Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Link to font hack: romhacking.net/hacks/1950
Well now, this has been something I wanted to do for quite awhile. Parasite Eve is a game I like to come back to for a run every year. The story, music, and gameplay are all superb I must say.
Doing a run showing everything off requires me to be on NG+ which, in this game, is called EX Mode. This allows you to carry over whichever weapon & armor you chose to give a unique name in your previous run. EX Mode also gives you a resource called BP (Bonus Points) after clearing a day (The game is six days long).
EX Mode's biggest perks revolve around content. There's a bonus dungeon known as the Chrysler Building that unlocks on your first EX Mode run and beyond. The other perk? Enemies are stronger, meaning more hp, attack, and defense. This gets more profound every EX Mode run until you hit round 4 where the boosts max out.
Normally, the enhanced enemies aren't really noticed early on because your carried over weapon & armor let you breeze through the game until the last quarter or so of the game. Not for me though because this run is going to be on the hardest round of 4 without using any carried over weapon & armor...and I'm not going to allow the use of any BP gained from clearing a day either, only using those gained as you would collect them in a fresh non-EX Mode game.
After watching the opening video and arriving at the main menu, you can pick the EX Mode option, then your finished game save to begin the game.
The game opens up at the scenic Carnegie Hall in New York on Christmas Eve. NYPD officer Aya Brea is here with her date to see a highly regarded opera show...even if Aya isn't the most excited about it.
Something to note...I'm using a font hack by GreenGoblin that makes the text a bit easier to read. There's a link to the hack provided at the top and will be there for the start of every description if you're interested.
Inside Carnegie Hall, you can check out the menu and immediately equip your shiny transferred weapon & armor and use any built up BP. I'll talk about this some more in a couple videos when it'll become more relevant.
Once you've passed through the doors inside, the show begins. Seems like an innocent show to start off with. The main actress eventually jumps into an opera solo and everything's fine...until she locks eyes with Aya and somehow manages to keep singing even without moving her lips. The actress then shifts gears and decides random people get to be live human torches. Classy!
Aya, being a cop and all, instantly brandishes her gun and tells her date to run, body checking him out of the scene and the game. You can then move around so run up to the stage and confront the actress.
The actress seems to know Aya well enough to claim that her cells are communicating, as if they're calling out, before the first fight begins.
Combat's pretty easy to figure out here. You have an ATB bar in the top left that fills as the fight progresses. While waiting for it to fill up, you're able to move around the battlefield and dodge any attacks sent your way.
When you're ready to attack, you can hit the proper button to bring up a wireframe mesh around Aya. This is how far your attack can reach. Any further and you'll see very high chances to miss, if not do severely reduced damage.
After hitting the actress once, there might be some merit to the actress's words as Aya mysteriously gains a new power called Parasite Energy. This is represented by a green bar under Aya's hp and is a fancy pants magic system. PE regenerates during battle, but repeated use of PE abilities during a single battle will slow that regen.
More problematic in this fight though lies with the boosts of EX Mode +4. Aya does a big fat 2 damage with her current gun (3 on a critical which is indicated by a yellow damage number). Not enough bullets to finish the fight so it's better to go with Aya's Club 1. Only 1 damage (2 on a crit), but it's a melee weapon and thusly has no limit on how much it can be used.
Luckily, the actress has only one attack. She has particles floating around her and, when she's ready to attack, will collect all those particles to fire a laser beam in Aya's direction. As long as Aya's running in one direction when the attack's about to come out, the laser will fire just behind her.
After a bit of a long fight due to how bulky the actress is, she manages to cause a flashback in Aya before exiting stage right. Following her leads to a chest with a Medicine 1 (heals 45 hp) and a hole. This hole leads deeper into the area, but as you check the hole, Aya's backup arrives outside. You can elect to go check in with them before dropping down, a thing you should do as there's a paramedic outside who'll heal Aya, but more importantly is a pair of cops, one of which will give Aya an Ammo +6 clip which you can get up to 10 times.
More next time!
Link to font hack: romhacking.net/hacks/1950
Well now, this has been something I wanted to do for quite awhile. Parasite Eve is a game I like to come back to for a run every year. The story, music, and gameplay are all superb I must say.
Doing a run showing everything off requires me to be on NG+ which, in this game, is called EX Mode. This allows you to carry over whichever weapon & armor you chose to give a unique name in your previous run. EX Mode also gives you a resource called BP (Bonus Points) after clearing a day (The game is six days long).
EX Mode's biggest perks revolve around content. There's a bonus dungeon known as the Chrysler Building that unlocks on your first EX Mode run and beyond. The other perk? Enemies are stronger, meaning more hp, attack, and defense. This gets more profound every EX Mode run until you hit round 4 where the boosts max out.
Normally, the enhanced enemies aren't really noticed early on because your carried over weapon & armor let you breeze through the game until the last quarter or so of the game. Not for me though because this run is going to be on the hardest round of 4 without using any carried over weapon & armor...and I'm not going to allow the use of any BP gained from clearing a day either, only using those gained as you would collect them in a fresh non-EX Mode game.
After watching the opening video and arriving at the main menu, you can pick the EX Mode option, then your finished game save to begin the game.
The game opens up at the scenic Carnegie Hall in New York on Christmas Eve. NYPD officer Aya Brea is here with her date to see a highly regarded opera show...even if Aya isn't the most excited about it.
Something to note...I'm using a font hack by GreenGoblin that makes the text a bit easier to read. There's a link to the hack provided at the top and will be there for the start of every description if you're interested.
Inside Carnegie Hall, you can check out the menu and immediately equip your shiny transferred weapon & armor and use any built up BP. I'll talk about this some more in a couple videos when it'll become more relevant.
Once you've passed through the doors inside, the show begins. Seems like an innocent show to start off with. The main actress eventually jumps into an opera solo and everything's fine...until she locks eyes with Aya and somehow manages to keep singing even without moving her lips. The actress then shifts gears and decides random people get to be live human torches. Classy!
Aya, being a cop and all, instantly brandishes her gun and tells her date to run, body checking him out of the scene and the game. You can then move around so run up to the stage and confront the actress.
The actress seems to know Aya well enough to claim that her cells are communicating, as if they're calling out, before the first fight begins.
Combat's pretty easy to figure out here. You have an ATB bar in the top left that fills as the fight progresses. While waiting for it to fill up, you're able to move around the battlefield and dodge any attacks sent your way.
When you're ready to attack, you can hit the proper button to bring up a wireframe mesh around Aya. This is how far your attack can reach. Any further and you'll see very high chances to miss, if not do severely reduced damage.
After hitting the actress once, there might be some merit to the actress's words as Aya mysteriously gains a new power called Parasite Energy. This is represented by a green bar under Aya's hp and is a fancy pants magic system. PE regenerates during battle, but repeated use of PE abilities during a single battle will slow that regen.
More problematic in this fight though lies with the boosts of EX Mode +4. Aya does a big fat 2 damage with her current gun (3 on a critical which is indicated by a yellow damage number). Not enough bullets to finish the fight so it's better to go with Aya's Club 1. Only 1 damage (2 on a crit), but it's a melee weapon and thusly has no limit on how much it can be used.
Luckily, the actress has only one attack. She has particles floating around her and, when she's ready to attack, will collect all those particles to fire a laser beam in Aya's direction. As long as Aya's running in one direction when the attack's about to come out, the laser will fire just behind her.
After a bit of a long fight due to how bulky the actress is, she manages to cause a flashback in Aya before exiting stage right. Following her leads to a chest with a Medicine 1 (heals 45 hp) and a hole. This hole leads deeper into the area, but as you check the hole, Aya's backup arrives outside. You can elect to go check in with them before dropping down, a thing you should do as there's a paramedic outside who'll heal Aya, but more importantly is a pair of cops, one of which will give Aya an Ammo +6 clip which you can get up to 10 times.
More next time!
