Battle Royale

Introduction

I was excited to see this game on the list as I've been a fan of the Battle Royale manga since it traumatized me when I was 12. Although it's been a while since I read it, and I never saw the movies (movies are really not my thing), I was looking forward to revisit a familiar story and being able to focus on mechanics and presentation.

I'm going to comment on some of the plot as I go along, so don't open those spoiler tags if you want to go into this spoiler free.

First Impressions

The cute sprite art of the game proper looks weird when overlaid with shots from the movie. I think I'd rather have RTP only assets.

I decided to start with Shinji because he was my favorite when I originally read the manga. I appreciate that there are options to skip the death scenes and the prologue, but I choose to skip neither so I could appreciate the game as it was meant to be played.

The game does a fairly good job of making the characters all look different at first glance. The real life graphics still bother me when it comes to the dialogue. It breaks the immersion when I have to process them side by side with the sprites.

At the start of the game, the music feels a bit too bombastic for what's happening. There's very little action actually going on onscreen, but the music trumpets on. This seems to be a pattern with the game.

I was kind of expecting the weapons to be truly randomized, but it seems to be following the movie. It's too bad, it could be interesting for an adaptation.

The First Playthrough

As soon as the prologue ended, I went on exploring. I didn't know where exactly I was supposed to go, and the game didn't help. The flashlight mechanic is a nice touch. It helps in building suspense. I like that items are marked with little shiny spots on the map, as that prevents the frustration of bumping your head into everything just trying to find a piece of equipment.



Time seems to pass on either the basis of steps, or screens, or something else, as I would often be doing absolutely nothing besides exploring and be interrupted by cutscenes of characters I knew nothing about. It felt a bit ridiculous that my character was on the other side of the map, and yet I know that these characters had died and how.

After 30 minutes of gameplay, the lack of direction in the game was starting to frustrate me. Characters seem to spawn randomly in the map, and just walking off a map makes them disappear, and it's very easy to make a mistake and change maps when you don't want to, as the areas of the map that serve as transfer points will accept any direction. You'll turn right even if you're walking up. You have to be careful if you're walking alongside an edge.

I had my first fight along the 40 minute mark. I just spammed attack. Without any sort of skills, it seemed like I didn't need any sort of strategy. Shinji is supposed to be OP, but I already had two allies, which only made the fight easier. The corpse remained on the field which is a nice touch.



Around the one hour mark, I decided to check out what would happen if I walked into a danger zone. I died. Just as well, since I still wanted to check out the other characters.

Second Playthrough

The intro is a lot more grating the second time around. It would be nice if you could skip it. This time I'm going with Shuya. I was gonna go with Hiroki, but he's not available. I'm skipping the prologue this time.

The second playthrough is much quicker to get into fighting territory, but without the Beretta I'm at an instant disadvantage in combat. I decide to walk into the opposite direction than I did last playthrough.

11 minutes into the game and I nearly have an heart attack when I leave the menu to find Kazuo right in front of me. And this happens yet again. This never happened in the first playthrough, so I was surprised. After continuously being attacked by him, coming from the weirdest angles, with no sense or reason, I died and gave up. I don't know if this is some mechanic I accidentally activated, or if it's a byproduct of play as Shuya, but either way, it was too much, too soon.

Final Thoughts

I liked the game far more than I was expecting, but there were just too many things to keep me from really getting into it.

For starters, the dramatic music at all times does nothing but make the game seem disjointed. The sudden jumps in the music always came when nothing special was happening, so I'd jump out of my skin just to realize I was still looking at a normal mirror, or in the middle of a plain field. The weird juxtaposition of sprites and pictures was also against this game, which sucks, because the game itself looks pretty good.

The map item was nearly useless besides giving me a general idea of where I was. It didn't change with the characters that died, and the names of special locations were in Japanese.

The game seems to be conflicted on whether it wants to be a free roaming game, or a more linear game that follows the manga/novel to a tee. You're dropped off with no directions on where to go, and you can recruit characters... Even if you saw them die in a cutscene. I would be even more confused if I didn't already know the story.

Finally, Kazuo chasing me was the final drop in the bucket that lowered the score I wanted to give this game. It came out of nowhere, and seemed to be unavoidable. I ran for like, five screens, but he always seemed to find me. This made the playthrough unbearable, as I was still using the starting equipment for Shuya and had no chances of winning.

There were also a few mappings bugs and spelling errors.



Huh.

In the end, it's on the way to being a solid game, but I just couldn't get into it.