Happy October, SBCGaming. You voted for it, so here it is: the game with the SECOND most iconic opera scene in Squaresoft's history: 1998's Parasite Eve. It's a bit of a mashup between a JRPG and a Resident Evil style survival horror title, with a turn-based active time battle system combined with real-time movement. This is a new one for a lot of the mod team, but it made it onto the poll on the strength of several sub members' suggestions, so we'll be excited to discover it alongside you!
As always, you have a year from the announcement date to complete any previous Game of the Month for flair, making this the last month to complete last November's pick, Alien Hominid. Post a picture of your end screen as a top-level reply to the most recent Game of the Month post to receive your flair. And stay tuned for next month, when we'll be doing another "Username Presents" GotM pick!
Parasite Eve was a blast! It was fun to play through, but also made me appreciate how far we’ve come with a lot of gameplay mechanics. I spent way too much time trying to maneuver Aya in just the spot to open some chests or doors, where others were openable from almost 90 degrees from the front. Meanwhile, other doors would open when you walked up to them, but again some had huge targets and some did not. None of it took away from the fun though (okay, maybe a few times with hidden chests). Glad I got to cross this off my backlog.
Finally got around to playing last months game. I loved Civ 2 as a kid and I've always held off on the more recent ones because I was told they have become way more complicated. Hearing this one was paired down again had me excited. I got stomped on my first try and on my second try I did the stomping. A lot of fun and brought back some old memories!
First time doing this so I forgot to get a shot of the end screen or credits, hope this is okay. This game was awesome! Maeda was cracking me up always trying to give you the most useless things and then gives you the most useful item in the whole game!
I ADORED this game! I thought the combat system was a little simplistic but still holds up, the difficulty curve was reasonable, and the length was perfect. I probably spent around 12 hours but replayed one section. The only annoying bit was theSewerswhere I straight up looked up where to go next. I could totally imagine being in awe of the cinematic FMV sequences back in 1998.
Catching up on some of the older GotM games, finished Advance Wars. One of my favorite GBA games, along with the Fire Emblem games from the same developer. Overall I prefer Advance Wars 2, mainly because a lot of missions in the first one are pre-deployed and I like being able to choose my own units. The campaign is a lot of fun though, it helps for replay value that most of the tutorial content is separate.
First played this on my PS Vita a decade ago. Stopped after completing the first day and always wanted to return someday. Glad to finally have some closure. It's a shame that we'll likely never get another entry. Looking forward to .45 Parabellum Bloodhound and Parasite Mutant and hoping they can match the vibe in this game.
Parasite Eve completed! This games story was so much more fun than I thought it could be. Unlocking the potential of the mitochondria is a wild plot point and the final fights were so weird and cool. Instant classic
This game was a masterpiece! I got all the way to day 5 before I realized my ROM file had all FMVs removed. It was so fun I didn't even realize until I got soft-locked at the sewer control panel. The music and atmosphere are top notch, and I love when Japanese devs do their take on an American setting. It's an endearing caricature of New York, plus the biology stuff was fun. Never underestimate the powerhouse of the cell.
Does anyone have any tips on running it on the retroid pocket nova. Halfway through the game the particle effects and cutscenes started having weird textures, black boxes or became invisible. I’m using SwanStation.
EDIT: figured it out, accidentally switched from vulkan to gl in the driver section and it solved my issues
I am using the SwanStation core on RetroArch. i actually got it to not have so many issues by lowering my upscaling back to 1x. Should I be using the Beetle core?
From my childhood, I had Parasite Eve 2 and loved that game. Somehow I never played the first even though I knew it was a great game. Now that I've beaten this game, I can't wait to read the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even though day 5 felt way too long with the random battles.
If anyone, like me, decided to turn off the random encounters with a patch code and got stuck with some encounters not working, just add this code to turn it on again:
First time beating a game from open_agb_firm as these game controls feel much better than on RGCubeXX (plus native). I seriously need to replay Alien Hominid in HD
So I've been trying to beat more games this year, and have been playing a bunch of shorter ones as a part of that. Funny to come here and see that this is basically a thread for that and Celeste is on the list.
Also funny, Sonic 2 and Link to the Past are there as well, two games Im in progress with, time to start catching up. (Im also playing Dreamland 2 but missed my chance for that one).
This one was soooo rough for me….. It’s weird, it’s an all time classic, I loved it as a kid (when I should have find it boring compared to now), the turn-based rhythm is perfect for handheld and I was happy to make use of the Thor dual screen!
But first, I really disliked the graphisme of the DS version (I know I should look past this kind of thing, but what a terrible art direction) and moreover, the game was too long to keep playing on a device I don’t bring everywhere with me.
So I restarted with the SNES version on the mini flip, chipping at it from time to time… and I thought I was going mad: I spent litteral (in-game) centuries looking for the last city of the last enemy civ (India, of course) while those fuckers vagrant army kept asking to talk to me to insult me.
So glad to finally curb stomp this Gandhi son of a bitch, at the end.
On to Parasite Eve (loved the beginning and combat system!), GotM forever ❤️
I saw Alien Hominid on here and kept going "why does it look so familiar? I've never owned this GBA game". Then once I booted it up and saw the Newgrounds logo, it all became clear. Completed!
Nice seeing a lot of first timers enjoying Parasite Eve. It does a great job of starting off with a bang to hook you into the story and the gameplay is excellent. Holds up beautifully.
So been enjoying this game way more then i thought i would but quick question. Did anybody else fight Eve in the sewers at the beginning instead of the alligator? I finished the level then i got the cut scene showing the gator then it was end of day 1. Not sure if i did something or their is a glicth l.
FML. Sold a handheld that had my Parasite Eve save on it. Which would be salvageable once the buyer got it and sent me the file but I did a factory reset.
First timer here, loved playing through PE. I didn't want it to end, until I spent the whole weekend lost in the Museum of Natural History - then I was happy to see the back of it!
The CG looked outstanding on the 3.5 inch Anbernic RG35XX H screen - but some of the prerendered backgrounds were a bit tricky. Certain exact cupboards to select were quite hard to see. Kinda stopped being a problem when i realised you're supposed to just press X constantly
Just finished Alien Hominid. IDK why, but I thought it was a completely different game when it was GOTM. I like run-n-guns so I really enjoyed this little masterpiece. I have also enjoyed seamless integration of bezels from the Bezel project in Rocknix. Moving on to the next game!)) Thanks again for GOTM!
Alien Hominid complete, very neat little game that I know was groundbreaking back in the days of everyone being on Newgrounds. The gameplay was a little simplistic with some tricky moments, but the art direction is very strong. 7.5/10
The story was really cool and I liked the real-time battle system too - it got a bit stale at the end, but the final battles were fun enough to make up for it.
The weapon system was interesting too - it took me an embarrassing amount of time to fully grasp it though so I didn't explore it as much as I should have
I'm replying this game right now just for the sake of GotM.
Unfortunately it's all down hill from here Parasite Eve 2 doesn't reach the heights of Parasite Eve 1 and it's best that we pretend that the 3rd Birthday doesn't exist.
The IP itself doesn't belong to Square-Enix so Parasite Eve 4 is unlikely to ever happen.
If anyone here wants something that's like Parasite Eve 1 go look up .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND and Parasite Mutant on Steam they are upcoming games with the same battle system as Parasite Eve 1.
Also, theoretically Sqaure to have the rights to make Parasite eve games, all they would have to do is ask permission like they did in able to get the rights to remaster FF 7 Crisis core.
Wow that was fast, thanks. The total should just be 11 though i apologize.
Games completed:
Super Mario World, Streets of Rage 2, Megaman X, Kirby Dreamland 2, devils crush, Age of zombies, Castlevania SOTN, Ducktales, Sonic 2, Celeste, Marvel vs Capcom 2.
So think I need a 10 emblem, and 1 extra game to show 11.
edit not sure how it works if thats how it's supposed to be. At least I have the 10 👌
It was mainly that I didnt want it to look like I finished 16 games so figured it would just be an emblem and 1 game. But if how it shows now is normal then thats fine too. I prefer seeing all of the sprites there anyway 👍
I think Key misunderstood what you were asking. You now have a "5" medal plus the six most recent flair, for a total of 11 games completed. Does that look right to you?
A great example of why I love this GotM initiative, thanks mods for running it! This is not a game I would have ever stumbled upon by myself or even attempted had I run across it. A bit of bullshit here and there but overall it was so much fun!
As an aside, I've owned a few devices up to date and re-sold most of them as they didn't really bring me a lot of joy when playing games. This one (RP Nova) really changed that for me.
Commenting so I can find it later when I beat it, lot of scrolling even a day later.
So far it’s pretty fun, FMVs look really good! Is anyone else experiencing long load times between some areas? Wondering if that’s an emulation issue or functioning as intended.
any reason you can't pin it and do whatever you're doing in modern? are they mutually exclusive?
not intending to switch to the official app, which is what I think you mean by reddit mobile (too many ads, I use Dystopia on iOS) and I don't like the modern interface as it seems to have a habit of showing posts that are days old instead of new stuff like old reddit does
honestly, I didn't know people used new reddit lol; it's way harder to navigate
Unfortunately old Reddit users account for less than 1% of our users. So we can't continue to cater resources to very small minority as we continue to implement new features. Keeping 2 s'offrent pin systems clutters up the main feed for vast majority of our userbase
I think that number may be a little skewed; there were at least two in this thread alone that aren’t using it and that’s not accounting for other apps (eg dystopia)
At time of this posting I count something like 32 top level comments, subtract the mod team and that seems more around 7-10% unable to find the post
It’ll be interesting to see if engagement drops or increases with no “legacy pinning”, I hope you reverse course and continue pinning like you did as before in addition to whatever new Reddit features you do
This is becoming a problem across many subreddits I frequent. And of course it's not the fault of the mods themselves, reddit is very purposely funnelling usage out of old.reddit and into the "new" garbage experience.
I concur, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the numbers the mods see are juiced to double down on this effort
Like, is that <1% reported actually posting, engaged users or just folks that got an impression as they doomscrolled? My hunch says the folks that use old Reddit or other methods of browsing and post on the thread and play the games is higher than that reported number
New reddit is dogshit though, for sure- huge posts, hard to find info, hard to navigate, autoplay, algorithm-heavy
I used it for about 20 minutes before I couldn’t stand it
I used to own this back in PSX days but for some reason never got further than an hour or two into it, but it always seemed interesting so excited to give it a shot.
This is a completely fascinating concept to me and I would love to join in. I clicked around on some links in here and didn't seem to really get anywhere. Can anybody point me to a main sort of page for this? I would love to read/know more about the program and fellowship and as I said before, join in.
Gotcha! I normally use some Android version to get around on here. That's probably why I couldn't see what your indicating. I will definitely switch over and go check it out. Thanks very much for the reply!
I haven't done GOTM in quite a while, but I've wanted to play this game for ages. Only ever had PE2 for some reason, and was always curious about the original.
Heck yeah, amazing pick! I also cheated and already finished it last month, but let's say it's so good that it's still fresh in my memory. Honestly, probably my favourite horror game on PSX. Dense atmosphere, great body horror, amazing characters (I mean, how could you NOT love Daniel after his entrance? 😆). Solid 9/10. Also, Central Park is one of my favourite winter levels ever. The only drawback is few scripted events with QTE and sudden death mechanics.
I'm pretty sure that's one of the few games I'm gonna return to at some point and there aren't many of those.
Oh dayum I have a lot to cover. Been addicted to Grim Dawn the last couple months, and Monster Hunter Rise before that, as well as some metroidvanias, would love to dive back in and get my GotM icons. Last one I did was Alien Hominid i think :)
Yeah so do I. It was one of those games I just found to difficult as a kid and never made it past the start of the second disc.
Kind of made it a bit of a tradition to break in new handhelds with a playthrough. And you know what? Its one of those games that are a lot better through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia
Beat it right around Christmas last year. Absolutely incredible game, immaculate vibes and a really great story, just a classic. Hope a lot of people check it out
Never heard of it, but I love October spooky season and want to try to beat a GoTM because I think it's so cool this community does this. Doesn't seem that long either, so maybe not so intimidating (famous last words, incoming obscure difficult game I'm sure).
Not really difficult but it doed have one of the most refreshing turn based style combat imo. Which makes it baffling that no other game has tried to replicate it yet.
This reminds me to play the second one, the first one I finished months ago. I know 2 was a big of a change up in the game mechanics, but I want to give it a go!
Its a game that's near my heart but yeah, not great
Starts off with a couple of really cool and unique locations but that's pretty short lived as the bulk of the gameplay takes place in the second disc where you trade a very Americana small desert town for endless slate gray halls you'll learn to loathe from all the backtracking
They took a sledgehammer to the gameplay and turned it into a bland rpg/Resident Evil hybrid that's just there. You lock on and shoot , sometimes the maps are cramped enough to make encounters relatively challenging but most are just a breeze. It cosplays as a survival horror/rpg hybrid but there's barely any challenge to speak of, pistol ammo is unlimited and magic cheap and plentiful with the basic fireball one shotting nearly everything the game will throw at you minus bosses
Plot's ok but it doesn't do a whole lot with Aya and the repercussions of what happened in the first game, she's just a bit more paranoid but there's no character arc or change in her personality from when you first start the game to the end credits. Replayability is actually surprisingly good with multiple modes unlocking after beating the game, including a pseudo randomizer mode and a good amount of unlockables on repeated playthrough, including a pseudo Gunblade
I've had some issues playing with the BeetlePSX core on retroarch but swapping to epsxe solved it
You know, all the promotional materials were insanely beautiful, from her wedding artwork to collabs with FF13. I still have the collector's edition with me.
Wished I would've picked one up when they was going as low as $20, even If I didn't enjoy this as a continuation to parasite Eve I can't deny they put a lot of effort into this game.
I can't believe I have to play another JRPG! Good thing it seems like a good one.
Also, please guys. When you finish a game and wanna get your flair, post on the newest GOTM post. Don't go back all the way to last novembers post. Just comment here.
Also Also, old reddit users, we'll make a effort for you guys to find the thread but it is pinned using our new "community hub" tab, you'll have to be on the modern desktop or mobile app to see it.
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u/mk18au GotM Club 51m ago
Finished February 2026 GoTM - 999, reached true ending (June) as indicated by red arrow.
Was quite interesting at the end, but some dialogues were sooooooo long, I would not end it without fast-forward.