a variety of much smaller areas and I personally much prefer this approach.

I don't really have any big flaws with the game. I guess the ending is a little lacklustre, the instant kill parts can be annoying, the game isn't very scary at all and the sewer area is pretty frustrating not just in the way the area is designed, but also due to the bat enemies that constantly blind you. For me though, the problems mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

The game is a very short (for an RPG) and tight package that felt like it was tailor-made for my tastes and it instantly clicked with me in a way that very few games do. It might be a little early to say this, but I think this is one of my favourite games of all time

Parasite Eve left a mark on me back in the day. It was the first video game I played that felt genuinely disgusting. The first game I played that unnerved and maybe even frightened me. I remember going through the opera house and connecting sewer over and over again, returning to the start of the game and never daring to venture further into the body horror that waited just beyond the first boss. That little taste felt more special knowing I was putting off something much worse, but as I got older and started watching things like Tetsuo (and building an appreciation for body horror that grows to this day), my memories of Parasite Eve started to feel quaint...

Now that I've actually sat down and put the time in to see the game through I can say that no, Parasite Eve is still pretty gross! But it's gross in the best possible way.

The graphics absolutely hold up, both in-game and during FMVs. I feel this is usually the case for games using pre-rendered backgrounds, though Square certainly got a lot out of the FFVIII engine when it came to character models. Eve feels fairly grounded, but when transitioning to FMVs its art style really shines. It's exaggerated, yet it has some grit and grime to it. Watching a rat turn itself inside-out shouldn't hold up as well as it does here, this was done during the formative years of 3D game graphics after all. But it does!

Thankfully this extends to the gameplay as well. Parasite Eve is an odd mix of survival horror and JRPG, with battles playing out within a set radius from the initial encounter. Aya Brea is a cop and attacks primarily with guns, but a wide and varied bestiary continually challenges players to rethink their strategies. I found combat to be consistently engaging from start to finish, something I can't actually say about other Square games of this era. Although my enjoyment did end just short of digging into Parasite Eva's optional dungeon, which seems tailor made for sadists who enjoy a good grind. Thankfully dungeons push the player along at an enjoyable pace, with none of them overstaying their welcome or feeling too brief.

The story is terrific as well. I'd like to avoid spoiling it for anyone who isn't already familiar, but the gist is that "rogue mitochondria" are triggering horrible mutations in New York City whenever they're not causing people to outright combust. Aya and the titular Eve share a strange connection with these goings on that is not made immediately clear, leaving it up to the play and Aya to unravel the mystery. The game does a great job of evoking a police procedural vibe, noir, and horror when appropriate. Nothing feels out of place here, it hits every beat just right.

Parasite Eve is ridiculous. It's violent, disgusting, thoughtful and mysterious. It's a shame Square didn't take more chances like this, and an even greater shame that its two sequels didn't quite live up to the quality of the original. It may be a bit harder to come by a copy now, but anyone who enjoys RPGs of the Playstation variety really ought to give it a shot. In any case, I'm glad I finally came back to it after all these years.

the aesthetic, atmosphere, style and cutscenes are almost unmatched by most games. this is a game that just cannot be replicated today the ost is out of this world. i cannot get enough of what they made here & i havent even beaten it i grew up watching my brother play it

i think we all dream about becoming a director for a video game on this website. well i think about that alot too, as for this games case i would absolutely love to make this Adult rated, as not many game are being made in this fashion anymore (triple A that is) and this rating would at least get some people intrigued. i cant imagine a parasite eve remake without the outright nudity, strange sexuality and creative gore, it wouldnt be the same infact id argue it would be a disservice to the original material

a classic with flaws.
i remember it like yesterday, seeing this game played by my neighbour and instantly wanting to play it too. one of the main aspects for this being a female main protagonist (which, surprise, is not even close to rare these days anymore, but when i was around 6-7 years old, this seemed like a huge deal to me.)

this game has an absolutely amazing story that you instantly get into. you basically have no other choice than that, the opening to this game being basically watching an opera as the whole frickin place gets burned and hundreds of people die.
the game is a little strange to get into, it is basically an action rpg with survival horror elements that sometimes get WAY too scary. im talking about the warehouse for example. if you do not have enough heals or are not careful enough how you spend your PE (parasite energy) you are basically fucked. and this goes for a lot of places in this game. its far from forgiving and every move you make should be calculated - is this worth shooting now? should i heal? try to charge my energy?

it can be really frustrating but what i like is that it never seems unfair to me.
the choices i make in battle are mine in the end.

the games music is absolutely fantastic and just goes to show how much of a classic parasite eve is when, after more than 10 years, the opening sequence is still burnt into your memory, same goes for the battle theme.

overall, this game has its regular ps1 flaws but is still a nice game to play these days and i honestly do not want it getting touched anymore, seeing what kind of remakes and remasters came out already.

A lesbian rookie cop story that includes ungodly horrors terrorizing New York City during Christmas 1998.




The soundtrack is also Yoko Shimomura's best work (imo)

Parasite Eve was a unique JRPG that came as a complete surprise to me. I typically avoid JRPGs (mostly because I am horrible at them) but I was instantly hooked with PE. The gameplay and setting felt like a mix of Final Fantasy and Resident Evil but with a really unique combat system that was a lot of and gave a real sense of control that I feel other JRPGs often lack. The game had a great soundtrack too. This was a really special experience. Highly recommended for fans of JRPGs, or people wanting something a bit different.

Near unmatched style and presentation for a PS1 title. Parasite Eve boasts a stupid, out-there, and self-serious B-movie tier story paired with an insanely good OST. Combat is surprisingly fun, short, simple, and easy for the time, which makes exploration less of a chore than most JRPGs that came out around this time. If I had any gripes about this game it's the limited inventory space and sometimes confusing intractability.

Basically, Mitochondria Eve makes me feel hot.