D2 Dreamcast Finished - Review

I do not know why it took me so long to beat D2 but I am glad I did.

First off let me tell you D2 is not to everyone's taste. Some people might not like it at all. Other might be put off by some of the gameplay issues.

Here are a quick few bad points about the game.

1. This game has VERY annoying cutscenes. Didn't like the doors opening and closing in RE games? You will HATE the amount of time this game takes to focus on opening doors and picking up items and stuff. Learn to love double clicking the B button since that is what skips cutscenes. A real shame since most of the cutscenes are great! But WHY would we need a 10 second cutscene of Laura picking up an item????? It's not even an important item, just a health pack or something...shit man.

2. This game should have had lightgun funtion. This would have been AWESOME. When you go into combat in this game you move from 3rd person to 1st person perspective. You have a target that you move arount with the directional or the analog controller. I use directional since the analog aiming seems to be pretty damn shoddy. But I think the light gun could have made this game SO much better. I mean you go into combat mode. You quickly grab the lightgun and aim it. It would have been great!

3. The voice acting does not match up well to some of the characters.

4. The item system sucks.

5. Not enough bonus stuff to find. Everything is linear.

6. Battle system is either WAY too easy or RAPES you.

Overall though I had an excellent time in this game. I like the weird story more than the glitchy gameplay. You command your chracter Laura (who must be related to Gordon Freeman because she almost never TALKS) around Canada after a plane crash. The story is weird and the cutscenes are weirder. Consider slogging through the 4 disks just to watch the ending movie. It's awesome and possibly the most messed up video I have seen in a video game yet.

You get levels as a character that give you more hit points and allow you to do more damage but this is more of a bonus than something you need to do. Collecting the weapons and lmited ammo is more important. This is one of the VERY few games that I didn't feel the need to max out my characters levels to beat the game. You get basic weapons that have unlimited ammo...I usually do not like this, but the fact that you also have limited ammo weapons like the shotgun make it more acceptable.

A quick note on item collecting. You need to use the Y button + the analog stick to look around every room to collect items when you are inside a building and in first person mode. This is annoying... What is even more annoying is that in some spots you CANNOT get items that you miss after you leave a room or something happens. They are still there, you just CANNOT get them....this drives you slowly insane in certain spots where you can miss ammo and health packs. So when you get to a new area, look ALL around and get all the items before you actually DO anything. That's the only way to avoid missing items.

The hunting aspect of this game is nice and can be considered a minigame. In fact if your controller sucks and you can't get a hang of the combat, hunting is a great way to get meat to replenish life points without having to waste medkits. (save those for the final CD, there are NO animals to shoot and eat) Just select the gun from the left trigger menu when you see an animal in the distance, zome in and shoot the bugger. Kill more animals for better aiming and little metals. The meat is the important thing though. You need to keep plenty healthy in this game incase you get suddenly beat down by three different monsters. Save often so you don't loose your levels or meat if you happen to die accidently. (which is actually difficult until the last CD since you can pause and heal yourself at any time)

The bosses make up for the normally crappy gameplay. VERY cool. If the regular enemies were half as fun to fight as the bosses then this game would be GREAT.

There is also a ton of messed up shit in this game which is actually toned down from theJapanese version (tenacle in the mouth, nudity).

You really get the feeling that some of the characters in this game that you face off against are truly demented. Notice that I say demented and not evil, in fact most of the creatures and bosses you face were once normal humans and you feel better after putting them out of their insane mutated misery.

The true evil is the last boss, which was about the only gameplay I truly got into. An experience!
Good for collection purposes and to fight the last boss to see the ending. If you see if for about $9 American get it. Otherwise hold out. It was one of the last games distributed in the USA and it is NOT really rare (no matter what people tell you). I wouldn't pay over $15 for this game unless it was NEW in shrink wrap.

Like I said some people like me will enjoy this strange game, others cannot look past it's flaws. Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it. 8/10