The Bouncer was Squaresoft’s first game on the Playstation 2 and another attempt by the company to mix an action-adventure game with an RPG.
Full Review
The Bouncer Review
By, Jason Ferguson
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
I’d recently finished a few RPGs and needed something new to play. I picked up The Bouncer, a Squaresoft RPG/Fighter, from the rental place. The game is pretty unique, but that’s pretty much all it has going for it. I love Square and figured that The Bouncer would be a classic Squaresoft title, but I was disappointed. Although not really a bad game it doesn’t feel much at all like an RPG, and fans of the genre may want to skip over this one…unless they’re also a big fan of fighting games.
The story to the game is pretty weak, but as good as can be expected for a game that can be beat in an hour. Your main character is Sion Barzahd, a bouncer in a bar called Fate. Dominique, a co-worker and friend of his (and his love interest, but he won’t admit it right away), is mysteriously kidnapped by special agents from Mikado, a super powerful corporation that can pretty much do whatever it wants (kinda like Umbrella from Resident Evil, but with less zombies and more robots). Sion and his bouncer friends rush off to rescue Dominique from Mikado and beat up everyone in their path until they rescue Dominique and unravel the mystery of her kidnapping. That’s pretty much all there is to the storyline…at least all I can mention without spoiling the few interesting parts. There’s actually some good twists in the plot and overall it actually has a pretty interesting story. But it’s so short and underdeveloped that it doesn’t really matter. There’s some interesting character history you can read during the load screens, but it flashes away so fast that its often hard to read. The characters aren’t really bad, it’s just that they are even more underdeveloped than the story. They’d actually have to add a few more hours to the game if they wanted to put some real character development in, so you end up with very little. I did find the boss an interesting character, and I even felt kind of bad for him a few times. Other than him everyone was just filling their boring roles.
Battle consists of running around punching and kicking bad guys… that’s it. It’s fun beating the crap out of people for a while, but I lost interest pretty quick. I would have quit if it wasn’t for the fact that the game was so short. Whenever you get the finishing blow in a battle your character gets battle points. These points can be used to learn new skills, or increase yours strength, defense and life. You’ve got three characters to choose from in battle, Sion, Kou and Volt. They’re attack styles differ somewhat so they each have their uses. You also can see certain things from their perspective when playing as them, which adds a little to the replay value and does help strengthen the story a little bit. In many battles you are accompanied by your bouncer buddies, but sometimes you’re forced to fight alone. Something that bothered me when playing the game is that when your character gets near an enemy he practically comes to a complete stop. So if you’re trying to run by an enemy, or back away from an attack, you’re pretty screwed. You’d think the character wouldn’t come to a complete stop when he gets close to a giant robot that’s trying to crush him. Maybe he’s just taken a few too many blows to the head. As annoying as this all was, combat was actually pretty fun (at least until I realized how repetitive it was). I don’t get to beat the crap out of robots often enough, and it’s a hobby I wouldn’t mind picking up.
The A.I. was pretty bad too and when you and your comrades were in battle they often sat there doing nothing. My teammates died quite often and I was forced to finish most of the battles myself. The more you use your other party members the more powerful they will become and the less likely they are to die, but they’ll still be idiots when you’re not using them. You don’t want your buddies to do too much of the work anyway or you won’t be able to get the final hit and strengthen your character. Somehow this group of bouncers manages to fist-fight their way into the headquarters of the largest corporation on the planet. You’d think the security would be a little better than that. I’ve seen malls that were better protected than this place. You never run into a security guard with a gun…the whole time everyone just goes toe to toe with you in hand to hand combat. Maybe they’re just trying to be honorable and fight fair? Nah, they’re trying to take over the world…what do they care about honor.
The graphics in The Bouncer were one of the high points. The characters were detailed and moved convincingly even when doing complex moves, and the cinematics were excellent. There were lots of these beautiful cinemas too, so you’ll definitely get an eyefull. There’s actually too many of them, and after nearly every battle you see some sort of cinema. Then at the end of the cinema you pop into another battle…this is all the game is really. It’s just a bunch of pretty cool looking graphics that tie together a very underdeveloped story with some people getting beat up in-between. It gets pretty annoying waiting for the load times every couple of minutes, because the battles were usually REALLY short and then you’d have to wait for the upcoming cinema. The backgrounds looked nice, but there really wasn’t much to them. There was practically no interaction at all with the environment, and there wasn’t even that many times when you got control of the game outside of battle…everything was done in cinema. At least the cinemas were nice. Actually, some of the nicest I’ve ever seen.
The sound was decent, but nothing great. Each character had different grunts and groans they made in battle, a taunt, and different things they said to start out the battle and different sayings when they died (hopefully you won’t hear the last one too much though…the game isn’t very hard). The voice acting wasn’t very good though, and most of the characters lacked any real emotion. That’s probably just because the dialog was so bad because some of the voice overs were actually decent. The voices seemed to fit the characters, but they had stupid and predictable lines. Fortunately, the music was quite good. It seemed to do a good job of setting the mood and kind of made me want to start fighting.
The game’s got some replay value to it fortunately. There’s a multiplayer mode where you and your friends can sit around and beat each other up, and you can replay the game keeping all of your upgrades. The bad guys get harder on replay though, so don’t expect to breeze through the game. You can also play through as a different character to see things from their perspectives. This is all assuming you found the game worth replaying. I probably wouldn’t have bothered playing more than once, but since it’s so short I figured I might as well go for it. I probably spent almost as much time writing this review as I did beating the game. Pretty sad for an RPG, but being a fighter you can’t really expect much more.
I can’t imagine anyone paying $50 to buy this game when it was new, and I’m glad I waited a while to play it. This is a game worth renting if you’re into this sort of thing, and maybe even worth buying if you can find it used for cheap. Not very often do you come across a decent RPG/Fighting game, so if nothing else it gets a few bonus points for being unique. It then loses most of these bonus points for being too short, repetitive and underdeveloped. Although a disappointment as an RPG it really isn’t a horrible game, and if you’re an RPG fan who wants to take out some aggression on killer robots then you may like this game quite a bit.
Final Verdict: 68%
