Ugly duckling is a series of posts talking about games that could’ve been great, but were not.
You probably never heard of T.R.A.G. (T.R.A.G.: Tactical Rescue Assault Group – Mission of Mercy or Hard Edge) until seeing this post or, at least, until listening to the collections of top worst videogame voice acting. But hey, since you’re here, check this: T.R.A.G. is a bizarre mix of survival horror, jRPG, beat em up/slasher/fighting and lots and lots of stupidest anime tropes imaginable. I mean, even if its most likely stupid, at least it sounds intriguing, right?
I suppose, releasing this game in the West in 99 was not a particularly good time. A year after MGS has shown how voice acting can be done. A year after Resident Evil discarded most of its cheesiness in voice acting and got better visually. A year after Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy VIII. This game has an unbelievably terrible dub which you can experience during the opening cutscene and even better when the cutscene ends and one of the main characters starts speaking with a different voice. Not a best first impression in 99.
But what is this game anyway? You start with two characters. Alex has a gun and his gameplay is pretty close to how you’d expect a Resident Evil-like game to play. Michelle uses a knife and plays more like a beat em up character. You can switch between the characters at any point, yet after a short intro they get separated and interesting things happen. Sure, we already had RE2 at that point and it had the “zapping system” and “scenario B”, yet this was unlike anything else. Some choices at the start did affect how the first few hours will play, how new characters will be met and how some puzzles will be solved. All while keeping the ability to switch between characters at any point. And then we get even more characters (though, sadly, at that point the game becomes more linear).
As mentioned, the game is full of terrible, and entertaining due to that, anime cliches. Rachel is a (kind of a spoiler, I suppose) cyber-loli with… ehh.. body parts bigger than they should be and camera focusing on butt wiggle a bit too often. Burns is a gigantic detective dude who punches stuff. Main villain becomes part software and looks like some evil boss from Mega man series. Bad evil lady with giant boobs and long laser nails later shows her “true form” as a demonic-looking bdsm leather-bound boss. And she’s not even the only boss to do that “let me show you my true form” thing. This is so incredibly stupid, yet the game manages to do lots of incredible attention to detail in the most unexpected places. Like, lots of special condition game over moments have their own fully rendered cutscenes that last quite a while.
Though, of course, it’s not all entertaining. Some of the translation silliness can get in the way (for example one puzzle seems to rely on a hint said by the character, yet what you have to do is the opposite to the hint). Alex’s cool tech headband turns out to be a nightvision device that you need to use in several locations, which you might not even know about depending on how you played the opening. Searching for items works just like it would in a traditional jRPG – by hugging all walls and mashing action. And in case you found something, continue mashing, sometimes there are more items to be picked up and all of them must be picked up one by one. Oh and the final boss is absolutely ridiculous and doesn’t fit the RE-like controls the game has.
It’s really weird to replay the game nowadays. I mean, it’s blindingly obvious why it hasn’t become more popular or known at all. Yet, it’s also full of really cool ideas that I have not seen in other games since then and it’s not shy to be absolutely stupid while being serious about it.