Third-person action games were big on PS2, thanks to games like Devil May Cry. They were some of the largest games you could find on the system, and Bujingai followed that trend. The story is nonsensical and has almost no point. You’re following a former master around who has been possessed by a demon and has taken your girlfriend or something lame like that. Having almost no story isn’t a great way to start a game either.
One of the big draws with this game was the fact that the Japanese rockstar Gackt was involved, and I mean about as involved as showing up and grunting. Advertising someone as big as Gackt was at the time and only having him grunt and shout is a complete waste of talent. He has zero lines of dialogue and probably finished his whole recording session in a few hours. There isn’t even any music by Gackt in here, which is lame. With that said, the game is all about hacking and slashing, and there’s plenty of that.
The game consists of a quick and heavy attack as well as dodging and a defense meter that auto-blocks attacks until the meter is run down. 90% of the regular enemies are brain dead and are a cakewalk to slice through. As enemies die, you acquire orbs, which are used to upgrade various stats. You also have spells that are hidden throughout the levels and can be passive or active. I rarely use these, and most are not that powerful, but the passive attack increase spell wound up being the most useful. Lau, the main character, has some really nice animations, and the game is very flashy, but there are so many flaws that make this game a frustrating nightmare to play.
Something as simple as platforming is bogged down by an awful camera and finicky jumping mechanics. The character jumps in the direction the camera is facing, and the direction can’t be altered mid-air. This led to dozens of minutes just trying to get across a few platforms. You can wall run, glide, and wall jump, but they add to the chore and headache of platforming in this game. The combat solely relies on the lock-on mode, as the camera can’t keep up with the action. This proves extremely annoying during boss fights, and the final nail in the coffin is the uninterruptible animations that cause endless deaths and pointless damage. Lau will spin and slice, but one button press is a series of animations that must be played out before you can even dodge. Even if you time your attacks in between the enemies’ most of the time, you will still take damage because you can’t stop the attack. This also goes for the fall-down animations that take forever, and recovery is just as slow.
The level design is also very bland, with generic Japanese folklore-inspired enemies and repeated bosses. There’s not a soul in this game, as it just feels like a cookie-cutter Japanese game that tried to get sales with Gackt’s name. I honestly didn’t feel like there was any benefit to playing this game the entire time I played, and I couldn’t even finish the game due to how incredibly difficult it ended up being to just fight the animations and camera. I got to the second-to-last boss and had to just give up after 2 hours of trying. It also doesn’t help that orbs aren’t given out often enough to allow you to upgrade fully before reaching the final 8th stage. I like how if you die, you just restart the area you’re in instead of the entire level, but it means nothing if you can’t progress.
As it stands, Bujingai is a forgettable game with almost no point in existing. If you’re itching for a hardcore hack and slash that requires precise timing, then this might be for you, but there isn’t even a decent story to complete, and even Gackt fans have nothing to really gain here.
If you ignored the original Killzone back in 2004, I can’t blame you. It was a rough road for Guerilla as they tried to make an exclusive first-person shooter for Sony’s underpowered console to out-beat Halo and Metroid Prime. Sony never had an FPS that was exclusive to their system, so it was Guerilla’s time to shine. It was dubbed “The Halo Killer” by fanboys, and it sadly received lukewarm reviews upon release. I actually got this for Christmas 2004 and ate it up like candy. I was a serious fanboy over this game. Fast forward 14 years, and I can see the game’s many flaws but also appreciate what it did for the PS2.
You play as a squad of four who are tasked with stopping an evil Nazi-like empire known as the Helghast that is trying to destroy all of humanity on the planet Vekta. The story is bare-bones, but there’s a lot of potential here with interesting art assets and great voice acting, but it just falls flat. There’s no background on the main characters of the war you’re fighting in. You’re literally just dropped in with no background or reasoning behind it. This was never done with Halo or Metroid Prime, as you were pulled right into the war or battles and understood exactly why you were there. It’s just a bunch of cutscenes with the squad going after various generals and moving from Helghan base to Helghan base.
The shooting is very interesting, as it’s part of why Killzone was loved by those who did like it. There’s a lot of weight behind the weapons, and they are actually quite unique and shoot well. It’s your standard array of military weapons, but with a twist and some personality behind them. Honestly, the weapons are the only thing front and center in Killzone and dominate the entire game. From the ISA and Helghast standard assault rifles to rocket launchers, grenade launchers, pistols, and heavy machine guns, Most weapons have a secondary fire that helps balance their weaknesses, such as the Helghan’s rifle, which has a shotgun attachment, and the ISA rifle, which has a grenade launcher. I personally stuck with the Helghast assault rifle through the first fourth of the game, as you can only play as Templar, but once the other characters were unlocked, I played as Rico since he has a chain gun with 800 rounds and a missile launcher. It’s seriously overpowered, but it feels so good to mow everyone down around you. The only weapon I really disliked was the shotgun, as it’s so slow to pump and shoot that unless you are one-on-one with a single enemy, you’ll get killed because you can’t fire fast enough. It’s practically useless, even in tight corridors.
The downside to the weapons having a lot of weight behind them is the animation. They are so long that they make the game more difficult than it needs to be. Every time you switch weapons, there’s a long animation of pumping the shotgun, fiddling with a rocket launcher scope, and flipping up the lid on the scope to the sniper rifle. Rico’s chain gun takes at least 2-3 seconds to swing out, then there’s a weird pump animation after, so you have to hide behind walls every time you switch weapons because of these animations. The same goes for reloading. Some weapons take over 5 seconds to reload, with the shotgun taking nearly 10 to load every single round. It’s fun to see and was never done up to that point in time, but it needed to be sped up or changed.
Outside of the weapons, the enemy AI is as dumb as a doorknob, with the Helghast literally standing around, not shooting at all, or they won’t move to cover. Part of this is the underpowered CPU in the PS2 and the game engine that pushed it way too far. There’s so much pop-in with fog of war to make up for the lack of a draw distance that enemies pop in and most of the time all at once, so an entire room or corner will be full of Helghasts that are easy pickings with a single grenade or kill you really quickly if you don’t notice them. The game engine just chokes the PS2 like no other game, with framerates dipping into single digits. I also played the remastered version for PS3, and while the 720p resolution looks sharper, there are still framerate drops because the engine just couldn’t handle the load. Sadly, because of the limitations, environments are bland and boring, with claustrophobic corridors and almost no draw distance. The game is gray, dull, and colorless, and while this could have worked, the weak PS2 brings the art backward because not enough can be rendered on the screen to make it look nice.
The entire game pretty much plays the same way and takes about 5 hours to finish. There are no vehicle scenes, no scripted events; it’s all just running and gunning, which gets old towards the end. For the PS2, this game is quite impressive and has a decent multiplayer mode, but there are more flaws than there are perfections. I would rather have had an ugly game that played better, but PS2 fanboys were clamoring for something that pushed the system like Halo did the Xbox. Is Killzone a Halo killer? Absolutely not, and it doesn’t even come close.
Kratos and God of War are PlayStation icons and symbols of what the system can offer. This game was the biggest hit in 2005, and I went nuts for it like everyone else. It reinvented the action-adventure genre like no one else had with epic boss fights, cinematic combat, and insane-level design. We finally get all of this in portable form on the Vita. While it isn’t the most ideal version, it’s still plenty of fun.
God of War is really starting to show its age and flaws these days; that is really clear. It was a new idea, however well executed, but still had some issues. The game isn’t quite as epic as I remember, thanks to the newer games in the series being insanely huge. There are only two big boss fights in this game, and I could swear there were more. The game is brutal in spots but still rewarding, with many secrets and areas to explore.
You play as Kratos, a Spartan general who cried out for Ares to save him and defeat his enemies, but this all came at a huge price. I won’t spoil more of the story if you have never played this series, but longtime fans know it already. The game has amazing combat, which is what was praised so much 13 years ago. Using the Blades of Chaos, Kratos can swing and spin them around with amazing animations and kill hordes of enemies. I’m not kidding about hordes; there are some scenes where you must defeat nearly a hundred enemies, which is brutal.
The enemy variety is also great, as there are small, easy enemies to huge, lumbering cyclops that take many hits to kill. God of War is famous for quick-time event kills. After so much damage is taken, the enemies will display the circle button above their heads. This initiates a quick-time button pressing, which will give you health orbs. Each enemy has its own unique animation. Each enemy is also a challenge on their own, as some are dangerous on hordes while others are not so much alone. The level design is fantastic, and the enemy placement is cleverly laid out to offer a challenge every step of the way.
The series is also famous for the magic powers you acquire that are different with every game. You get four, which become very useful for various enemies. Poseidon’s Rage is great for clearing hordes of weaker enemies, as it’s an AOE attack. Zeus’ Fury is the only long-range weapon you get for picking off ranged enemies. Souls of Hades is like a shield, and Medusa’s Gaze is great for larger single enemies to turn them to stone. On top of the Blades of Chaos, you also get Artemis’ Blade, which is a powerful short-range heavy weapon, but once the Blades were fully upgraded, I honestly never really used it.
Outside of combat, there are puzzles that will sometimes slow you down. Most consist of pressing switches in order, climbing puzzles, or jigsaws. Pandora’s Temple is a giant puzzle within itself that takes up a third of the game near the middle. I just can’t stress enough how hard this game can be. Some spots had me restarting dozens of times until I got it right, and this included platforming sections. The first game’s Hell area is notorious for being brutally difficult. Having to balance on long spinning logs covered in blades and then climb spinning spiked towers that stretch on forever is daunting, but rewarding when you do complete it.
Overall, God of War is still a blast to play 13 years later and is as polished as I remember. Outside of hardware limitations at the time, Sony did an amazing job creating what they did. There are some cheap deaths, unbalanced difficulty in spots, and the quick-time events do get repetitive, but it’s minor issues that can’t really bring the game down even today.
The Vita version is the only way to play this game in portable form, and it’s not the most ideal version. The PS3 version runs at a smooth 60FPS, but the Vita cleans up the visuals a little and does have some FPS drops when a lot of enemies are on screen, but it’s not often. I’m sad to see this game doesn’t hit 60FPS, which it does even on PS2 sometimes, which keeps this game from getting a perfect score.
I have to note that this is the older, and better, model of the Cordless Precision Controller for PS2. The newer one doesn’t feel as nice but is more widely available. Besides the official DualShock 2, there isn’t a better controller out there. There were so many third-party controllers for the PS2, and they were all mostly terrible. From poor ergonomics to bad wireless technology or lame button placement, Some controllers opted for the Xbox-style analog stick layout or were just poorly built. Logitech was the king of accessories back in the day, and while they were more expensive, they were worth the money. I had this controller last for over 10 years until it pretty much died on me recently, and I had to buy a new one. That’s a long time for an accessory, and it went through several moves, was stashed in storage for a couple of years, and was dropped, kicked, thrown, and smashed over and over again growing up.
What makes this controller the best wireless option for PS2 is that it just feels good and is more solid than the official controller. There’s more bulk, and it feels heavier and more solid in your hands. The controller fits so nicely with shorter arms and a thicker back with larger top buttons. The D-pad is much improved and works well with fighters as it’s a rolling D-pad over the standard plus D-pad. My only complaint would be that the analog sticks are too loose for my taste, and they take some getting used to.
The controller connects to the receiver easily with just a press of a button, and there is no need to repair it. I never once had to pair the controller over the 10 years I owned it. It shuts off after 5 minutes of inactivity; there’s a mode button for switching from digital to analog, and that’s all you need. It lasts nearly 50 hours on 2 AAs, so get some rechargeables and you’re golden. I also have to mention that the battery cover is a pain to get off, but you can’t have everything.
Overall, this is the best controller option for the PS2 bar none. Sadly, it’s not made anymore and can be upwards of $50–60 used, and new controllers run over $100. If you can nab one, these are worth the investment tenfold. Just another side note: the black version is the most common, with the silver being second and the blue one being nearly impossible to find. The silver ones pop up here and there, but I have yet to ever see the blue one.
Ico is probably one of the most forgotten games in history. Being one of the first graphical powerhouses for the PS2, it proved that you don’t need a complex story and characters to have a good game. All you know is that you are a boy named Ico who is trying to save a girl named Yorda from her evil mother and escape from the castle. You enter as a captured prisoner because you have horns. You then escape and find Yorda along the way. What made Ico such a big deal was that you led her around manually by holding R1. This forced you to become attached to her, and they rarely spoke.
This game was way ahead of its time. That’s probably why people passed it by for Jak & Daxter and other PS2 games at the time. The game consists of some pretty cleverly designed puzzles that involve pulling switches, climbing, cutting ropes, and swinging on chains. You also push and pull on the occasional block. The level design is really well done, but there were a few obscure puzzles, like jumping off of a chain to knock a bridge down. This is completely against the game’s mechanics, so you would never know to do this. Leading Yorda around sounds annoying, but it prevents you from having to rely on the already shoddy AI. The game mechanics work well enough in design, but they are sloppy and frustrating to deal with.
When you jump, Ico tends to clip into ledges and ladders, making you have to slightly adjust him until he latches on. If you press the analog stick just slightly and jump, he will jump 20 feet, causing you to jump off ledges or fall to your death. There’s just so much bad collision detection, and the animations are janky and not well done. When you drag Yorda around, her arm looks like a flopping noodle that can go through her body. I know this was originally designed for PS1 before the game jumped ship to PS2, but still. There are other mechanics, like setting your sword down to pick up a giant stick, lighting it on fire, and then setting off a bomb. Sometimes you have to toss these before they blow you up. Fun game mechanics and all, but they repeated through the entire game, making you grateful for the short length (just about 4 hours).
A lot of times I didn’t know where to go because the middle of the game has two areas that are identical but just slightly different. The constant backtracking can confuse you, requiring a walkthrough. There are no boss battles to speak of except the final boss, but the combat is so frustrating and annoying. Ico swings his sword around aimlessly, and you can’t move while doing so. The AI jumps away as soon as you run after it, so if you get stuck in a three-hit combo, you get knocked down, and Yorda gets dragged away. You can’t die in this game during combat, but if Yorda gets dragged underground, you’re done. You can pull her out of the hole, but sometimes a shadow creature will hit you and knock you back, and then you have to suffer the long animation of getting up. A lot of games had these animations (The Mark of Kri), and I don’t know why. It breaks the fluidity of everything. Once you get the hidden mace in the game, combat is really easy, but you still get annoyed by the creatures constantly backing up when you approach.
The graphics look great with the new HD upgrade, but even back then, they were amazing. A lot of textures have been slightly upscaled, and some bloom and HDR have been added for better lighting. You can still notice the game’s age during up-close shots of areas. Textures are muddy and so blurry that they don’t even look like what they are representing. The main thing is that you can pan the camera around more now that the resolution has been bumped up, making navigation easier. This is how you do HD upgrades, right?
Overall, Ico is a great game, but the dated mechanics really show their age. If you can look past all this, you are in for a great, albeit short, game, but don’t expect engaging characters or a complex story. There are four cutscenes in the whole game, but this is about the journey and not the story.
Shadow of the Colossus
I have been wanting to review this game forever, and now I have the chance. I played this back in 2005 when it first came out, and it was just unreal. SotC still has some of the best graphics to grace the PS2, and it almost looked next-gen at the time. Of course, it suffered from the massive slowdown, but now we can play it with some extra graphical effects and at 60FPS. There’s not much of a story here; there never is with Famito Ueda’s games. You are a boy named Wander who brings a girl to a temple in a cursed land and vows to destroy all 16 colossi in order to bring her back to life. The game has one of the most touching endings I can remember.
The game is very basic; you just head to each colossus and slay it. There is a huge open world, but it is very barren and void of life, but that’s the way it is supposed to be. You feel very alone and helpless in this land of brown and gray. You have two weapons: a sword and a bow. You can hold the sword up to the light to guide you to the next colossus, which really isn’t that hard. Once you find it, you have to figure out how to get on top of it, and that’s the tricky part. Each colossus is completely different. Some are tall, some are fat, and some are the size of a lion. These lumbering beasts will attack, but you need to find their weak spots. One colossus has weak spots on the bottom of its feet. When it walks, you need to use your bow and shoot it. It then falls over, and you can jump up, grab its fur, and start climbing. Some aren’t so easy; in fact, there are no hints on how to get on top of these beasts. One tricky water serpent requires you to swim over him, and then his tail will come out of the water so you can grab it.
The best part is when you get on these things. Each colossus is like a level in itself. You can climb around and hold the R1 button to stay on. They will try to shake you and your window to actually stab the glowing, weak spots that are really small. You have a stamina meter, and when it depletes, you let go and fall back down. This can be really frustrating if getting on top of the Colossus is already frustrating or a long fiasco. As you slay these monsters, your stamina and health increase, but you still need to watch out. The worst part about the game is the god-awful controls. They just stink, and the game mechanics are sluggish and unresponsive. If it weren’t for this, the game would be perfect. Wander’s animations are a bit jerky, and when the colossi shakes you and your stamina is dropping, you just want to charge your stab and kill it, but sure enough, you get shaken again right as you start to charge. Wander flops around, and it just feels sluggish. When you try walking on the colossus, Wander will fall and tumble, sometimes right down to the ground. I almost threw my controller several times because of this. You will mainly die because of the mechanics, not your skills.
Let’s talk about your horse. Aggro is the main character, but I felt like I was driving a Mac truck. He won’t move if you push the stick forward; instead, you have to mash X, and it takes forever for his momentum to get going. You can only tap the stick left and right to steer him, but he moves too quickly and runs right into walls, which he then stops on a dime and turns completely around. Maneuvering through tight areas is a serious pain. The horse controls are just terrible. This is probably the only bad part of the game; there is nothing else like this game out there. The colossi themselves look fantastic and are just gigantic. You really feel helpless and wonder how you are going to take this thing down. It all adds to the foreboding atmosphere of the game and the loneliness and helplessness that you feel throughout.
I have been wanting to review this game forever, and now I have the chance. I played this back in 2005 when it first came out, and it was just unreal. SotC still has some of the best graphics to grace the PS2, and it almost looked next-gen at the time. Of course, it suffered from the massive slowdown, but now we can play it with some extra graphical effects and at 60FPS. There’s not much of a story here; there never is with Famito Ueda’s games. You are a boy named Wander who brings a girl to a temple in a cursed land and vows to destroy all 16 colossi in order to bring her back to life. The game has one of the most touching endings I can remember.
The game is very basic; you just head to each colossus and slay it. There is a huge open world, but it is very barren and void of life, but that’s the way it is supposed to be. You feel very alone and helpless in this land of brown and gray. You have two weapons: a sword and a bow. You can hold the sword up to the light to guide you to the next colossus, which really isn’t that hard. Once you find it, you have to figure out how to get on top of it, and that’s the tricky part. Each colossus is completely different. Some are tall, some are fat, and some are the size of a lion. These lumbering beasts will attack, but you need to find their weak spots. One colossus has weak spots on the bottom of its feet. When it walks, you need to use your bow and shoot it. It then falls over, and you can jump up, grab its fur, and start climbing. Some aren’t so easy; in fact, there are no hints on how to get on top of these beasts. One tricky water serpent requires you to swim over him, and then his tail will come out of the water so you can grab it.
The best part is when you get on these things. Each colossus is like a level in itself. You can climb around and hold the R1 button to stay on. They will try to shake you and your window to actually stab the glowing, weak spots, which are really small. You have a stamina meter, and when it depletes, you let go and fall back down. This can be really frustrating if getting on top of the Colossus is already frustrating or a long fiasco. As you slay these monsters, your stamina and health increase, but you still need to watch out. The worst part about the game is the god-awful controls. They just stink, and the game mechanics are sluggish and unresponsive. If it weren’t for this, the game would be perfect. Wander’s animations are a bit jerky, and when the colossi shakes you and your stamina is dropping, you just want to charge your stab and kill it, but sure enough, you get shaken again right as you start to charge. Wander flops around, and it just feels sluggish. When you try walking on the colossus, Wander will fall and tumble, sometimes right down to the ground. I almost threw my controller several times because of this. You will mainly die because of the mechanics, not your skills.
Let’s talk about your horse. Aggro is the main character, but I felt like I was driving a Mac truck. He won’t move if you push the stick forward; instead, you have to mash X, and it takes forever for his momentum to get going. You can only tap the stick left and right to steer him, but he moves too quickly and runs right into walls, which he then stops on a dime and turns completely around. Maneuvering through tight areas is a serious pain. The horse controls are just terrible. This is probably the only bad part of the game; there is nothing else like this game out there. The colossi themselves look fantastic and are just gigantic. You really feel helpless and wonder how you are going to take this thing down. It all adds to the foreboding atmosphere of the game and the loneliness and helplessness that you feel throughout.
The graphics are superb, even to this day. The PS3 version adds some texture filtering and anti-aliasing, and of course, the frame rate is now 60. There’s also some extra bloom added, so the lighting looks great. However, despite all this greatness, the game is pretty short, and you can beat it in about 5–6 hours. All you do is slay all 16 colossi, and you’re done. However, it was a very memorable experience.
Overall, Shadow of the Colossus was a milestone for the PS2 and is still one of the best games ever made. The frustrating controls and game mechanics keep this game from being as perfect as all the rest. Have patience and just deal with it. Every PlayStation fan should play this game.
Ico is probably one of the most forgotten games in history. Being one of the first graphical powerhouses for the PS2, it proved that you don’t need a complex story and characters to have a good game. All you know is that you are a boy named Ico who is trying to save a girl named Yorda from her evil mother and escape from the castle. You enter as a captured prisoner because you have horns. You then escape and find Yorda along the way. What made Ico such a big deal was that you led her around manually by holding R1. This forced you to become attached to her, and they rarely spoke.
This game was way ahead of its time. That’s probably why people passed it by for Jak & Daxter and other PS2 games at the time. The game consists of some pretty cleverly designed puzzles that involve pulling switches, climbing, cutting ropes, and swinging on chains. You also push and pull on the occasional block. The level design is really well done, but there were a few obscure puzzles, like jumping off of a chain to knock a bridge down. This is completely against the game’s mechanics, so you would never know to do this. Leading Yorda around sounds annoying, but it prevents you from having to rely on the already shoddy AI. The game mechanics work well enough in design, but they are sloppy and frustrating to deal with.
When you jump, Ico tends to clip into ledges and ladders, making you have to slightly adjust him until he latches on. If you press the analog stick just slightly and jump, he will jump 20 feet, causing you to jump off ledges or fall to your death. There’s just so much bad collision detection, and the animations are janky and not well done. When you drag Yorda around, her arm looks like a flopping noodle that can go through her body. I know this was originally designed for PS1 before the game jumped ship to PS2, but still. There are other mechanics, like setting your sword down to pick up a giant stick, lighting it on fire, then setting off a bomb. Sometimes you have to toss these before they blow you up. Fun game mechanics and all, but they repeated through the entire game, making you grateful for the short length (just about 4 hours).
A lot of times I didn’t know where to go because the middle of the game has two areas that are identical but just slightly different. The constant backtracking can confuse you, requiring a walkthrough. There are no boss battles to speak of except the final boss, but the combat is so frustrating and annoying. Ico swings his sword around aimlessly, and you can’t move while doing so. The AI jumps away as soon as you run after it, so if you get stuck in a three-hit combo, you get knocked down, and Yorda gets dragged away. You can’t die in this game during combat, but if Yorda gets dragged underground, you’re done. You can pull her out of the hole, but sometimes a shadow creature will hit you and knock you back, and then you have to suffer the long animation of getting up. A lot of games had these animations (The Mark of Kri), and I don’t know why. It breaks the fluidity of everything. Once you get the hidden mace in the game, combat is really easy, but you still get annoyed by the creatures constantly backing up when you approach.
The graphics look great with the new HD upgrade, but even back then, they were amazing. A lot of textures have been slightly upscaled, and some bloom and HDR have been added for better lighting. You can still notice the game’s age during up-close shots of areas. Textures are muddy and so blurry that they don’t even look like what they are representing. The main thing is that you can pan the camera around more now that the resolution has been bumped up, making navigation easier. This is how you do HD upgrades, right?
Overall, Ico is a great game, but the dated mechanics really show their age. If you can look past all this, you are in for a great, albeit short, game, but don’t expect engaging characters or a complex story. There are four cutscenes in the whole game, but this is about the journey and not the story.
Shadow Hearts is a JRPG that is all about politics and religion. Of course, what is a JRPG? Covenant has a very interesting story with memorable characters; however, the pacing is a bit off. You play as Yuri, a young man stricken with a curse called the Mistletoe. This locks out his inner powers inside his heart, and you are trying to find a cure for it. Along the way, you meet many people with various abilities for combat. The story is a bit involved and complicated, but it is interesting. I could try to explain it, but it would take nearly 3–4 paragraphs just to do that.
Let’s start with the combat. Shadow Hearts uses a ring system where a needle spins around a ring, and you press X when it falls in the yellow and red areas. Each character has different-sized hit areas and different amounts. You want to try to get it in the red zone, which is a strike zone that does extra damage, but it can be hard because some characters’ strike zones are small 2 pixel slivers. You can acquire expansions for these areas, and you can customize your ring. Once you get good, you can increase the number of hit areas, but they become smaller. This ring is used for everything from items to special attacks to magic. In Shadow Hearts, you can do combos with characters by watching your battle turns at the top. Use a four-player combo, and you can do massive damage and special combo magic attacks. One thing I really like about this game is that you aren’t stuck with specific characters that only do magic. Everyone can do it because you use magic crests, which have different magic attacks that are both offensive and defensive. Some characters just have more MP than others. This means your heavy hitter can also cast Raise Up without compromising anything.
Covenant is mainly comprised of boss battles. They are very frequent but are the most fun in the game. Each is different; some are weak to combos and special attacks only, and some are just weak to physical damage. However, the ring system makes you solely responsible for whether or not attacks hit or miss. If you don’t focus and miss part of the ring, you don’t attack. This also makes the combat more engaging because you aren’t just flipping through menus. Yuri has the ability to switch between fusion forms, which are elementals. This allows you to target a weakness on the fly. However, everybody has SP, which are sanity points and deplete with each turn. When you run out, characters go berserk, and JRPG players know that is not a good thing. You have to use pure items to restore these points, but this only becomes an issue early in the game. Once you level up enough, you get enough SP that it won’t run out before a boss battle is over.
The amount of grinding in the game is minimal. Since you mostly fight bosses, you get globs of XP all the time, so just from bosses alone, you can get to level 40. There are random battles, but they aren’t as frequent as most JRPGs, but they still exist. Random battles are the single thing that keeps me away from these games. It is a lazy game design that just needs to end. There are puzzles in the game that can be kind of challenging, but the mazes are frustrating. Running around and trying different combos on different floors is just a nightmare. Partner this with random battles, and you are bound to toss your controller a few times.
There are side quests, but they are pretty weak and not really worth it. You usually just get items for it or armor, but these armors can be bought later on, usually just after the next boss fight or two. A lot of the character’s abilities have to be learned from fighting people in the game or finding them, which I found irritating. I’d rather just learn them by leveling up. Karin’s sword arts are found by talking to certain people, so if you miss them, then your special attacks will always be weak and not fun. Besides all that, this is a more tolerable JRPG, and even people like me who hate them will enjoy this game.
The graphics at the time were good, and there is a nice art style here. The CGI cutscenes are nice, but there aren’t enough of them. The voice acting is spotty; a couple of characters sound good, but the rest sound like cheesy high school students in a play. That is usually expected in English versions of JRPGs, especially back then. I would play this game for the story and the fun boss fights. Skip all the side quest crap and just finish the story. There’s nothing worthwhile about spending 20 extra hours on some items.
Sly, Bentley, and Murray return in an attempt to obtain the stolen Clockwerk parts from the Klaww Gang. After defeating Clockwerk in the first game, they were obtained illegally, and the gang must get them back to destroy them. Along the way, Carmelita Fox is still trying to capture them while a few new faces show up. The game is the same at its core, but everything around it has completely changed. This really feels like a whole new game.
For starters, you will notice there are no individual levels anymore. The game is more of a sandbox, with various missions you can take on when you want. You can play as all three characters this time around, and each one has its own specific missions. Each character feels different. Murray is a huge lumbering hippo who can’t use stealth and instead whacks away enemies in just a couple of hits. Bentley is equipped with a sleeping dart crossbow and has various gadgets he can use to get around. In fact, they all have gadgets and abilities you can purchase with those coins that were useless in the first game. 100 no longer gives you life because that whole system is gone. Instead, you now have a life bar, and when you die, you restart at the last checkpoint. This game plays a whole lot easier and relieves a lot of the frustrations from the first game.
Additionally, the interior areas of the game are mission-specific, so you won’t be going back. I honestly preferred the individual levels because navigating these hub worlds can be a pain. Getting to certain places requires climbing around certain areas to get there. Some areas are a real pain, and you have to figure out how to get there. Just to get to the main mission, this is pretty lame. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes climbing around a confusing level just to start a mission. It doesn’t help that enemies respawn all the time when you kill them, and they are everywhere. It gets really frustrating when you just want to get on a mission and you have to keep killing the same enemies all the time. Thankfully, some abilities like a smokescreen, shock cane, and paraglider help Sly get around easier, but the other two have to find their way completely via the ground, which means long, roundabout ways to get to a mission marker.
When you start a mission, you will notice they are varied and pretty fun. Bentley has a new hacking mini-game that is a dual-stick shooter; Murray punches things a lot; and Sly has a new pickpocketing ability that he can use to get coins and loot from guards to sell for abilities and to get those keys. A lot of the gauntlet-style levels are really fun and require quick reflexes. There are 8 episodes, and the game is just as tough as the last one. Boss fights now have meters and don’t go down in a few hits anymore. You have to slowly chip away at their health to beat them, and it requires patience. Overall, the game feels mostly the same, with missions just varying from hacking mini-games, beating this or that up, or pickpocketing X amount of keys. It starts to feel old towards the end, plus the navigation of hub worlds will just drive you nuts after a while.
There are still clue bottles and vaults to be found, but they just have extra abilities in them and really aren’t worth searching for. The clue bottles will take over an hour to find on each level because the hubs are so difficult to navigate. There are 30 in each hub, but good luck finding them all without throwing the controller. Besides this, there are no extras in the game, like the last one, which is disappointing. Despite all this, I think the large open hubs are what hurt the game the most because of how annoying they are to navigate. The mission variety is really nice, but by the end, they just repeat themselves.
The graphics have been greatly upgraded with better physics, better-looking textures, and higher resolution models. The controls are a little tighter, and the camera was fixed a little, but it can still get stuck or lost sometimes. Overall, Sly 2 is an excellent game, but it just feels too similar to the last game. With the whole sandbox idea, I feel they are hard to navigate and get in the way of getting around to different missions.
I am not sure why I passed this game up all these years, but I am sad that I did. Finally being able to play it, I realize just how well it stands up today. Sly Cooper and his gang are trying to retrieve the Thievius Raccoonus, which is a book of secrets passed on from thief to thief in Sly’s family. The evil Clockwerk and several of his henchmen stole a page each, and it is up to you to get them back.
The first thing you will notice about the game is how well it controls. The movement is buttery smooth, with great platforming and gameplay mechanics. Sly can double jump, but his main mechanic is his cane. He can use it to swing around and attack, but there are also ways to sneak around like a thief that just feel really whimsical. When you see blue sparkles on ledges, you can hold a circle and sneak around them. When Sly moves around, a sneaking sound plays instead of footsteps, which are really neat. This also goes for poles and other areas to climb. Just jump near it and hold a circle, and Sly will cling on. This mechanic is very well done and makes platforming a lot of fun. Combat is pretty simple, where you just whack away with your cane and all enemies die in one hit. This isn’t as easy as you think because you die in one hit too. There are traps and obstacles to avoid, such as lasers and spotlights. Sometimes you will have to think a little to find a way around an enemy who is blocking the path.
There are five levels, and four of them focus around a central hub with branching mini-levels. There is a level to infiltrate each hub, and within these hubs are clue bottles to open a vault at each level. These vaults contain new moves for Sly, which come in really handy. It is a lot of fun to find these bottles because the levels are pretty short and aren’t too hard to find. Some levels are actually mini-games that consist of covering Murray on a turret, a dual-stick shooter mini-game, or even a race. These are really hard and require quick reflexes, or you will die often. Before you ask, yes, there are lives in this game, but 100 coins give you a 1-up, but other than that, the coins are useless.
The boss fights are really fun in this game, but also really tough. They require precise movement and patience, because one hit and you are dead in this game. Yes, that sounds really brutal, but it is true. You can get magnets that act as free hits, but these are pretty rare. In fact, probably the most frustrating thing about this game is that with just one hit, you are dead. This includes falling in the water or off a ledge. Later, in vaults, you can find a page that prevents you from dying when falling off ledges or in water, which is a lifesaver (literally). Before that, though, you will die dozens and dozens of times because there are some cheap deaths in this game, but because of how fun it is, you will quickly get over it.
The art style is beautiful, with a cell-shaded comic book look that wasn’t really seen in games before Sly. The graphics look great even for today, but that probably has a lot to do with the art style, which hides the lack of technical prowess of the PS2. The voice acting is a bit spotty, but it brings out the characters, which are nice. I just wish I could have played Bentley or Murray more. They are all great characters and need more time in the spotlight. If this game wasn’t so short and infuriatingly difficult in spots, it would be perfect.
Overall, Sly Cooper is a great entry into one of the best franchises ever created and is a pinnacle for the PS2. Solid controls, excellent platforming, fun combat, and a whimsical art style make this a must-have in your collection.
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Great post tthankyou