LTTP: Beyond Good and Evil
Undrey
It seems like the announcement of the closure of the PS3 PSN store did more good than harm for me (only because they didn't go through with it). It was a...
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ResetEra
It seems like the announcement of the closure of the PS3 PSN store did more good than harm for me (only because they didn't go through with it). It was a kick in the butt to start playing all the classic games that I'd missed out on. Having just played Onimusha Warlords, a PS2-gen game that was a lot of fun, but definitely showed its age, I expected the same thing when I started Beyond Good and Evil. I am so glad to have been wrong. I loved this game, so prepare for a lot of gushing over how much I loved it. Also, it looks like there isn't a lot of talk about this game on here? I'm guessing that's because the last release it had was 2011, but still.

The game's an action-adventure game, set on the planet of Hillys. You play as Jade, a 20 year old reporter (more on this in a bit), who lives in a lighthouse with her uncle Pey'j, an engineer, who happens to be an anthropomorphic pig. Jade and Pey'j look after a bunch of orphans at this lighthouse, where they're suddenly attacked by these creatures called the DomZ. This sets you on a journey trying to unravel a bunch of mysteries that I won't spoil. The story has everything I wanted out of a game of its type; you're taken on an sci-fi adventure with twists and turns, some great characters, and a lot of charm.

I love the design of main characters (Jade and Pey'j). They graphically look really good and hold up surprisingly well, almost 20 years later. Their designs feel iconic, in that they're very unique and seeing them immediately reminds me of the game and its world. I was a huge fan of Jade and love the way she was written and portrayed. One of my other favourite characters, was a Kronk-like character that you meet a few hours into the game. The game does a great job of giving each and every character their own personality and making them stand out from one another.

Guess which one you're playing as

The game takes place in a small open-world (or a big hub area), with missions having their own designated areas (that you can revisit at any time). You travel the hub area with your trusty hovercraft, treading over some beautiful water. Certain areas in the hub world are locked off until you buy upgrades for the hovercraft (using pearls you earn through the game) that allow you bypass them (which I loved). You spend most of the game (barring stealth sections) with a companion, and the back-and-forth chatter helps keep things lively. This has become a lot more normal in linear action-adventure games a generation or two later (Uncharted, TLOU), but for a game of its time, it does it surprisingly well.

One of my favourite things in games, and the reason I like the game so much, is the world-building. The game does a great job with making it feel like there's character oozing out of every nook and cranny, and that the story doesn't stop at the planet/sector you're on. The game has a Pedestrian District with a bunch of different characters, shops and a bar. One of these shops is a news stand, where you can subscribe to news channels that update through the game as events happen. The bar has a variety of characters sitting about, some passed out drunk and some playing a weird pallet game (that you can join in on). You can also talk to all of the characters (they respond in text only), and the dialogue choices update as you go through the game.

The game does a great job of world-building through gameplay. Every game mechanic is tied to some sort of character or world characteristic. For example, one of your sources of currency, as a reporter with a camera, is to take photos of different animals (who all have their in-world scientific names) to send to a science museum to help them build up their archive. You also get a line or two for each photo you take from the museum lady, with a chunk of the animals getting unique lines. The camera can also be used to scan physical maps to save them into your HUD. The game's save mechanic (manual saves only), is also done at Mdisk Decrypters. Mdisks (which I just learnt are a real thing) contain various things from databanks to surveillance videos and such. One of these Mdisks is the Save Game Mdisk, that you manually insert into the Mdisk Decrypters to save. I much prefer a system like this of the earlier God of Wars and their save points that were just sources of light.

Another example is the way you collect things while in your hovercraft. Whenever you're next to a collectible while cruising around in your hovercraft, there's a nifty little machine that magnetises to the thing you're next to and pulls it in to collect it. My final example (I could go on forever) detail with the hovercraft, is that all of the aforementioned locked off hub areas have a proper in-world reason for being there. One example is a flying vehicle that pulls you out of zones you're not allowed in. A ship upgrade (that you buy from a garage with Jamaican rhinos(?)) solves this by allowing you to blow the damn ship up before it tries to approach you. These all seem like details that don't matter, but they add so much to the game's world and atmosphere.

Speaking of the game's world and atmosphere, the game looks and sounds great. I played the HD port on the PS3 and thought it would look pixelated and washed out on a 4K TV, but it runs at 1080p and at no point in the game did I think the graphics were anything but gorgeous. My main complaint with the graphics is how amazing some setpieces & shots looked, which would be great if the PS3 had a damn share button, but alas, beautiful moments in the game were left unscreenshotted. Some of those slowmo moments were way ahead of their time. The music was great, with some catchy in-world songs (namely that damn bar song).

With the world-building stuff out of the way, I move on to gameplay gameplay. It's your typical action-adventure gameplay, and I mean that in the best way possible. There's no dedicated jump button, you instead hold R2 and run towards a platform and automatically jump to it (similar to Assassin's Creed). In the place of a jump button, you've got a dodge button that you'll be using during combat. Combat has two buttons, attack and dodge. It's nothing amazing, but it's fun enough for a game that's not prioritising it. Your companion will also participate in combat, and you can have them perform their special move to help you defeat all the enemies. The companion being there for combat is surprisingly not too annoying, as they can handle their own for the most part.

The game also has minigames here and there, like the bar minigame I mentioned above, some races (what would a PS2 game be without racing sections). I enjoyed all of these and never found them too be annoying, or overly abundant. I generally liked all of the gameplay that the game had to offer, and would actually be excited to get collectibles, instead of dreading them or rushing through collecting them.

My main issues with the game were the stealth sections, and one vehicle section in particular. I went through the entire game not loving (or hating) the stealth sections, because once I got caught I tried fighting the enemies and always failed. It wasn't until literally the last mission in the game that I found how you're supposed to actually fight them. Instead of attacking them with their shield up (which prompts them to immediately attack you), you wait for them to attack and then hit them while their shield's down. This was a major dumbass moment that I take full accountability for. Nevertheless, the stealth sections and the vehicle section I mentioned force the Y-axis camera into this weird non-analogue movement where moving the camera up and down forced an "up" or "down" look really quickly, which made it really hard for me to see what was above or below me at times.

All in all, I loved this game and was a bit sad playing through it because of how it did commercially and how unlikely a proper sequel is. I know there's a BG&E2 coming out (if ever), but it seems to stray away from what I loved about this game. I just absolutely love the PS2-ness of it. It might be nostalgia speaking, but there's a certain charm that PS2 era games had that imo haven't been properly replicated by either the AAA or indie scene in recent times. The game took a solid 10 hours, which I found to be the perfect length for this type of game. It never got boring or tedious, instead leaving me wanting more (in a good way). I'd definitely recommend checking this one out if you haven't (apparently the Steam version's not great so watch out for that).

Are there any similar PS2-gen games that are great in the same way this one is? Preferably ones I can play on the PS3/PS4/Vita or Steam. I've got Primal downloaded on the PS4 and will be playing that down the line. I'm really hoping Kena will scratch the same itch.

Also thought this was worth a mention: the game's 1.5GB! In a world of 50+GB games I am ecstatic about this.

Double also, damn I didn't mean for this to be so long.

Unfortunate they seem to have no idea what to do with the property and have farted around with it all this time. It's a game that was a bit ahead of its time. Something like this in a modern context would be more well received imo. Back then it felt a little out of place as the market was pushing more towards edgy content.

Agreed. I think if it had come out around the time Ubisoft was doing the UbiArt games, and if they'd pitched it as a non-AAA game, it'd have done amazingly. I think they'd released it around the same time as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time which makes no sense to me. Like why cannibalise a new IP by releasing it so closely to something as big as PoP.

Man I love this game. Your description is extremely accurate to how I feel too.

The characters, the world-building, the AMAZING MUSIC... all so good. The stealth sections really bring the game down - if they found a way to make them a bit more fun or to rework so there's less stealth, I think it would be a perfect game.

I really REALLY wish the IP would go to a team that understood what made the first game so magical.

Going into the game I honestly did not expect stealth sections at all. It was a total surprise seeing enemies go on their back-and-forth routes and having to sneak through areas. I thought it'd be more combat-oriented. Still, I had some cool moments with the stealth. Once where I used the disc-launcher to sneak past a guard, and another time where I used the disc-launcher to hit a button to make a platform move and kill a guard.

It's really sad seeing what became of the dev team after this. They went from a great new IP to Rabbids games and licensed games. I honestly wouldn't have minded a sequel with minor changes in gameplay. Something like an add-on pack or an expansion. It's also weird seeing how they left if off with a cliffhanger. I think had the game sold better we'd had seen a trilogy akin to the Sands of Time trilogy.

It's interesting reading this on Wikipedia:

Part of the disappointing sales stemmed from Ubisoft not knowing how to market the title,[60]​ something that Ubisoft North America CEO Laurent Detoc labeled as one of his worst business decisions.[61]​ At the time, Ubisoft's marketing efforts were more focused on the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.[59]​ Ubisoft's former North American vice-president of publishing, Jay Cohen, and its European managing director, Alaine Corre, attributed the commercial failure of the game to a lack of marketing. "The game play was there, the technical excellence was there but perhaps the target audience was not there," Corre told the BBC.[62]​[63]​ Corre later commented that the Xbox 360 release (in 2011) "did extremely well", but considered this success "too late" to make a difference in the game's poor sales.[17]​ The game was intended to be the first part of a trilogy, but its poor sales placed those plans on hold at the time.[64]​

Either way, I'm glad the game exists in the first place and that it's available on relatively modern systems. Too many less popular PS2 games are locked to that generation.

I think this video's worth a watch, covers a lot about the game's behind the scenes happenings:

Awesome game. I plan on getting it on XSS as well, just to have it in my library.

Hopefully they don't forget what made the original so unique in a long awaited, sadly MMOey and perhaps overly ambitious sequel.

I was genuinely jealous when I saw that it was available on the newer Xboxes. Really wish backwards compatibility was more supported on the PS4/5 though I get why it's not, with the PS3's weird architecture. If the game has a boost mode it'd genuinely improve the game if it made the loading screens a lot shorter.

It's still an amazing game held back only by a lack of inverted y axis option in the console versions. It often gets compared to Zelda but it's really more in the spirit of the Twinsen games.

Yeah I saw the same complaint about the camera controls on some reviews. I'm glad I play non-invertedly, but the flight controls took a bit of getting used to with them being non-inverted. I don't think the game needs a remake, but a re-remaster with some of these kinks ironed out would be cool.

Great write up and I'm glad you enjoyed the game OP! There's something really comfy about the world, it kinda of reminds me of Psychonauts in a way. The art direction is also just really classy, it was clear that they put a lot of work into how everything needed to look and making sure it was all consistent.

Gonna leave this here, my personal fave tune from the OST:

Thanks! I was scared that the game wouldn't hold up but I'm so glad it did. I totally see what you mean with the Psychonauts comparison. That's a game I need to get back to, I only played a few hours of it but found the platforming janky (at least that's what I remember my excuse being). I think I'll restart the game and go through it fully before the sequel comes out. Really glad that Psychonauts at least gets a proper sequel.

Also hahaha, that song's great. It got stuck in my head while I was doing the races and the air hockey-like minigame with Francis. The Mammago's song was pretty good too. Just like the rest of the game, the OST's full of charm.

I still have very fond memories of this game. It's just so charming and unique. The characters were all incredible and the world was a real joy to explore, it all felt very cozy (except for the horrible human-traficking part, those were frightening). The scenario was very tense at times too and overall I was fully involved from start to finish.

It's one of those gems like Okami that totally flopped and will never get the proper sequel they deserve, such a shame.

I had goosebumps when I saw the BG&E 2 trailer for the first time but after all this time and the direction they seem to take, there's not much hope left in me.

Agreed with the charm and cosiness. I loved how unlike some of the games at the time, they let their protagonist show emotions and feel things. I loved the relationship between Jade and Pey'j. Her relationship with Double H is also great as it develops through the game. Double H is just great haha.

I haven't played Okami, I always thought it was something more akin to ICO and such. I might just play it sometime soon, thanks for namedropping it! I'm loving going back through these games that didn't get their deserved spotlight back then.

The thing I usually have hope for is an indie game like the games I used to like. The people who played those games when they were younger are now old enough to make games, hopefully that means some of them try to and successfully make something like this.

That just sent me down the rabbit hole of that playlist. A great OST, there's a real sense of nostalgia in some of them. Even the smaller sounds like puzzle success noises were nice.