It seems that a minority still want to view this game as "greater" than the sum of its parts, but never seem to address the problems that individually tear this game to pieces. Obviously when you shoe horn in a lot unfinished mechanics with a decent storyline, a unique visual design of characters within said plot, and nice setting to have it all take place in, you're hedging your betsIt seems that a minority still want to view this game as "greater" than the sum of its parts, but never seem to address the problems that individually tear this game to pieces. Obviously when you shoe horn in a lot unfinished mechanics with a decent storyline, a unique visual design of characters within said plot, and nice setting to have it all take place in, you're hedging your bets that the positives outweigh the negatives. In this instance however, their is a constant subtle effect of negative outweighing the positive throughout. From the horrid camera controls, fixed camera angles, woefully terrible combat, woefully goofy artificial intelligence, the utterly boring races, the collect-athon photography mini-game, (that I should remind everyone has no bearing on the plot after the first "Domz" attack) the bizarre characters that grew obnoxious even after the first twelve times they uttered dialogue and the main character herself feeling more fleshed out than any other half-baked concepts in the game. Playing through the game so long after release allows players now to isolate the "bad" and see if its possible to push through till the end of the game hoping that all they've put up with will be rewarded. Which never happens. The game ends with a whimper and a completely unnecessary cliff hanger. Given the time of its release, I can see why many would sympathize with the title having received "less then" the right amount of attention or respect, but the painful truth is that it "didn't" revolutionize any mechanics. It borrowed more from older mechanics, half-assed those, and was then laden with a mystical sort of reputation as "the game that didn't sell well." I think after all this time it'd be a bit obvious why of course. Their were things in this game that didn't work. Stealth sections were embarrassingly dull and simple. Drawn out to the point of tedium, lacking any real complexity most times. The player faced no serious peril or repercussions from dying at any point in the game and merely had to sit around for about ten seconds after Jades slow-motion, cinematic, and ultimately pointlessly received "death-blow." The minor characters are barely made relevant as well since the plot is immediately thrown on top of you after the first "mission" of the game. It draws you in a bit and then it just goes nowhere. Nowhere but clear cut, no choice, linear pathways through the rest of the game and story. The dialogue is rough as well, featuring fairly inconsistent performances in a game all about characterizing the main characters and even Jade fails to sound committed or merely concerned about anything going on. She doesn't ask questions, she's just like "Rebels good, Empire bad." Its a tired, old, mangy, dead horse of a concept and their is no build-up aside from the introduction, the brief fight at the beginning so that players could familiarize themselves with the simplistic combat system, and a very light explanation for all of it one to two hours into the story. Their is no excuse for the barrage of silly side quests that merely slowed down the main quest and it destroyed any feeling of urgency when a supposed side-character is in trouble, only for Jade to be out hunting "pearls" to fix up a Hovercraft for optional racing side-quests. Everything in this game aside from the world, setting and visual style seems to have received more effort than anything else. Why is Jade a cardboard cut-out? Why do other characters seem utterly pointless upon first meeting and subsequent meetings afterwards? Why are we thrust into these linear and boring areas of the game when the initial starting points seem so large and varied? Alpha Section must be paying quite a bit on their electric bill to keep all these lasers going, I mean I haven't seen this many lasers shoved into level design since Rayman 2. Which isn't even a slam on Rayman 2. That game had brilliant level design and is in many ways very similar to Beyond Good & Evil. The problem here was these tiny boxes of levels that Jade was shoved into, only for the player to realize after they were over: "Wow, without all those switches, stealth sections, forced fighting sections, photo-sessions, and brief cinematics, that wouldn't have taken very much time at all." Which is the point, everything done to frustrate the player, through "so simple you feel like an idiot" puzzle solutions, to the cramped level design, you start to get the feeling that this was all just a vehicle to tell the story. Which is a terrible feeling. As cinematic "experiences" games fall flat in almost every regard. Its not what their about. Beyond Good & Evil tried to balance the two and failed. Its eleven years later and it has completely failed to grab me or immerse me into its world through its broken mechanics, poor design, and lackluster characters. I can't believe people still call this game "underrated."… Expand
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