Parasite Eve (Patreon)

http://sincomics.com/ I was playing Parasite Eve again, and that's still a really good game after all these years. Eve was a fun villain. Just evil enough that you want to hunt her down, but human enough that she's just kind of a jerk too. She's an evil monster but has enough humanity to pick on you and be petty through the game and that's a good mix. There's a lot of charm in how bonkers the story, characters, and animations are so even though the graphics didn't age well, there's an appeal to it. I also love how the final boss is basically you murdering a baby. Granted, it is an evil, evil baby with pyrokinesis, a forked tail, and devil wings, but you're still shooting a baby in the face with a gun. The gameplay certainly has its issues with Aya's pathetically small inventory size, her sluggish running speed, and that the balancing is so bad that Aya is either an unstoppable god or a total wuss that dies in two hits and it's usually just a level or two separating those extremes. But the battle system is fantastic. It's a great melding of turn-based attacking with real-time movement that I'd like to see in more games. PE gave me hope for JRPGs that they'd grow out of their archaic systems and adopt new ideas, like more control over your character, less time in menus, combat that's fast, getting rid of towns and shops, a simple system to upgrade your weapons but one that has depth based on how you want to customize yourself, and no random battles, but sadly the industry didn't lean into that stuff. And jeez the bonus dungeon is so terrible. I want to do the extra boss fights but the idea of slogging through 70 levels of a randomly generated maze kills my interest.