Soukaigi (Playstation)

 So, for years, I've just ignored this game for a number of reasons. It's a Japan-only Square-published game that takes up three discs. So I always just drew the logical conclusion that it must be a language-dependant RPG that would be totally impenetrable. But I saw it a couple of weeks ago in a compilation video of JP-only Playstation games, and it turns out to be a 3D beat em up! The reason it's on three discs is because there are a lot of very long, fully voice-acted cutscenes! (Luckily, they are all skippable, though).

 

Another interesting point is that it was developed by Yuke's, who are mainly famous for their many, many wrestling games, even more surprising when this game appears to have a plot inspired by the likes of X/1999, with a mystical apocalypse occuring in modern (well, nineties) Japan. (Though they did also make Eretzvaju/Evil Zone around this time, too, a fighting game that parodied/homaged various anime genres that were contemporaneously popular, so it's not toally unheard of for them.)

 

It's a very ambitious game in general, with huge stages that you can mostly roam around at your leisure. You can't just run past the enemies straight to the exit, though, as there's a meter to be filled before you can. It's on the righthand side of the screen and it fills up a tiny bit every time you kill an enemy or smash one of the red crystals that are floating about the stages. Once it's full, you can head to the exit for the next cutscene and a boss fight. It seems like a strange limitation at first, but I think it is an interesting attempt at making you actually fight enemies in a 3D beat em up, without forcing you to stay in one place with invisible walls or whatever, which would look a lot stranger in 3D than it does in 2D entries in the genre.

 

It's very difficult, though. The controls take a little getting used to, at first, and some things continue to feel strange, like how useless the jumps are, and how dashing straight forward is done with the square button, while quickstepping in any other direction is done by double-tapping that direction. And, of course, Resident Evil-style swivel controls in a fast-paced action game are not particularly welcome. 

 

It's here where I have to make an admission, too: though I played the game for a good few hours, I just couldn't get past the third boss fight. I'm sure there's some secret tactic I must be missing there, because it feels impossible. Having said that, though, the first two bosses were pretty difficult too, and in a very old fashioned way: they're all about learning the boss' attack pattern, how to properly react to it, and then doing that and getting your hits in until the boss is dead. It just feels like the bosses have a lot more HP than they really needed to, making the fights cross the line from tight challenge into arduous slog.

 

The game's big draw is its aesthetic, of course, with stages taking place in empty towns at sunset, beaches at night, and so on, all enhanced with a little extra mystical onmyouji-esque seasoning. The first stage's background music even has chanting! I'd say it's worth giving a play just for how great it looks and sounds alone, and if you've got the skill and/or patience to get further into it than I did, I hope you post lots of screenshots of the later stages somewhere!