Happy about: Wicked Seed

Back in 1998, at the peak of their creative input in the 1990s, SquareSoft has released a game called Parasite Eve. A “cinematic RPG” that combined a lot of the game systems they’ve been using at the time, with an exciting story-driven action blockbuster production. The game is still, despite its flaws, beloved by many and there has never been anything quite like it – even the direct sequel of the game, that I happen to love even more, was a very different beast, leaning a lot more into classic survival horror mechanics. So, unsurprisingly, it has been mostly up to independent developers of recent years to try and recapture the magic of that original Parasite Eve game. And Wicked Seed is one of such titles – a reimagining of the same general mechanical idea, but done on a much much much tinier budget.

Just like its main inspiration, Wicked Seed is technically a turn-based RPG with a heavy focus on exploration and adventuring, borrowing the overall structure approach of a classic survival horror. Though unlike PE, Wicked Seed leans much more into this structure and, in fact, up until the final boss fight you can simply revisit almost any previously seen location in the game to search for things you might’ve missed before or just engage in combat with enemies on locations. Additionally, despite being clearly inspired by PE and relying on the same basics, the actual combat mechanics in Wicked Seed work differently. Sure, the game is still very heavily about smart positioning when you commit to any action – a somewhat lost art of modern titles that aren’t tactics games, – and you still have limited combat areas, skills that use special energy, importance of distance for an attack and many other familiar elements. But the differences are far more important.

So, for one, this game doesn’t have a meter that needs to fill before you can take action and instead you can perform as many actions, as much stamina you have right now – a meter that constantly refills during combat. So that means that you have a lot more choice in how many chains of actions you want to commit to per each “turn”. Enemies do work on clearly defined “turns”, however, and they just stop and do nothing between each attack. Additionally, apart from just prompting enemy attacks and getting out of the way (movement doesn’t cost any stamina), you early on gain an ability to block attacks and later still even parry them, which in turn plays into systems of stagger and special finisher moves that deal a lot of damage. Combat locations in the game are usually quite cramped, unlike Parasite Eve where you’d have giant screens of empty space to fight in, so mastering all of the different ways to avoid being hit and learning enemy behaviour becomes extremely important.

When you play the game on Normal and without any modifiers, the game is quite well balanced, though that always depends on how well you learn the weapons you use and what approach to combat you take. But even if you do die, you can simply restart and that will place you right before the combat. Though, otherwise, the game utilizes the typical save point system, though with the addition of Souls-like ideas, like the ability to heal for free at a save room, but that heal respawning all enemies in the game. It is also worth noting that more often than not, when an enemy starts an attack, they will start walking towards you and will not stop until they can initiate the attack, which is quite different from PE, where most enemies had attacks that could be initiated from anywhere on the screen, so you’d always need to just dodge it when it starts. Here, you actually need to let the enemy get close to you before they can do anything.

As could be expected, the game is chock full of unlockables, bonus things, new game plus mode, bonus dungeons (one was added recently as free update and another announced as a future free update) and other things to do. So you could level up more, upgrade weapons more and all that good stuff. Which is going to be the main draw of the game, I would imagine, since most of the rest of the game is quite dreadful. I mean, the game is quite ugly and uninteresting to look at, the script is terrible and the music is forgettable. Puzzles range from uninteresting to “guess what am I thinking” utter nonsense. Levels are rather poorly thought out and there is no map (by design), making some of them quite confusing too. The only other big thing, apart from fun mechanics, that seems to be a big focus for the developer, is the absurd collection of increasingly more explicit outfits for the main heroine of the game to go along with the butt shots every time she has to crawl. You thought you’d get some cool unlockable infinite ammo weapon for an S+ rank? Nope, the reward is half-transparent nightgown for the main character. Priorities!

But despite being in many regards a trashy game, the core mechanics are genuinely good. Not very refined and at least partially dependent on the Parasite Eve nostalgia. But very good and with enough cool ideas to stand on its own. I really enjoyed playing Wicked Seed for those core combat mechanics and would love to see the developer do more with them.