Category Archives: Beat Em Up
Seven Samurai 20XX Is The Quintessential 2000s Game
Giving It Another Chance – Dynasty Warriors 3
Nano Breaker Is The Worst 3D Beat Em Up Ever Made
Giving It Another Chance – Shadow Of Rome
Musashi Samurai Legend Review
Square-Enix seems to enjoy alienating their fans in regards to how they handle their IP’s, with games like Valkyrie Elysium and the 3rd Birthday both managing to upset long term fans of both series, it’s no surprise that Musashi Samurai Legend, the sequel to Brave Fencer Musashi would also upset a lot of people for the same reason. Now I feel that I need to address this first because I spent a lot of time criticizing Valkyrie Elysium for being a bad Valkyrie Profile game and for this reason, I can truly relate to fans of Brave Fencer Musashi who hated this entry. However I want to point out that there is a huge difference between Musashi Samurai Legend and Valkyrie Elysium and that is the fact that Square-Enix developed Musashi Samurai Legend in house and the game was made by the same guy who made Brave Fencer Musashi, Yoichi Yoshimoto. Valkyrie Elysium on the other hand was outsourced to a company named Soleil despite all of the previous entries of the franchise being developed by tri-Ace. With a completely different company working on a game, it’s expected that the experience will be completely different as each developer has their own approach to game design. With the same guy working on Musashi 2 however, it’s strange to see such a drastic redesign of a concept that people already loved.
On the surface, Musashi Samurai Legend appears to be a clone of Kingdom Hearts but that’s mainly due to its aesthetic style as opposed to the actual gameplay mechanics besides the ability to pick up green orbs to restore health which just happened to make a reappearance here. While the gameplay may appear comparable at first with them both revolving around real time action with a leveling system slapped onto it, they aren’t really all that similar in terms of mechanics. Musashi 2’s gameplay is peculiar to say the least. The controls for this game are truly puzzling as your main attack button, square performs a fixed combo while triangle just swings whatever secondary weapon you have equipped in a slow vertical swipe that is completely useless in battle but is mainly used to open up these circular prison things. You would think that they would utilize the triangle button for something more important like additional moves to mix up your combo or some sort of defensive mechanism but no, the triangle button is completely wasted on some arbitrary move. Thankfully, the game does utilize both L2 and triangle for special moves, giving it some purpose but why do we have to press both buttons to use them? These attacks in particular are connected to your secondary weapon and are used to gain access to certain locations or operate contraptions located in the world, though they can still be used in battle, to varying results. These attacks also consume MP so you won’t be using them too often, which means that you’ll spend most of your time pressing square.
Musashi’s katana can cut through metal
That’s not to say that Musashi Samurai Legend doesn’t have any technicalities of its own as contrary to what one may think, Musashi Samurai Legend does have some mechanical nuance thrown in to keep its combat interesting. The downside however is that the game doesn’t execute them in a way that brings about any real challenge and the awkward controls bring about messy inputs. For example, players can cancel the downtime of their basic 5 hit combo into other attacks such as a stab or a spin attack, unlike Dynasty Warriors however, you don’t cancel into moves with triangle, instead you have to input a command via the game’s analog stick. What this means is that to perform a spin attack you have to spin the analog stick around which can be tricky to pull off when in a pinch. This sort of input complexity could have easily been avoided had the developers allowed the use of triangle for cancel moves but sadly this isn’t the case. There is also a timed counter mechanic similar to Onimusha’s criticals that allows you to counter attacks when pressing the attack button just as you are about to be hit. Unlike Onimusha however, the timing for these attacks is extremely generous, making them so easy to pull off that it’s barely a challenge. These attacks are also not instant death moves either so you won’t get that same satisfaction that you would get in Onimusha but since the timing isn’t half as difficult, it makes sense that you won’t deal as much damage.
On top of this the game also features the ability steal system that first appeared in Brave Fencer Musashi but Musashi Samurai Legend does things a little differently as it functions closer to that of Castlevania Curse Of Darkness’ steal system or Swords Of Destiny’s sword time in the sense that you must lock on to an enemy, bait them into attacking you, then press the button at the right time to bring results. The same is true for the counter system as well but enemies that have moves will have a blue light inside the lock on cursor to indicate that there is something to be learned from them. It should also be noted that to do any of this you must fill up a focus gauge. I cannot understand the necessity for such a gauge but it exists and you need to be mindful of it should you wish to perform any of these maneuvers. Regardless the mechanic is at least interesting and is kind of what sets this game apart from other beat em ups out there. The issue with the combat system is simply the fact that it just does not work as well as you would expect as I spent most of my time cancelling the first combo strike into itself because if your attack is delayed for a second, you are able to strike again with minimal animation frame use which allows for more consistency in terms of damage dealing as the first hit of the combo is noticeably quicker than the last. With that in mind, most of the combat pretty much comes down to just pressing square with a few cancels via complex inputs. This is hardly ideal for a beat em up but the flexibility brought by the ability system does add some more utilities to make the combat a bit more interesting outside of just performing square combos. In a way though, the combat feels more comparable to the combat found in action platformers or action puzzle games along the lines of Legacy Of Kain and Zelda than it does a beat em up, which begs the question of is Musashi Samurai Legend really a beat em up?
You cannot steal moves or counter until the exclamation mark appears.
At its core, it pretty much is a beat em up as you’re mostly going to spend your time slashing enemies with your sword but there are a few puzzles and platforming bits here and there, though the same could be said for the Devil May Cry games, except those games generally have a more technical combat system than Musashi Samurai Legend. Some of Musashi’s abilities do play a part in puzzle solving and getting around the levels which does give them that additional utility but the game clearly doesn’t revolve around this aspect, which to me is a good thing because I’m not a huge fan of puzzles in videogames but this, combined with the lackluster combat mechanics makes the overall gameplay feel rather shallow. One might assume that the game has metroidvania elements with the addition of items and weapons that allow you to access new areas but I found those areas to be few and far between. Musashi 2’s levels are rather linear and tight with the odd side path to find treasure which is ideal for someone like me but isn’t what many people look for in a metroidvania. So the result of this is a beat em up with a messy combat system. Like I said before, Musashi 2 has a leveling system as well as the ability to buy items and equipment but so does Onimusha Dawn Of Dreams and if I was to compare the two, I’d say that Onimusha Dawn Of Dreams is the better game, granted Musashi does let you choose which stats to focus on when leveling up to allow for a bit more freedom but this does very little to make up for the game’s failings in the combat department.
Musashi Samurai Legend strikes me as a game that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be and feels like a mishmash of different genres despite leaning closest to that of being a beat em up. To make matters worse, the lock on, which doubles as the focus ability is very short in range and does not focus the camera. To focus the camera you have to press R3 which as I’ve mentioned before, isn’t ideal. I found myself rarely using the evasive moves for this reason as to use it, you need to be locked on but some enemies have long ranged attacks which you cannot evade from a distance. So much like in Chaos Legion, I spent most of my time jumping to avoid attacks as opposed to actually evading, almost as if I was playing a Napishtim engine YS game. The bosses of Musashi feel like they were ripped straight out of Zelda and function in the same way. They have patterns and a weakpoint to locate. Once you find that weak point, it’s just a case of rinse and repeat till you win. The latter section of the game does mitigate this a little as you fight mostly humanoid enemies but for the majority of the game, this is how many of the boss fights go down. I’m not a fan of this style of boss fight as it feels less about understanding the combat mechanics and more about trying to figure out how to actually deal damage. This once again begs the question of whether or not Musashi 2 is in fact a beat em up because it doesn’t feel like one at all. If anything, Musashi 2 is best described as being a Zelda game but with greater emphasis on combat than puzzle solving. At some point though, you have to draw the line as to what is and what isn’t a beat em up and Musashi 2 goes beyond that line I’d argue. Hopefully this paints a clear picture on the type of game Musashi 2 is.
Musashi 2’s story In a nutshell
The storyline is whimsical and silly throughout. There’s nothing really all that special about it but its quirkiness kept me mildly amused throughout so it did its job well enough. The plot is pretty much the same as The Bouncer, minus the bar and fist fighting of course. An evil corporation deploys ninjas to kill everyone and they steal the tits, you know the usual shit. So like every hero you gotta go and get em back. You’ve seen it all before, but you gotta love how tongue in cheek the game is about it all. Comfort food never tasted sweeter. You have the secret meetings where everybody sits atop a seemingly bottomless pit on an elevated chair to discuss evil matters, you know, like every videogame. On top of this you have a huge whale that just happens to embody a shopping mall that apparently every sane being in the universe lives in with giant robots, ninjas on motorcycles and jet powered surf boards you know, all the stuff every adolescent dreams about. On top of all this you have what is without a doubt the most dangerously based gameplay mechanic known to man, the ability to pick up women and use them as melee weapons. I kid you not this is a thing and you’ll be doing it a lot because apparently the women in this game are insufferably accident prone, either that or they’re just looking for an excuse to be carried by their samurai gigalo, which is arguably more likely given the fact that one of them just happens to be a powerful sword fighter, seriously Musashi even considers charging for this at one point, he be opening up an escort service one of these days I swear.
Musashi 2 brings the best out of Tetsuya Nomura’s art style by opting for cel-shaded character models as opposed to the more realistic looking characters that most of the games he works on tend to have. I think this is the best decision they could have possibly made because the characters look more-or-less the same as their artwork and this allows them to blend in perfectly with the vibrant, colourful levels you explore throughout. I think that Kingdom Hearts would have looked so much better had it opted for this art style choice. The death animations for enemies is also rather neat as they will split into pieces when you hit them with a killing blow and your choice of attack for the killing blow will alter how the enemies are split when defeated, which is a nice touch. The soundtrack has a good mix of intense and relaxing tracks. While not all of the tracks are great, the ones that are more than make up for the ones that aren’t. I’d say that the soundtrack is equally as impressive as the visuals with all things considered, it’s definitely one of the things that gives the game its appeal.
So as you can see, Musashi Samurai Legend doesn’t really have all that much going for on paper in the gameplay department and while it may seem like I’m trashing the game, I actually enjoyed playing through this game a lot. The thing is though, Musashi 2 is such a mess of a game that has a lot of potential to be good. Sadly though the game falls flat on its ass and this frustrates me to no end because I really want to express my adoration for this game but I just can’t, there’s no way I can defend a combat system that is this badly executed regardless of how interesting the mechanical nuances are as I’d just be lying to you. Musashi 2 is a mediocre game that shows promise but fails to deliver the goods, there’s just no getting around that fact. In a way though, the result of this leads it to feel like one of the most definitive 2000’s games out there. The 2000’s was a time of discovery and experimentation. Musashi Samurai Legend finds itself in the midst of all this and this is likely what lead to the game’s negative reception as it really did not stand out at the time but going back to it in the year 2023 has been a trip down memory lane.
Musashi Samurai Legend took me back to a time where I was innocent, a time where games brought excitement to my 12 year old mind, a time where the vast majority of games strived to be edgy and cool to cash in on the counter culture that was prevalent at the time. At the same time, Musashi Samurai Legend presents you with the familiar concept of dumping players into vibrant and colorful worlds to do stuff in, that are considerably more tighter in level design as opposed to the games you see today. Once again, the first Kingdom Hearts comes to mind here. The whole game feels like that raw nostalgic 2000’s experience in its purest form but with absolutely nothing else going for it. Whether you should play it or not ultimately depends on whether or not you enjoyed playing games in the 2000’s, I mean who didn’t? Let’s be honest, it was the best time to be a gamer, the golden age of gaming. How can you not love the 2000’s? There are better games out there but Musashi 2 does have some cool ideas and concepts that makes it worth trying at the very least, if you’re looking for some comfort food. For everyone else, you’re probably not going to care about this game much at all.
Story/Plot: Satisfactory
Visuals: Good
Gameplay: Mediocre
Music: Good
Lifespan: Quite Short
Difficulty: Easy
Would You Replay? Maybe
Overall: Satisfactory
Video Review:
Valkyrie Elysium Review
With the success of Valkyrie Anatomia, one would think that this would be the perfect opportunity to bring back the Valkyrie Profile series. While many of us expected a tri-Ace developed Valkyrie Profile game, Square-Enix decided against the idea and instead handed the series over to a different developer. Soleil, a company known for making beat em up games was chosen to take over the development of the series in place of tri-Ace and as someone who considers themselves a fan of the Valkyrie Profile games, I found this decision to be completely asinine, given the fact that tri-Ace were the people who made the series so great to begin with, I knew going into this game that it was going to be a disaster. Now one might argue that tri-Ace was too busy working on Star Ocean The Divine Force to work on a new Valkyrie Profile but at the same time, Star Ocean The Divine Force is a Square-Enix game, much like Valkyrie Profile, so they could have worked on Valkyrie Profile 3 instead but Square-Enix being the blithering idiots they are, decided to release yet another Star Ocean game instead. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Star Ocean but the Valkyrie Profile series has always been the pinnacle of tri-Ace’s capabilities, so to see them not working on the latest entry is bitterly disappointing.
So with all that in mind, it’s important to expect something completely different with Valkyrie Elysium as it is a completely different game entirely from Valkyrie Profile. Valkyrie Elysium is not a JRPG like many would be led to believe, it is one of the most unapologetic 3D Beat Em Ups I’ve played in recent years, given the fact that the skill tree in this game is designed specifically to restrict the player’s growth, something that even Devil May Cry doesn’t do. The issue with the skill system ultimately comes down to the fact that to learn new skills, you not only need to learn previous skills but you also need a specific color of gem and those gems can only be acquired upon reaching certain points in the game’s story, therefore they are a barrier for players looking for growth.
The biggest let down with this is that one of the few things carried over from Valkyrie Profile is the crystals that rain from enemies when they are attacked. In the first game and Covenant Of The Plume, these crystals would be converted into bonus experience points as a reward for playing well. In Valkyrie Profile 2, these crystals would not only reward bonus experience but they were also a currency used to purchase sealstones which were very valuable items that players could use to turn battles in their favor. In Valkyrie Elysium however, the gems dropped from enemies can be found just about anywhere and are used as currency to learn new skills, as well as weapon upgrades. The issue is that when you acquire all the upgrades up to a certain point, many of these crystals become obsolete, requiring a different color of crystal and with limited upgrades to spend them on, as well as skills, they just kind of sit in your inventory collecting dust which is such a waste given the fact that the game clearly encourages you to play well to collect them, it completely eliminates any incentive to do so beyond a certain point. Sure, many other games have similar issues but given the fact that Valkyrie Elysium’s skills don’t take many crystals to learn, they’re easy enough to acquire to the point that there’s no reason to farm them, since you’ll have reached the cap… or at least near the cap by the end of the level regardless of how well you performed in battle. Restrictive skill systems is the most anti-tri-Ace thing you can do and this sickens me.
It’s obvious that the developers wanted to focus on the game’s combat above all else being a beat em up and all. The thing is though that while the combat looks visually appealing, I find it to be pretty mindless in execution. Now don’t get me wrong, there is value to be had in watching Valkyrie perform crazy attack strings and there’s quite a bit of flexibility to be had in regards to movesets. For one, you have the cancel combo system seen in the Dynasty Warriors games where you mash square and cancel into triangle for a finisher. Now you would think that you would use this a lot but I found myself using it very little late on in the game upon learning new skills. Once new skills become available, Valkyrie’s moveset becomes a lot bigger and with that you will unlock moves that are heavily abusable, one such move is the soul steal which guarantees that enemies will drop souls upon being hit by it. The lower the enemy’s health gauge, the more souls you will get. This allows players to abuse the einherjar system to rack up insane hit counts and restore the arts gauge faster.
It’s easy to rack up 999 hits with the help of your einherjar.
Speaking of einherjar, it appears that upon summoning them, you have absolutely no further control over them. Despite this however, you are able to learn new abilities for them, though the game never tells you how to actually use them. It turns out that upon summoning them, they will use whatever einherjar attack is set to them, then they follow up with their normal attack for the rest of the fight. I honestly find this to be a wasted mechanic as all you’re doing is summoning them, you’re not inputting commands like you can do in games like Chaos Legion, Castlevania Curse Of Darkness or Nights Of Azure. It would have been interesting to have the option to have them trigger their einherjar skills freely at the cost of soul gauge, similar to Chaos Legion’s assist moves but there’s nothing like that here. It just feels like a waste of an idea that accomplishes nothing besides making the game a hell of a lot easier. At first, prior to getting your second einherjar, the game can be rather tough and bosses will be quite challenging but all that disappears once you have a full roster of Einherjar with the soul steal skill, you’ll be watching your einherjar do all the work while you occasionally dive in and slash at them for souls to keep summoning einherjar to the field. It seems to me that the einherjar could have been removed entirely and the game would be more better off as a result, it’s tedious having to constantly summon them into battle, even though you can adjust the time they are out, you’ll still have to resummon them constantly in long fights, they might as well just remove the summoning mechanic entirely and have them all out on the battlefield by default like the original Valkyrie Profile games did.
Now the einherjar system might not seem like a huge issue at first as you could choose not to use them but the biggest problem with einherjar summoning is that it takes up one of the game’s vital buttons, R1. The problem with this is that R1 is the button commonly used to lock on to enemies in most beat em ups but in this game, players have to use R3 to lock on to enemies as well as reset the camera and this makes combat an absolute nightmare when you’re surrounded by multiple enemies. To make matters worse, there’s no minimap so you will often encounter stragglers somewhere off screen which you have to look for because the camera isn’t facing them. Of course this leads to you getting attacked from behind quite often as well. The problem with R3 is that in order to press it, you need to use your thumb, with R1 you can use your index finger, allowing you to change the camera angle without letting go of the face buttons. Anyone who has played a lot of beat em ups, particularly at a high skill level knows how crucial this is as having to constantly move the camera with the right analog stick just isn’t practical. Fortunately any frustrations brought about this issue tend to occur early on in the game as by the time you start accumulating einherjar, you become so powerful that you can heal yourself constantly by replenishing the arts gauge with einherjar attacks, though I imagine on higher difficulties that this would not be the case so it is still a problem throughout the entire game. Despite all this, the game heavily encourages you to use your einherjar as doing so leads to stat boosts after every mission, so even on higher difficulties, you’ll still want to abuse this mechanic as there really is no downside to doing so besides a brief downtime when summoning them into battle.
On top of Einherjar, you have divine arts which are essentially spells you can use at the expense of your arts gauge. Aside from the aformentioned heal spell, there are several other spells which each have different elemental properties, some of which are AOE spells, others are single target spells. The primary purpose of divine artes is to fill up a stagger gauge a significant amount, letting you freely combo enemies without them being able to move, though you can also increase the gauge slightly by having an einherjar summoned who has the same element as the spell that the enemy is weak to. Later on in the game, some of the spells can fill the screen and this can become somewhat of a visual impairment in the middle of a fight, especially when combined with the einherjar attacks, it can be hard to see what’s going on at times but fortunately all you need to worry about is soul steal spamming and so long as you keep soul chaining, you should be more-or-less fine on lower difficulties but on higher difficulties, this could be a real pain to deal with, as if the game’s lock on controls weren’t problematic enough.
In regards to defensive play, you have a guard and a evade button. Guarding allows you to parry enemy attacks and counter them, while evading gives you I frames during an enemy attack, very generous I frames I might add. Honestly I found little opportunity to make use of the guard or counter moves since so many fights have you fighting enemies that bombard you from all sides, with AOE attacks you have to avoid, it just feels easier to use the dodge since it gives you plenty of I frames and the pay off for guarding doesn’t seem to be worth the effort, at least on normal difficulty. Perhaps people will be able to find some use for it in the higher difficulties but it would be very tricky to pull off, especially when you consider how chaotic the fights are, props to anyone who can manage it though. Some skills allow you to automatically summon einherjar for free with no soul gauge cost by performing these maneuvers but why bother when soul steal makes souls so easy to come by? I suppose it removes the temporary downtime from summoning einherjar into battle but it didn’t really feel as if it was necessary for me to utilize any of the techniques required to automatically summon the einherjar. The one thing that does bother me though is the lack of an aerial dodge. While you do get a double dodge as an upgrade early on (which should be obtained immediately), the lack of an air dodge can make fighting in the air somewhat risky because it could mean landing into en enemy attack. Some enemies also like to grab you which can be really annoying as sometimes the game requires you to spin the left analog stick to escape.
Love at first fight…
There are numerous weapons to acquire throughout the game and each enemy has a weakness to a particular weapon, encouraging you to swap between them. I found myself using the Baleygr the most since it seemed to have great crowd control potential, particularly with its triangle move which was also great at harvesting gems. Each weapon has a proficiency rating which is tied to skill unlocks, you will have to use all of the weapons should you wish to unlock all the skills associated with them. Sadly though you cannot switch weapons mid combo which is a shame because that could have made combat a lot more interesting. You will also find potions from treasure chests to heal yourself but there is an inventory limit and using them decreases your score at the end of a stage, like in Devil May Cry. I found the heal spell to be good enough for the job personally but if you’re having a tough time, they can help. Ultimately if you’re looking for a fun challenge, Valkyrie Elysium will probably disappoint you greatly but if you don’t mind a mindless beat em up, the combat will deliver a moderately enjoyable experience.
Visually speaking, the landscapes look nice and all but I personally consider Valkyrie Elysium’s character design to be a huge downgrade from the character design in the Valkyrie Profile games. That being said however, I do think that the character designs are serviceable and aren’t terrible, I just think that they could be better and being a Valkyrie game, I’ve come to expect the visuals to be top of the line, so I can’t help but be disappointed in that regard, then again it’s all subjective really, some people may actually like the new character designs but they’re just not for me personally.
No shortage of trees and ruins in this game.
The music on the other hand doesn’t disappoint, if there’s one thing that this game does right, it’s the soundtrack, though I wouldn’t expect any less from Motoi Sakuraba at this point. While not his best work in my opinion, I do think that he does a fantastic job nonetheless. Interestingly enough, Valkyrie Elysium handles the battle music the same way that Nier Automata does, in the sense that the area music transitions into a combat variant of the same song and I think that this compliments the nature of the game’s more seamless combat well. I’d like to see more beat em up games do this in the future. It’s very different from the soundtracks that Motoi Sakuraba has done in the past but it does have a few similarities to his past work if you listen closely enough. Funnily enough, the game’s soundtrack probably the only thing that makes you feel like you’re playing a Valkyrie Profile game.
The story is without a doubt the worst part of this game as the characters are as bland as you can get. While it goes without saying that Valkyrie has the personality of a potato, the einherjar aren’t really all that better. I had a really hard time even remotely caring about any of the einherjar in this game, to me they were just sentient elemental attributes to attach to Valkyrie’s attacks. To be fair though, the game does have interactions between the einherjar and Valkyrie over the course of the journey but many of these conversations come across as awkward due to Valkyrie’s lack of personality. By the end, all the einherjar are pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet. The plot is pretty boring too, I mean all you’re told to do is purify souls and find these 4 gifts, that’s pretty much it, the plot doesn’t go anywhere else besides the obvious plot twist that harkens back to the first game which is executed in the most generic way possible. Just about everything in this game’s story feels generic and soulless to the point that there isn’t even a single soul to be engraved upon. Pretty much every location is a barren empty ruin with very few people residing in them and the few that are just happen to be in 1 place. The world feels so empty and mostly lifeless that I really don’t give a shit about saving it. Even Valkyrie Profile 2 had towns filled with plenty of NPC’s, this game has barely any of that. Also where are the rest of the Aesir? You’re not telling me that Odin and Valkyrie are the only gods on Valhalla surely. Where’s Freya? Where’s Thor? Where the fuck is Loki? None of these characters are here and this only serves to make the game feel even more lifeless.
Ok roll call, who the hell are you people again?
There are numerous side missions but pretty much all of them are forgettable and many amount to the same thing such as the einherjar quests which are more-or-less the same for each one. much like the story, they are criminally monotonous and only serve to extend what would otherwise be an extremely short game. Despite being a serviceable beat em up, Valkyrie Elysium is a half assed attempt to bring back the Valkyrie Profile series. Soleil were clearly given a mission that they weren’t prepared for and the only people to blame are Square-Enix for getting them to do it instead of tri-Ace. Square-Enix have essentially betrayed the entire Valkyrie Profile fanbase with this game and they should be ashamed of themselves for making this game a thing. As a Valkyrie game, Valkyrie Elysium is an abomination, as a standalone game however, would I recommend it? Well if you like mindless 3D beat em ups then it may be worth picking up for around twenty pounds but if you don’t care about mindless 3D beat em ups, give this game a pass.
Story/Plot: Bad
Visuals: Satisfactory
Gameplay: Satisfactory
Music: Great
Lifespan: Very Short
Difficulty: Easy – Medium (Medium at the start, Easy by the end)
Would You Replay? No
Overall: Satisfactory
My Message To Square-Enix after finishing Valkyrie Elysium:
Video Review:
Valkyrie Elysium Demo Impressions
What made 3D beat em ups so interesting in the 2000’s?
Now it goes without saying that I’m an advocate for the 2000’s and that I’m not a fan of modern gaming. While I do enjoy games released in the 90’s, I have always had a soft spot for the 2000’s but in recent years, my interest shifted from JRPG’s to 3D Beat Em Ups. If you have read any of my reviews then you will notice a pattern, many of them tend to be either JRPG’s or Beat Em Ups, usually from the 2000’s and there’s a reason for this but I mainly want to talk about my reasoning for covering beat em ups.
Now I’ve always argued that many people look back on the 5th console generation of games with rose tinted glasses. The genesis of 3D games was disastrous in retrospect. Games would have to employ camera controls in order for players to control their field of vision, since the genesis of 3D made third and first person camera angles more common than they once were as it allowed players to see the 3D effects more clearly. The problem with this is that neither of these camera angles worked well with free movement, so new design methods were employed to solve this issue.
Using Spiderman on the Playstation as an example, you can clearly see how bad these games used to be in regards to how they handled these camera controls initially. Some games opted for fixed camera angles with tank controls such as Resident Evil, other games had free movement where the camera followed wherever you turned like Spiderman and some games had a camera focus button which at the time was often a button used to toggle between a first person view mode to examine things around you easier, a concept that would be almost entirely scrapped in later years due to the demand for controls to have a faster response to the action and if you ask me, 3D Beat Em Ups were a big reason for this as many of them were fast paced and revolved around dexterity.
The 6th console generation may not have brought about the 3D Beat Em Up genre but it is arguably the most important console generation in terms of what would ultimately define the genre in years to come. This would be the learning curve that would separate the men from the boys and it was thanks to the success of games like Devil May Cry and Dynasty Warriors that we got to see many of these types of games show up in the 2000’s.
While the early 2000’s were still rather primitive, they did bring about the Onimusha series which is a series I look back on fondly. Onimusha 2 in particular is a game that I find holds up well even to this day, whereas other games such as Dynasty Warriors 3 do not. I would even argue that the original Devil May Cry doesn’t hold up as well nowadays. What makes Onimusha 2 stand out is the fact that it is such a simple design idea, yet so fun to play regardless, because of this they likely did not run into as many design complications as games like Devil May Cry as not only was the game entirely grounded but the mechanics focused solely on charged attacks, normal attacks, secret techs, magic and criticals, nothing more, nothing less.
Meanwhile, Devil May Cry implemented a style gauge that encouraged stylish play, implying that the developers wanted players to utilize the flexibility offered by the game… except that flexibility just wasn’t there. It wouldn’t be until Devil May Cry 3 where this idea would be fully utilized. In the first game however, the moveset available to you was sorely limiting. Only a single weapon in the game offered a decent variety of combos, that weapon being Alastor. Sure the Sparda sword kind of rivaled it in some ways but this came at the cost of not being able to use devil trigger. Ifrit was a complete mess of a weapon as not only was its devil trigger exclusive inferno move so unbeleivably broken but its primary attack string is entirely static, there were no unique delay moves like Alastor and the weapon as a whole felt stale to use. I mean the artistic merit was definitely there, which is something I want to discuss further but mechanically speaking, the game felt unfinished, then again it was originally supposed to be a Resident Evil game conceptually, so none of this really surprises me in retrospect, Devil May Cry is one of the best examples of a game that suffers from an identity crisis, something that Onimusha, despite also being rooted in Survival Horror, did not suffer from. Onimusha is timeless, Devil May Cry to me was just a fad, a fad popularized by the counter culture trends that the era was known for. Nu metal bands were already established around this time and edgy culture was prominent, Devil May Cry’s success was almost entirely guaranteed as a result of this as Dante’s entire design was based on the state of the counter culture trends of the time in terms of both personality and aesthetic. The gothic landscapes did a good job at blending in with the whole “grim-dark emo” trends too and it was this that ultimately catapulted the genre as a whole into greater importance.
2003 Would mark the year of two interesting beat em ups. Chaos Legion fully capitalized in the trends of the time, so much so that many people consider it to this day to be a rip off od Devil May Cry even though that could not be further from the truth. Chaos Legion’s design foundation would not be rooted in Devil May Cry, rather it was Dynasty Warriors 2 that set the foundation for the 1 vs many concept of beat em ups which Chaos Legion revolved around. What set Chaos Legion apart from Dynasty Warriors however was the ability to summon and control minions, a concept that would later be used in more modern titles such as Astral Chain and Nights of Azure but at the time, this was a fresh take on 3D Beat Em Up combat that utilized a rather interesting method in regards to combatting the third person 3D conundrum, namely the lock on lightning bolt, a concept that is absolutely ludicrous by today’s standards but if you think about it, this is one of the most conceptually fascinating implementations of a lock on system in the history of videogames. It is these small things that makes this genre so interesting to me.
So we have the Devil May Cry’s, we have the Dynasty Warrior’s, what about the Shinobi’s? While Shinobi would later get a sequel of its own titled Nightshade, many could consider Bujingai, released in 2003 to be its successor at the time. Tne very first stage of both Bujingai and Shinobi suggests that Shinobi was an inspiration alone as they both start in an urban metropolis filled with neon lit streets but later branch out into other areas. What Bujingai took from Shinobi was its movement, which it expanded on with concepts such as triangle jumps and combined them with a Shinobi style forward dash maneuver for some crazy platforming techniques. Sadly though, Bujingai’s platforming was not well received unlike Shinobi’s, however I personally enjoyed Bujingai’s platforming myself and really appreciated how the movement was handled in the game. It truly stood out from games like Shinobi, in the artistic department and this ultimately made the game more interesting to me.
The thing is though, artistic merit isn’t everything and sadly, many developers failed to realize this, which led to a few stinkers. Seven Samurai 20XX may be the single greatest example of what a bad game in the 2000’s was like. It was a game that showed so much artistic promise but failed in its mechanical execution. The developers of Seven Samurai 20XX clearly didn’t do their homework and forgot to implement the basic fundamentals of 3D games that were becoming common place at the time. These fundamentals being the camera controls and the lock on system, both of which being completely absent from the game despite it having free movement without having fixed camera angles. This game was truly a treat for me to experience, because I got to see this blunder firsthand, an unwritten rule of 3d games broken, yet the game was still shipped. I can totally understand how this could have happened considering the nature of the time the game was made. It is clear that they were trying to make another 3D Beat Em Up in the style of all these other games but they clearly didn’t know how to do it. Can we honestly blame them for this though? I mean it’s not like there were design resources out there that were readily available, you just kinda had to figure things out yourself and unfortunately that led to failures like this. Believe it or not, Seven Samurai 20XX actually has a ton of flexibility but absolutely none of it is utilized well at all and to make things worse, you had input complexity to deal with, without any meaningful payoff for executing the inputs. It truly was a disaster of a game that I look back on fondly because this disaster would become the ultimate lesson for 3D Beat Em Up game designers on how not to make a 3D Beat Em Up. I mean that’s not to say that Seven Samurai 20XX was the worst of its kind as despite the fact that it was a disaster, it somehow turned out better than some of the other games in the genre, which should tell you a lot about what the 2000’s era of Beat Em Ups was like.
It wasn’t until around 2005 that what I and many others consider to be the quintessential 3D Beat Em Up would come to be. Devil May Cry 3 was a different beast entirely. While it was based on the framework and the ideas of the original Devil May Cry, the end result was outstanding. The game had a mix of fixed camera and movable camera, though the fixed camera sections arguably hold up better. The lock on system works really well, even going as far as to double as a health bar, which helped to alleviate the UI from being too cluttered. So many moves were added thanks to the style system and there were so many new weapons added too, each with equal amounts of flexibility to make for a truly varied moveset, allowing for the style gauge to be put to good use. Devil May Cry 3 would ultimately become the game that would shape the 3D Beat Em Up genre in future years.
Of course that didn’t stop other experimental beat em ups from coming out in later years such as God Hand, a game which is notoriously difficult with customizable movesets and three different evasive maneuvers which added more depth to the game at the cost of complexity, the control scheme left a lot to be desired though and the tank controls were hardly ideal. Then you had Urban Reign which is considerably more simplistic than that of God Hand but this works in the games favor because there is still a lot of depth to the combat regardless of the fact that it has less complexity. Of course you still had your shortcomings like The Sword Of Etheria but at least the game tried to do something interesting with the whole juggling of enemies with multiple characters in real time but it just didn’t work out well mechanically speaking. Once again, this is another conceptually interesting game with a lot of promise that failed to fulfil it.
I suppose you could also look at the original Odin Sphere if you’re going to count side scrolling beat em ups since that game at the time was incredibly flawed but at the same time it had a lot of potential, much like Seven Samurai 20XX and The Sword Of Etheria. My point being that these games, whether they were good or bad were all interesting to me. The reason why I feel so compelled to review these games is because they are so much fun to critique and point out all of their issues. I find these games fascinating as they are essentially telling me a story, a story of how the genre found its place in gaming today and how they managed to solve all of these problems, setting standards for future games in the genre.
I find that nowadays, not only is there a lack of 3D Beat Em Ups in favor of soulsborne games but I find the ones that come out tend to be squeaky clean and don’t take risks, nor do they go out of their way to break the mold and try something new. Sure you have games like Astral Chain which tries to follow in Chaos Legion’s footsteps but that’s kinda the point, there’s no original ideas now and I get it, it’s not easy to come up with something original in an era where there are so many established ideas as is. The thing is though, back then, in the 2000’s, these original concepts were a thing and it fascinates me to see how far they’ve come over the years. Sure I enjoy playing videogames but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t enjoy critiquing and analyzing them more. I’m hoping that Valkyrie Elysium will offer something different to feed my desire for more interesting 3D Beat Em Ups, if not, then I’ll just keep playing the oldies. I’ve still yet to experience most of what the genre has to offer so I’m a long way away from reaching the point of satisfaction but the journey has only just begun, I must satisfy my craving for PS2 era 3D Beat Em Ups, let’s fucking go!
Spiderman & Spiderman 2: Enter Electro (PS1) Review
Yet another double review and you might be thinking, why am I reviewing two completely different games here? Well you see there isn’t really all that much that differentiates the two save for a few nuances. Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is like a standalone expansion in a way, it adds the ability to shoot web balls in mid air, as well as an alternative kick animation but besides that it’s moreorless the same as the first game so I’m going to be reviewing both of them together for this reason. Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is a childhood game of mine that my mum game away to some other kid, eventually I picked up both the first and the second game to relive those memories and experience the first game for the very first time.
First of all I have to address the biggest issue with both of these games and that is the fact that they both fail on the basic fundamentals of action games. First of all, the melee combat has two main buttons, square to punch and circle to kick. The problem with this is that they both kind of do the same thing really, though I find punching to be far more reliable personally so I mainly use square. This means that circle is completely useless in this game as it does the same thing square does but with a different animation, sure there are a few differences besides that but nothing important in the grand scheme of things, they’re both attacks that yield similar enough results, just pick one and spam it, you sadly cannot mix them up as you are locked to either one combo string or the other which makes the melee combat feel sterile. Thankfully there is an aerial attack that I found to be far more useful as it lets you approach a locked on enemy from the air with a diving attack, given the fact that this is a Spiderman game, you will be attacking enemies from above a lot and it’s often the best way to engage in a melee combat situation as it’s kind of like Ninja Gaiden’s Flying Swallow attack, an ever abusable diagonal strike that covers a great distance very quickly.
The downside to this though is that if you want to follow up with a melee combo, good luck because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to cancel out the recovery time of Spiderman’s landing after his aerial attack. I tried many things and the results varied. Sometimes it would cancel the recovery time, other times it wouldn’t, it just felt random, perhaps there is a mechanic that I don’t know about that allows me to cancel attacks but even if there is, the melee combat is so shallow that the difference it would make would be insignificant since even if you do manage to cancel, the combo ends after 3 punches anyway which may not even be enough to take the enemy down. My point is that this recovery time leaves you wide open to be attacked and this can be incredibly frustrating as it can happen seemingly randomly. Sometimes you will jump attack and be unable to move for a brief period because Spiderman is in the middle of his landing animation, where he can be attacked, other times you will jump attack and go straight into a combo, it’s so inconsistent that it’s hard to rely on melee combat alone but sometimes there is little choice but to do so. There’s also a grab attack you can perform which can be useful in some of the few stealth missions the game has which are surprisingly the best missions and these missions are mainly found in Enter Electro which gives it some bonus points. They can’t be used on bosses though so don’t bother trying to grab Sandman, they of course can grab you though because double standards. You can however grab objects and throw them at some of the bosses though this can be pretty tricky to do when you’re getting chased by a boss, what makes this even more annoying is that the button to pick up objects is square and this means that you will find yourself punching the object instead of picking it up sometimes.
Thankfully you can always fall back on your web techniques to deal with certain foes but doing so consumes web cartridges which you have to replenish by finding items littered throughout each level. The good news is that unlike the melee combat, there’s a good array of web skills at your disposal, you can shoot a line of webbing at your enemy directly to tangle them up, though this only works against non-boss enemies, you can shoot web balls at enemies that act as projectiles which can be used on bosses and is arguably the most useful web skill in Spiderman’s arsenal, especially in Enter Electro as you can use it in mid air which could be handy for speedrunners to utilize in certain sections but sadly it can only be used while on the ground in the first game for some reason. There’s also the web gloves that increase your melee damage if you want a little bit of extra power to your attack at the cost of webbing, then there’s the web grapple which you can use to trip people up or bring them up close for a melee combo. Finally there’s the web dome which costs a lot of webbing to use but is arguably the most useful as it protects you from attacks for a short period of time as well as dealing damage to multiple enemies around you.
You should have called for backup!
The downside to all of this is that the controls for these web moves are tied to directional inputs which are the same buttons for movement and it doesn’t work in the same way as Devil May Cry where you can only perform them when the lock on button is held since in these games, the lock on is toggleable. Speaking of which, the lock on in this game is absolutely terrible since it unlocks the moment that you turn so you don’t get the same strafe stance that you do in Devil May Cry. It certainly shows how far action games have come over the years but it doesn’t do these games any favors. If they released this game today, people would laugh, like it’s an absolute joke of a lock on system, arguably one of the worst lock on systems in the history of lock on systems and because of this, doing any of the web moves is an absolute nightmare since you might accidentally move in a direction instead of performing the necessary directional input with triangle to execute the move. Talk about a massive pain in the web balls.
To add insult to injury the camera in these games is really bad. Now thankfully there is a camera focus button so moving the camera manually isn’t an issue. The problem is that whenever you turn around, the camera will automatically face the position that you are facing and while this may seem intuitive, like I said before, the lock on will disappear because the character you are locked on to is no longer in view because the camera just turned away from them. Thing is, the camera is somehow at its worst when it is fixed. I swear the stages that have fixed camera angles in this game are the absolute worst since the camera angles are horrendous. For example there’s a mission in Spiderman 2: Enter Electro where you have to catch a train, now you would think this would be a simple fixed vertical camera angle but nope the camera shifts to a diagonal view when standing in certain spots which annoyed me to no end as I would end up swinging diagonally by accident instead of forward because the camera angles fucked with me so goddamn much.
Obviously there’s more to these games than combat, there’s a heavy emphasis on platforming as well and this is handled a little better as you can web swing across buildings with ease. The only downside is that Spiderman can be very difficult to control when upside down because the controls feel as if they’re inverted since pressing forward doesn’t move him forward in the direction of the camera, rather it moves him forward in the direction he’s facing and this can be a real nuisance. Spiderman moves rather slow when climbing which can make climbing walls feel a bit tedious at times, though I can’t really complain too much as the camera focus button also doubles as a camera control button, yes you can actually move the camera with the left analog stick or d pad, not the right analogue stick though, this is likely due to the fact that the PS1 didn’t originally come shipped with a right analogue stick but it would have been so much easier if it did since you could do all of this on the fly. The camera movement can feel a bit slow and clunky but it gets the job done, you can zipline with the press of a button, letting cancel your webswings with a simple jump into a zipline which feels surprisingly good.
Now there are many different levels in each game, some of them are timed chase sequences, others are platforming sections with a few baddies along the way, then you have the combat focused levels where there are a bunch of enemies in a room to fight, usually with an objective to deal with along the way and of course you have the boss fights. Some of these take place indoors but others take place atop skyscrapers. The only thing each level has in common is that they feel more like a wrestling match with the horrible controls, camera and lock on as opposed to fun challenges. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty cool ideas such as stopping a plane from exploding and escaping from police helicopters but these levels can be very frustrating to deal with as well, no thanks to the controls of course. Seriously Spiderman really can’t catch a break at all in this game, though quite frankly it’s quite fitting for our friendly neighborhood hero to be put in all of these bad situations. I can’t help but love all of his one-liners in this game and how snarky he is, it’s almost as if the games are self-aware about how aggravating some of the levels can be since Spiderman never ceases to comment on all of the ordeals that await him, in fact I’d argue that this is probably the best part of both games.
This visuals are absolutely shocking
Another great thing about these games is the visuals, now sure, the facials are absolutely horrific for the human characters but I find Spiderman and some of the less human-like villains to look pretty well designed for a PS1 game (Enter Electro even adds a layer of webbing under his armpits which is a nice touch), though they did come out late in the ps1’s lifespan to be fair. I think the city skyline feels a bit empty though, you can’t see any city beneath you so you feel like you’re jumping across floating platforms at times. There are moments, particularly in the second game where you get to move around on the city streets which is nice I suppose. I personally found the final few levels of the second game to be the most interesting in terms of aesthetic, while the first game for the most part I found to be pretty forgettable by comparison in terms of level concept.
The music in the first Spiderman is done by everybody’s favorite advocate Intellevision Amico advocate, Tommy Tallerico, while the other was done by Todd Masten, so it goes without saying that both soundtracks are completely different. The first game has a mix of electronic and rock while the second game is mostly electronic music. Now considering the fact that I played the second game as a kid, the soundtrack is somewhat memorable to me, however I can’t really say that either soundtracks are particularly noteworthy personally, I’d say Tommy Tallerico’s soundtrack in the first game is a little better than the second game’s soundtrack overall but not by much. Some tracks are just short loops that repeat over and over again seemingly endlessly and that’s likely what makes them so memorable since they are so unbelievably repetitive that they get stuck in your mind. I wouldn’t say that either of the soundtracks are terrible though, I mean it’s not as bad as say Crazy Bus but it’s still nothing special either.
Meanwhile, at the Dreadlords’ Citadel somewhere in the Twisting Nether… oh wait wrong game.
The story of Enter Electro takes place right after the story of the first game, so they are loosely connected. You don’t necessarily have to play the first game to understand the second game but the game’s ending does have a reference to the first game that players might recognize if they played the first game. Ultimately the story is best described as being your typical day in the life of Spiderman as you unravel a conspiracy and stop the big bad at the end. Both Spiderman and Venom are the highlights in terms of characters, though some of the villains are so absurd, you can’t help but love them. It’s just dumb fun throughout and you can’t go wrong with that.
Honestly I’m bitterly disappointed with these games as a whole, perhaps it’s a sign of aging but they just suffer from too many issues for me to recommend. I found both games to be incredibly frustrating to play which is a shame because it could have been so much better had it not been for the terrible controls, camera and lock on. It’s hard to go back to these games nowadays after having experienced so many legendary games over the years and quite frankly, I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy, they are that annoying to play. The sad thing about all of this is the fact that these games have a surprising amount of replay value as you can hunt for comics and unlock costumes for Spiderman, some of which can give him cheats that can be used in game to make the game slightly less annoying to play. It sucks to have to be so negative about a game that I had such fond memories with but I have to be honest with you all, don’t waste your time and especially your money with these games, they really aren’t worth it in this day in age. They are nothing more than a relic of the past, which may have been fun back in the day but have aged like horseshit.
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