I remember seeing copies of Parasite Eve on store shelves all the time back in the day. Curious, I'd pick it up, feel somewhat intrigued by the premise, but ultimately always ended up passing on it. Being a game by Squaresoft with the tagline "the cinematic RPG," I was worried the game would be all style and no substance. Since I'm in my current trend of playing old PlayStation games on my PSP when I'm away from home, and since the game is cheap enough to download, I figured now was as good a time as any to give the game a shot.
When a game describes itself as being "cinematic," I interpret that to mean the game wants to be like a movie. To me, that means a game should emphasize its visuals, its story, and its characters, to make the game's overall presentation more closely resemble that of a typical Hollywood movie. Well the bad news for Parasite Eve is that its story and characters are absolute garbage, and nearly all of the game's audio-visual aesthetics fail to impress outside out of the pre-rendered cutscenes. Thankfully the gameplay is pretty good, providing an interesting blend of RPG and survival-horror elements, but that's the game's only saving grace.