Daikatana

I got this 2 weeks after release for £2! It just didn't sell. It got terrible reviews, but I thought I'd try it anyway. First chapter was a bit average. Also a bit weird. Battles to the death against small insects. Then the sidekicks appear. Oh dear. Every door became an epic boss challenge that took 30 minutes to defeat. Every fight became a pain in a butt as your sidekicks run straight up to the bad guys to ensure that the bad guys can get a good shot at them. So much for the amazing AI that was promised. You spend the rest of the chapter attempting to shepard suicidal idiots who can't work out what those mysterious rectangular holes in walls are for and instead mash their faces against the wall to try to get to the other side. Then came chapter 2. No sidekicks and all you have is a sword. And then you realise you're fighting skeletons in ancient Greece. It was "Jason and the Argonauts - the Game"! It was epic. If the entire game had just been that it would have declared the greatest game ever made. Then sadly chapter 2 ends and chapters 3 and 4 are like chapter 1. The game wasn't terrible. It was just average except for the completely unexpected awesomeness of chapter 2. And it also gave me a lifelong irrational fear of doors.

... of course though, a game-breaking bug midway through prevents me from finishing it. Not the worst game ever, honestly. The ad campaign was pure, sweet hubris, and Romero paid for it with his reputation. But the game itself? I've seen and played worse. Unfortunately, it does not really become any better as you progress. The most interesting thing so far was the different weapon sets with each subsequent new realm (plotwise, timeperiod) you enter, with their own motif. These realms, though, would probably have been better if they were games in their own right, and given more time and polish. However the clashing styles don't do this game any service, especially when there is nothing but a flimsy plot and uninteresting characters stringing it together.

Ok if you are goint to buy this game, download the unofficial l 1.3 patch because you can have the option to play without the friendly A.I. Not the best but I did not think it is as bad as people make it out to be.

There are some games that were panned upon release that benefit from hindsight. Maybe the time wasn't right. Maybe development was troubled. Maybe the execution doesn't quite land, but the ideas are good. Daikatana isn't one of those games. This was bad by 2000 standards, it was bad by 1997 standards, it was bad by 1993 standards. The thing about Daikatana is that it was definitely ambitious; a transchronologic adventure, with AI partners and a whole host of diverse weapons, as well as an overwritten plot. Certainly for its time, it could even be considered innovative for the genre. The problem is that the execution isn't there and it's not there in a big way. Buggy and glitchy; AI partner pathfinding breaking or getting stuck in geometry (leading to entire level reloads). Level design that is tedious at the best of times. Melee combat that is woefully unresponsive (big problem when your game is centered around a magic sword). Ugly, with repetitive music loops and sound effects. Even the story, as innovative as it might sound as an idea, is terribly written. What the game does have is a nice combat flow; shooting and movement feel good, but this is not enough to balance out everything else. Don't play it. Don't buy it. Even as a curio. It's not worth it. Even the 1.3 fan patch, as much as it fixes some things, can't fix the shattered foundations of this disasterous piece of electronic abortion.

The 1.3 update fixes the technical flaws, so I'll bump it up to 5/10. It's tolerable as long as you adjust the AI settings and unlimited saves. Operating as intended, Daikatana is still lame. Hitscan enemies nail you with 100% accuracy the millisecond you open a door, and the early weapons and enemies were poorly designed for the environment. It's not "the worst game ever," at least the PC version isn't. Whoever says that hasn't played many games. A depressing number of games then lacked manual saves. The sadistic level design is way more forgiving and intuitive than Hexen. Unreal, C&C Renegade, Red Faction, and Halo had levels just as inept and frustrating as Daikatana's jungle sequence. Hell, Daikatana can't even claim the title of most atrocious jungle mission in the year 2000, that goes to Hitman.