Parasite Eve: Squaresoft’s cinematic RPG (Review)

In the 1990s Square was making a big push towards making video games more like film. Starting with Final Fantasy VII with it’s very impressive opening cinematic and character focused story. This continues throughout their remaining SNES games, and into the PS1 era. Emphasis is placed upon story, cutscenes, and visuals. This comes to a head with the bombastic cinematics of FF7 and its later siblings. Each of these games felt like RPGs that utilized filmic elements to help tell their story, but never truly “cinematic” RPGs. That title is most aptly applied to Parasite Eve. It packs many filmic elements together with innovative RPG mechanics to create a very unique experience.

What makes Resident Evil 4 so special?

When it comes to single player games, I very very rarely replay them. Heck, it’s not unusual for me to never beat many games that I claim to love.  I tend to play a game until I “get what it’s doing”, after which I’ll put it down and maybe never pick it up again.  When deciding what game to play, especially single player games, I like to seek out new experiences.  That said, there are a few games that break this mold: Bloodborne, some Final Fantasy games, and all the Metal Gear Solid games.  But the game I always come back to, the one I’ve replayed not once, or twice, but many many times, is Resident Evil 4.  With this blog post, I want to examine what it is about RE4 that makes it so memorable and repayable. What puts it above almost every other game* in my mind?