Daikatana Review

Last time, I wanted to give my opinion on Saints Row IV, an interesting-looking game that could turn out to be a disaster, putting it in the same category as games like Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever and Sonic Next Gen.
Today I'm going to review one of those games. Now, John Romero, creator of the revolutionary DOOM franchise, had resigned from Id Software somewhere in the late 90s. And from there, he had established Ion Storm Inc. alongside fellow Id employee Tom Hall. And we all know the result; an overhyped video game with the infamous egocentric advertisement: "John Romero is going to make you his bitch. Suck it down." I speak, of course, of Daikatana. Obviously, you already have an idea of what I'm about to get into. This was the game that established my distrust for supposedly revolutionary video games. Now, this was originally intended for the first Quake Engine, but Romero later decided to say "Fuck all that," and switch with the Quake II engine, causing a bunch of frustrated developers to give up on it. It also caused the game to be released about 3 years after its intended deadline 1997. That's right, 2000. In fact, one of the demos ran at a mere 12 frames per second. Was it a decent game for its time? I think it should be self-explanitory. I never played the PC version, but apparently, it's supposed to be slightly better than the version of Daikatana I've played... the N64 version. *Shudders* Now, don't get me wrong, I grew up with the N64 and Playstation, Sega Saturn, shit like that. I've played games like Resident Evil, Mario Kart 64, Ocarina of Time, considered some of the best games of all time. So, there's no reason for Daikatana to have been as bad as it was. The game starts up with an 11 minute cutscene where... the graphics, textures, camera, and character animations are bland and just hard to look at. In fact, there is no voice acting, at least not in the N64 version. The premise is that, in the year 2455 AD, the world is in crisis by a severe pandemic, caused by the antagonist Kage Mishima. The ancient blade Daikatana is the key to time travel, which Mishima used to cause the pandemic and take over the world. So now, it's up to protagonist Hiro Miyamoto, a martial arts master who is accompanied by his allies Superfly Johnson and Mikiko Ebihara to undo the pandemic and take down Mishima. The concept of this game is kind of interesting, but just never led anywhere. From what I've researched, Johnson and Ebihara, in the PC version, accompanied you throughout the game, and with their help, you had to solve certain puzzles in the game. The sidekick AI was horrible and became a major point of criticism. The N64 version didn't have the characters helping you out, but instead kept them in the cutscenes. As for gameplay, it's like Daikatana with RPG elements. Your character has 5 attributes to level up as follows, vitality, attack, speed, acro, and power. Defeat enough enemies and you level up and enhance, one of these abilities, these enhancements are barely noticeable. Remember when I said that the textures and graphics are bland and hard to look at. That's not even the best that can be described about them. I mean I can list several other games with better graphics than Daikatana that were released around the same time, even before that. The game also controls horribly; left and right on the D-Pad cycles through weapons, Control Stick looks around, C moves foreward, backward, left and right Z fires weapons, B brings up your weapon menu screen, R jumps, A is miscellaneous, and A and R at the same time crouches. But unless you have the instruction manual, you'll never figure that shit out. The setting and plot is alright in my opinion, but nothing really special. Same could be said for the music and sound effects. Level 1 is the present day where you find the Daikatana, Level 2 is ancient Greece where you fight a gorgon monster, which is probably Medusa, and I think one of the causes of the pandemic, Level 3 is ye olde Europe where you fight King Garroth, the black knight, and Level 4 is back to Mishima's era where you fight him and end the pandemic... after a shocking plot twist. The abundent technical problems in Daikatana can be gamebreaking at times. Yet surprisingly, the boss fights are pretty easy. The best feature of the game is the wide variety of weapons. You start off with the Distuptor Glove , which isn't all that effective. Well, that is pretty expectable as it's your starting weapon. In the first world, you obtain a pistol-like Ion Cannon, a rocket launcher called the Side Widner, the Shock Wave cannon, the C4vizatergo grenade, and the badass Shot Cycler, a submachine gun/shot gun hybrid. In the second world, you get the Discus of Daedalus, which is a razor sharp circular boomerang, the poison Venomous which will kill any organic enemy in a few seconds, the mighty Poseidon Trident, which was originally intended to be a melee weapon as far as I'm concerned, and a powerful shockwave hammer. You get the idea, there's more weapons in the other levels. Y'know, this could go on and on, but point is... overall, I'm so-so for Daikatana. The biggest problem is that not a lot of effort was put into Daikatana, and it was supposed to be a lot better than it turned out to be. Many consider this to be one of the worst FPS games of all time. When games like Bioshock and Tomb Raider are met with critical acclaim, I can't help but wonder where games like Final Fantasy XVI and Duke Nukem Forever went wrong. And one thing I'm more afraid of than being disappointed is being disappointed by a video game. Oh well, it could have been worse. Bottom line, Daikatana is one of the biggest disasters in video game history.
Final Score: 4.5/10
If you liked my review of this, feel free to check out Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
That's all for now. Peace out!