The Top Shelf: Case Files 026-030: "Yuri On Crisis"
by mento
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done, five games at a time. Be sure to check out the C...
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done, five games at a time. Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!
Case File 026: Sacnoth's Shadow Hearts
- Original Release (JP): 28/07/2001
- PS2 Exclusive!
If Final Fantasy X is the popular jock of the PS2's early wave of JRPGs (that's a weird sentence to write), then Shadow Hearts is the wry, self-effacing goth in the corner no-one pays much attention to. Critics at the time didn't seem to like Sacnoth's follow up to their PS1 game Koudelka, which heavily modified the combat engine but kept the spooks and chills largely intact: the game sees shapeshifter Yuri Hyuga get caught up in a conspiracy to use a comely British exorcist's latent psychic powers to summon "God" by a calm, suit-wearing toff with extraordinary command over dark energies.
While the idea of an RPG set in the early 20th century with themes of Lovecraft and other literary horror underlying the emergence of the first World War was appealing enough as a break from the norm, the game was blessed twice more with its infusion of dark and surreal humor and the paradigm-shifting "Judgment Ring" system. With the Judgment Ring, the success of most attacks and skills was determined by tapping a spinning radius as it passes through colored segments on a disc, with risky opportunities to hit much smaller critical zones for additional damage at the potential cost of missing the segment all together. It ended up being just the tonic the game needed to keep its random encounters and long boss fights from becoming too stale.
I adore everything about this game: the wonderful grimy industrial/gothic music, the exploration of Yuri as a character and his hang ups about his father (a recurring theme for RPGs made that year, it seems) and the effects of the slow accumulation of acquired demonic energy on his psyche, the various shout-outs to major figures in early 20th century Asian and European history, the inclusion of "sanity points" as an important statistic in a world of eldritch horrors, the fact that some of your party members include a fictionalized Mata-Hari and an effete vampire, or that the game has two endings and both are canonical due to time trickery. However, Shadow Hearts is yet another case of an excellent game being outshone by its sequel, so while I have to eliminate it for the sake of keeping this shelf limited to one game per franchise just know that it's among my favorite underrated RPGs for this system. (Ruefully) Eliminated.
Case File 027: NanaOn-Sha's PaRappa the Rapper 2
- Original Release (JP): 30/08/2001
- PS2 Exclusive!
I'm one of those weirdos that prefers Um Jammer Lammy to Parappa, so I wasn't too impressed with the PlayStation 2 follow-up to the latter that raises the stakes for its dog-boy hip-hop star, making him the unlikely hero in an adventure to stop the world's food from being turned into noodles by the deranged son of a fast-food burger magnate. It's an excuse for more ridiculous songs to awkwardly rap along to, though none of the scenarios in the game are ever as relatable as passing a driver's test or rap-battling a procession of people waiting in line for the bathroom before you pee yourself. I'm also sitting here trying to recall a single track from Parappa 2 and coming up short, despite being able to quote most of the first game's tracks verbatim. That can be attributed to old man selective memory loss more than it might be perceived as an admonishment of the second game's music quality, but then we are rating games primarily on their memorability here on The Top Shelf. I still have a tremendous amount of respect for NanaOn-Sha's creativity in their rhythm games though - perhaps the relative "safeness" of this sequel is its actual biggest detriment. Eliminated.
Case File 028: Arc System Works's Guilty Gear X
- Original Release (JP): 30/09/2001
- Not PS2 Exclusive (originally an Arcade release, also saw Dreamcast and PC ports)
Fighter game genealogies are always fascinating to me. No other genre repeats itself so often or so incrementally besides sports games, and tracking the large number of playable characters as they drift in and out of each iteration of a series and pop up as guests in others would make for some interesting flow charts, "rock band family tree" style. When I see Guilty Gear X, a late addition to my PS2 collection that I've never played and only know from its reputation as one of the early highlights of the "anime fighter" subset, it makes me curious to find out more about the game's story and setting, where the characters came from and how X expands on the original Guilty Gear than I am to actually play it. In my limited experience with anime fighters, they tend to be a bit more hardcore than their traditional equivalents in terms of gauges and air juggles and super-cancels and the like, so I imagine there's a harsh barrier to entry here to overcome. I'll jot this one down as eliminated with what I hope comes across as less a condemnation but more the tacit acknowledgement that fighter games simply aren't my deal. Eliminated.
Case File 029: Namco's Time Crisis 2
- Original Release (NA): 01/10/2001
- Not PS2 Exclusive (originally an Arcade game)
In an unfortunate (or maybe fortunate, given that I don't need a room full of plastic accessories) turn of events, I found myself with a copy of Namco's pedal-based Arcade shooter without a GunCon peripheral to play it with. You can of course play it without the peripheral, but at that point you're losing half the fun of a game like Time Crisis 2, along with half the cursor movement speed by relying on the DualShock 2's analog sticks. From all reports, though, the port was a fairly faithful one and retained most of what made the original an adrenaline-fueled quarter-muncher. As another game that fell into my collection without ever getting played, I'm in two minds to revisit it. Yet without the GunCon, I don't think it can make as strong a case for the shelf. Well, let's just find out; I've eliminated too many games this week already. Considered.
Case File 030: FromSoftware's King's Field: The Ancient City
- Original Release (JP): 04/10/2001
- PS2 Exclusive!
Onto the fourth and final FromSoftware PS2 game I own. You can't say that From didn't support the heck out of the PS2 when it first arrived, though I wonder how much of that was due to From's prodigious output back then. Slimming down to just one new game per year of late seems to be working wonders for them. The Ancient City, or King's Field IV, is their most "traditional" PS2 game: a first-person dungeon crawler with a glacial pace and a particular sense of foreboding that accompanies each of its dark dungeons and doomed NPC encounters, two major components in their later Souls games. I remember finding King's Field IV a much harder game to play than Eternal Ring, the latter of which was probably deliberately made more approachable for a new audience of PS2 owners looking at the launch games for their first system purchases. King's Field IV is more in the classic From approach of "screw you, either learn the ropes tout de suite or quit, you wuss", made evident after you die the first dozen times. It's certainly not a great game - slow as molasses and having to restart from save points a lot isn't necessarily a winning combination - but it might present a good starting point for From's older back catalog if the first three King's Field games for PS1 are a bit too dated for you. There is still that satisfaction from eventually conquering it, after all. (A fun thing I found out when reading the Wikipedia entry on this game is that the localization named many NPCs after people anticipating the game on the series's English-language fan forums. No idea if that's true or not, but it would explain why you run into a knight called XxSephiroth420BlazeItxX at one point.) Eliminated.
Results
Another harsh week, with only a hobbled Time Crisis II port given any chance at a follow-up. Yet I still maintain a lot of affection for Shadow Hearts - there's no way it makes it onto the shelf in lieu of its sequel Covenant, though - and King's Field IV - I still prefer Eternal Ring, and only by a little bit - and there's no denying that PaRappa the Rapper 2 and Guilty Gear X have their own substantial fanbases and hardly require my endorsement. Even with four eliminations I'm heartened that there were no duds this week.
Even so, we're now at 8 for 30 for potential shelf nominations, and yet to confirm a single placement. I assure you, I'm not just doing this for dramatic effect. With 180 games to process, I gotta be discerning. Next week's batch of five will prove to be controversial, as a few of these games are beloved by many but not so much by me. Be sure to have your torches and pitchforks ready for the next episode of The Top Shelf!