Why was Daikatana so bad?

lol least bad thing. I like the way you said that. I'll pay attention next time for the music.

I've been forced to tackle the turrets in a number of ways. At some point it took me 15+ minutes to realize that I needed to destroy a turret to proceed. Other times I've been on a turret as it rose like you suggested.

Everything is neon color and that's not a bad thing. I like a game that feels like a game while still taking itself seriously.

I played the GBC version years ago when I first found out from this forum what Dai-Katana was. Its shining proof that everything needs a Zelda GBC clone. Doom? Zelda GBC clone. Quake? Zelda GBC clone. Rage? Zelda GBC clone. Someone needs to churn them out. Even Final Fantasy had its own Zelda GB clone, Final Fantasy Adventure.

I like how Hiro is supposed to be this noble good-natured hero-type who will go off on a wild crusade against the most powerful man in the world based entirely on the word of an old guy he just met that night, and yet the game does two things that encourage the slaughter of helpless bystanders: first it counts them as Monsters on the scoreboard, and second gives you xp for murdering them. But hey their deaths are completely justified due to the miniscule amount of extra training they provided to the main protagonist, hell their families should be grateful for the honor.

I've stated that I really liked the art style before but the map structure and a.i. are some of the worse.

SuperflyJohnson said:

I like how Hiro is supposed to be this noble good-natured hero-type who will go off on a wild crusade against the most powerful man in the world based entirely on the word of an old guy he just met that night, and yet the game does two things that encourage the slaughter of helpless bystanders: first it counts them as Monsters on the scoreboard, and second gives you xp for murdering them. But hey their deaths are completely justified due to the miniscule amount of extra training they provided to the main protagonist, hell their families should be grateful for the honor.

Replace "Hiro" with "America" and your post would make perfect sense in one of our middle east topics.

SuperflyJohnson said:

I like how Hiro is supposed to be this noble good-natured hero-type who will go off on a wild crusade against the most powerful man in the world based entirely on the word of an old guy he just met that night, and yet the game does two things that encourage the slaughter of helpless bystanders: first it counts them as Monsters on the scoreboard, and second gives you xp for murdering them. But hey their deaths are completely justified due to the miniscule amount of extra training they provided to the main protagonist, hell their families should be grateful for the honor.

Personally, I like how he's a swordsman that I have yet to see use a sword. The non enemy NPCs are pretty cool. I'm laughing my ass off about your NPC comments. I don't even follow the whole XP thing. Leveling up is one of those things if it happens it happens.

I spent 30 or so minutes to complete the meat factory level. Died several times, discovered MANY MANY glitches. Got stuck in the floor. A constant glitch where its as if I'm strafing into an object that isn't there. I started to think Superfly Johnson was invisible. That would make sense in a senseless glitch. Opening doors caused the game to pause for several seconds. Not loading, pausing. When the game unfroze I was elsewhere in the room.

The monotony of that level was.... behind every door stands 2 soldiers, 2 android toads (the first two levels have real toads, not android toads designed to look like real toads), 4 hover pods and a ceiling sentry. What the fuck. Every door. I had to just shoot through a doorway so much it was making me wonder... Doom wasn't like that. I actually had to enter rooms to kill thinks right and not just stuff myself in a doorway?

The thing that took so long is with that bottleneck and the glitches, I ended up shooting and killing Superfly in the crossfire or he'd shoot and kill me.

I found a weapon that I already had, some sort of sizmic bouncing bomb that I had a feeling the game wanted me to shoot into every room with half a dozen enemies and let the bomb do its work. Funny thing is each bounce sent off a tremor that would kill Superfly or myself even though it was in another room. The area effect went through walls. Not just that, but I've been figuring out if a door is closed, the enemies in that other room take no damage. Plus another glitch that will make enemy death animations replay if they didn't finish if a door closes.

Warts and all.

Thankfully now I know to rocket out grates and destroy door locking mechanisms on the ceiling.

I've been using the rocket launcher for the past 2 levels now. Nothing but rockets.

In the level after that, some ice level, I heard Superfly scream out 'Suck it Down!' I was laughing at how the blue key was right next to the blue door. At least let me find the door before I find the key.

There was a few levels of enjoyment, but now its back to laughably bad.

Another thing that makes me laugh is how the level up system is at odds with the Daikatana's own upgrade system, since using the Daikatana sucks XP into the sword instead of your stats. It doesn't help that the eponymous weapon of the game is practically useless, and in its fully maxed state can actually be considered a hindrance due to the ridiculous, blinding lens flare coming off the sword.

On top of that, both your stats and your Daikatana compete for XP with the sidekicks (who don't actually use the XP for anything), so that the only way to maximize XP is to order your sidekicks to stand down at the start of every map (which at least saves you the headache of keeping them alive, but defeats the whole purpose of having sidekicks; might as well play coop mode by yourself and get free respawns).

edit: I gained a level from a partner kill while playing the 1.3 patch. This may be due to a change made for 1.3 or I could just be wrong about them not giving you XP to begin with.

Another hour, another level complete and another tried. The ice level.... wow. What would kill me the most was random falls into the ice bath. Not even strafe dodging. I'd get knocked back and fall in. Sometimes over a guardrail. I saw Superfly Johnson get blocked by bullet holes in mid air not even on the wall. Superfly died a lot, more crossfire at door bottlenecks, because no enemy is ever not the first thing you see. Mostly it was the instant death ice water. At some point I had beat the level only to discover Superfly Johnson was at the last checkpoint. I went down a flight of stairs too fast and just flew into the insta death water.

I tried the level after that now that I have 2 AI partners. Wow are they fucking useless. They get stuck trying to run over cliffs. I couldn't bait them away they wanted to go down a cliff so they were stuck trying. I had to command one to stay put and then switch to command the other to stay put. Then command them one at a time to follow me.

Getting them into a GIANT ELEVATOR with an entire wall missing was a sad comedy. First one would enter and the other would run as if she was trying to enter. So I baited Superfly out... then she'd go in and Superfly would be running outside the elevator as if trying to get on it? I figured eh fuck it. Down goes the elevator and the other falls in. That's when I realize the door shuts and its a timed issue, so back up the elevator I go to hit the button again. I left them behind.

Then when I was using the elevator to get down I crushed them both. Fucking hilarious. Started the level again the same thing happened. Door closed before I got down to it with these two clowns. So I dropped them off on the ground floor, jumped out and I landed on one of them, killing them. I think that I crushed them, but maybe it was gunfire.

I figured, eh fuck this game. Superfly's long drawn out dialog was starting to get to me.

Not to mention, the thing that unlocks the computer to open the door. It was obvious you had to shoot something to open the cage to the computer. I shot it a few times, nothing. So I went throughout the complex trying to find what I had missed. Came back a few times, tried using what I had shot. Then I shot it again. Still nothing. Then when I came back with Superfly and shot the thing, then the cage revealed the computer inside.

Well what the fuck.

I did it. I complete that level fighting every inch against 2 awful AI partners. I had to complete the level on my own and then go back for them. Not just that but put up with fall deaths and door crushing deaths. Forced fall deaths going from one giant piston to another. Those deaths were easy, its baiting 2 AIs that was the real chore.

Then after that half of the level it was more falling. Not just more falling, but the game would give you more than max health to compensate for fall damage down to a platform, but if you miss the platform, you end up in a damage trap with no way out. So you have 200 health and you need to sit there drowning in acid with over health. Nice.

After that, I earned the right to fight Mother Brain of all things as a 'boss.' Now I finally have the Dai-Katana. The game stopped being fun. That level took around 2 hours because I don't save.

I'm impressed you stuck with it. Episode 1 is just garbage and it's little wonder that very few people ever got far enough to actually use the Daikatana in singleplayer.

I also made it to episode 2 last night (why...) so it appears that our playing is somewhat synchronized. That elevator segment with the flying things is just offensive. How segments like that were deemed acceptable to leave in the game is just beyond understanding. Was Ion really that hard up for competent level designers, or was it something else like nepotism, or just plain mismanagement? I seem to recall reading somewhere (it was probably in that Gamespot article I linked earlier) that Romero was originally doing all the levels for episode 1, but decided to hand off the job to someone else so he could 'manage'.

Actually I could easily look up the name of the level designer for that shitty Vault level because he hid his initials at the beginning of the second part of the level (right before you go up the ladder to enter elevator hell, it's the grating on the floor of the side room).

Wait, I can do better than 'flying things', because I have the official Daikatana strategy guide!! (why...)

Let's see here... Deathsphere!

This heavy floating defense droid seeks enemies and takes them down with a shower of lasers. The RoboCo (this is something cut from the game; Romero had this idea that all the Mishima subsidiaries would be 'Co' like SciCo for science, RoboCo for robots; I know this because he expounds on it in the strategy guide authored by his then-girlfriend Killcreek, in one of many indulgent 'Design Comments' sections which for some reason have to take up an entire page even though it's just a paragraph or two) Deathsphere moves fairly slowly (bullshit -ed) but can attack from long distance for big damage. This robotic floater is one of the most effective defense systems in Mishima's fortress.

You can't run from this one. Duck behind pillars and other objects, peeking out only to sneak off a shot at the massive machine.

The guide is rife with inaccuracies; obviously written for an earlier version of the game than the final.

edit: you may have noticed the 'electricity' effect in the mother brain room that intermittently covers the floor. The guide confirms that this was originally intended to harm the player (a lot, I'd imagine). I guess at the last minute someone, in an uncharacteristic show of mercy and concern for the player's enjoyment, decided that the player has made it this far, pressed forward through dick level after dick level raping them every which way including up (keep in mind in the 1.0 release you'd still be required to depend on save gems; NO QUICKSAVE 4U), maybe, JUST MAYBE we should give them a small concession and allow them to work out how to battle the bizarre boss without the goddamn floor killing them.

Episodes? There are episodes? You mean that was just 1 episode? That is scary! I'm 9 hours in. That is my own fault though. No saves except what the game saves unless I'm starting to get frustrated.

Well I guess that means I'm in Episode 2 then. I haven't played it, just enough to know I know have Daikatana.

Something I'm noticing... with AI there seems to always be clear cut walkways and paths. Without AI that either means vent crawling or wacky falling segments. With the AI, they really needed to develop the AI to pathfind a lot better. They constantly want to follow me off tall platforms.... problem is I'm standing behind them. So they're stuck in a running animation. They get stuck with the non hostile AI. Sometimes the Asian woman starts shooting the non hostile AI when they're cowering in fear.

I really think someone played Half Life 1 and thought we should do that. Then fucked it all up. Well not all of it, there were moments of joy between level 3 - whenever I had 2 AI partners to manage. I told my friend about Daikatana, he asked isn't that game old? He got the game bundled with a video card. He said he installed it once, played it, ininstalled it thinking it was shovelware.

Having the partners makes it feel like escort missions, even if I ditch them. When I was playing with the 2 AI partners sometimes they'd randomly die and it would be game over. I needed to tell them to pick up health and stuff, which is good, but I just wish that it was easier.

Good for him getting his initials in. The second half of that shit level seemed very brief, not that I'm complaining. It just seemed half ass. Even the mother brain section was half ass.

Deathspheres, those things briefly freeze my game when they shoot. Its so odd. Must be connected to V-Sync. I wouldn't think a 3.2 gHz 12 DDR3 RAM PC would freeze for a year 2000 game, but I thought wrong.

So Romero's girlfriend did the strategy guide? This goes back to Mighty No 9 having some dev's girlfriend working as the community manager and people rioted over nepotism. I guess if you can do the job its great, but some things seem like nepotism, but does nepotism apply to people sexing one another?

Now that someone else is playing, that might push me forward to play more. There's literally so much I can take when I play Daikatana.

geo said:

No saves except what the game saves unless I'm starting to get frustrated.

I play that way too (with the gems and mapchange autosaves, no quicksave). On the hardest difficulty. I am clearly a masochist, there's just no other rational explanation.

With the AI, they really needed to develop the AI to pathfind a lot better.

I'm pretty sure the last delay for the game was almost entirely for getting the AI to work right. Right up to the end the overambitious AI partners hobbled the game's development, and for what? They're still irritating, constantly in the player's way, or shooting the player in the back, or getting stuck on ladders or crushed by an elevator.

I really think someone played Half Life 1 and thought we should do that. Then fucked it all up.

Exactly that. "The plan at Ion was to finish the game in the first few weeks of January. Kavanagh says the extra time was of benefit to the team so they could "add the kind of polish you find in Half-Life" to Daikatana. "

About the AI, just in case you aren't aware, holding shift while you give a command will give it to both sidekicks.

Even the mother brain section was half ass.

The real boss isn't even that, it's the weird mutant dogs that shoot rainbow rings at you making your screen go all distorted. The stuff before that is just obtuse guesswork and some turrets, oh boy more turrets.

Shoulda cut the brain BS entirely and just made the dogs a better fight. It's like there was no filter, nobody saying 'yeah that sounds cool in theory, but in practice it's lame and not fun so we should cut it'. Like how nobody was brave enough to tell George Lucas that Jar Jar Binks was a really dumb idea, or he was just too full of his own ego to listen.

Deathspheres, those things briefly freeze my game when they shoot.

Me too, on every computer I've played it on. You see it's because Daikatana is an expert FPS and experts appreciate the challenge of having your game hiccup every time a stupid bot fires its lasers.

So Romero's girlfriend did the strategy guide? This goes back to Mighty No 9 having some dev's girlfriend working as the community manager and people rioted over nepotism.

Oh she did more than that... "In the midst of all this, Stevie "Killcreek" Case would move on to the project as a level designer. Case, the now-famous Quake player who beat Romero in a best-of-three Quake tournament in January of 1997, had previously worked in Ion's QA department. (She had prior experience building levels for a Quake add-on pack that was scheduled for release through WizardWorks.)"

Unfortunately I don't know which levels in particular she worked on.

As for Mighty No. 9 I donated to that KS before Dina entered the picture. Her involvement now makes me wish I hadn't. She tried to say that when she said her bf works there she meant 'best friend'. Yeah, because when you talk about your group of friends that includes your best friend, you don't just say 'my friends' you say 'my friends and my bf'. Totes.

I just love it when a smug agenda-pushing hack assumes I was born yesterday. Really warms my cockles.

Now that someone else is playing, that might push me forward to play more.

I would suggest we play co-op but for some reason I feel it's a 'valuable' experience to see the 'epic story' unfold and hold your sidekicks's hands through enclosed spaces and narrow corridors where they are more likely to kill you than an enemy.

I think this game gave me brain damage.

Holding shift? I never knew that! Thanks. I've had to look at the controls a lot when it comes to the partners and upgrading.

You're right about the mutant dogs. I didn't know what they were, I just fired rockets at them while they made my screen all wavy. Meanwhile, Superfly Johnson did nothing because I told him to stand there off of the electric floor.

The dogs needed to be taller... like Barons so I could see them ontop of the platform. The first time I killed the giant brain I killed it without breaking the glass using the seismic bomb launcher. That thing kills everything.

LOL I like the thought of Romero being in a best of three Quake tournament, makes it seem so comically over the top.

Well at least she had level design experience and hopefully writing experience.

All of the levels seem awful, but awful in different ways. The partners cripple the level design for their pathfinding.

Community manager seems to be the 'stop sign holder' of construction.

I didn't even know there was co-op. Does that mean I get to be Superfly or does that mean we both have a partner follow us?

Thinking more about the Half-Life influence, I believe one of the game's biggest downfalls is trying to ape HL's level design.

Romero previously worked on FPS's with a rigid structure: self-contained levels organized into episodes. Daikatana keeps the episode structure but then tries to mash HL's map-to-map flow with breaks into that structure. Most (all?) levels in Doom were designed to be completeable from a pistol start, meaning even if it's a later level, and even if the player enters the level in a weakened state (like with only a pistol and no armor) it's still feasible to complete the level on any difficulty (possible exception of Nightmare).

with HL, Valve was very careful with how they designed the sections of levels where loading breaks take place. When that happens there won't be any enemies around so the player isn't in imminent danger on the other side of the load; there may be enemies around the corner, but not right in front of you. That way if you happen to be running on low health and not saving, just relying on autosave, you don't get yourself into a spot where you keep dying on the other side of a load break, forcing you to load an earlier autosave.

Nobody on the Daikatana team was so thoughtful. The second half of the Vault level we both just played is a particularly egregious example of this, especially on higher difficulties, and having the load gem system in play just makes it all the worse; as mentioned before, it's very easy to get yourself into an unwinnable loop as you get killed immediately on the other side of the load, forcing you to lose possibly a great deal of progress to try it again with (hopefully) more health.

geo said:

Well at least she had level design experience and hopefully writing experience.

I don't know if she did any writing, but I do know the guy who wrote this Salon article was the game's original writer, a childhood friend of Romero's. An excerpt:

My own turn at Daikatana controversy came in the form of Hiro’s sidekick, Superfly Johnson. I originally named him Superfly Williams — in honor of the classic blaxploitation film/soundtrack and Jim Kelly’s character from “Enter The Dragon.” Superfly was to be of French origin, his name taken from the few cultural documents left in the apocalyptic future. His character arc would be finding out his real identity at the end. Not too heady, but certainly not a stereotype. I tried to explain to the genuinely concerned designers that the name Superfly came from a great 1972 film and greater Curtis Mayfield soundtrack.

The very next day, one of the designers brought in the Lifestyle setion of the Dallas Morning News, featuring a front-page article on the cultural resurgence of blaxploitation films…and the 20th anniversary re-release of the Superfly soundtrack.

I was vindicated until the game’s release: Superfly “Johnson” now ran around the levels and said, “Wassup?” He was awarded most stereotypical character in game history by a few gaming sites. I still defend Superfly’s noble origin, and in an industry of jive-talkin’, afro-wearin’, pimped-out black video game characters (as in Tekken or Interstate 76), I don’t think Daikatana can accept the award. I noted that most gamers had no problem with sexist female characters — as in Duke Nukem, where the player is encouraged to splatter half-naked strippers.

After Daikatana, I moved gratefully into the cultural oasis of Austin to work on Warren Spector’s Deus Ex. In terms of publicity and controversy, Ion Austin had it made. Far from Dallas, Spector’s low-profile approach kept the game out of the cyber cross-fire. The team and office were smaller, and Deus Ex had a tighter deadline that kept everything in focus.

Meanwhile, the news from home base got worse. After my Austin transfer, nine core members of the Daikatana team walked out.

So it appears that Devine left the Daikatana project shortly before the infamous Ion 8 incident, and after his departure somebody with some pull on the Daikatana team took his 'Superfly Williams' and made it into 'Superfly Johnson'.

Now I wonder who that person could have been...

I didn't even know there was co-op. Does that mean I get to be Superfly or does that mean we both have a partner follow us?

It's up to 3 players, no AI partners, no duplicate characters.

It skips the cutscenes entirely and allows respawning without reloading the level. It is remarkably less frustrating to play.

Oh, and you can play it by yourself just fine.

Speaking of Daikatana: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9699-John-Romero-Daikatana-Review-Epic-Failure?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all

Here we are talking about Daikatana and Ben Croshaw makes a video. Which one of us is Yatzee?

I understand the writer wanting to make some Blaxploitation character, but it doesn't feel like a Blaxploitation game. So the character ends up feeling out of place and forced. The Miko character is a strong female character with a really dislikable personality. They're all pretty unlikable after spending 11 hours with them.

Well I just got done with 2 hours of Daikatana, the first three levels I played went extremely smooth to the point that wow it was easy. Daikatana isn't the ultimate weapon, the boomerang Darius blades are the ultimate weapons. They never run out of ammo and most enemies are melee, everything is dead before it has a chance to react at least on medium difficulty. I barely got hit let alone lost 30 HP.

The second level of the episode, I ended up just running past all the enemies. The enemy design is just dull, there's a wide variety of enemies, but they all do the same thing. Skeletons have shields but don't bother blocking. Why have a minotaur when everything else is melee and its dead before it ever gets to me? The manticore looks just awkward flying in air with its legs standing when I'd imagine the back legs would dangle. There are tiny spiders. I remember a RPG design article saying if you have spiders and snakes as enemies, you're just not trying.

The mapping is extremely straight forward with the first three maps of the second episode. The exterior rock walls are awful and it all seems so happy and cheerful. The sky is a pretty blue and the rock walls are pretty white when the undead ferryman pulls up his ghetto raft as skeletons and spiders chase me. Why not have a river of blood under a moonlit night sky?

Then came the fourth level, Argopolis. I'm halfway through it and I keep getting stumped. I've gotten the Y key and I assume that I need two more.

After getting the A key I was pretty stumped for half an hour trying to get a door open until Miko stepped on the correct switch to open the door. When I stood on the switch it only showed the door, nothing more.

I want to skip every cut scene so badly. It feels as if the cut scenes aren't even needed. Why does Hiro need to talk to the ferryman? Can't the undead boatman just hold out his hand and Hiro say, oh, you must be looking for money. Why does he even need to say anything? Just the gesture of holding out its hand should speak volumes. Cut scenes for the AI partner pulling a switch to raise a ladder didn't need to be a cut scene so much as a scripted event.

I kind of think anyone who wants to play the game might be best served just warping themselves to episode 2 because holy crap even E1's weapons are mostly awful, exempting the sidewinder and disruptor glove (which is just boring but at least you can't backhand yourself to death).

The latter 3 episodes at least have a higher ratio of usable weapons to fuckyouanddie weapons. I'd have to say the better levels (which isn't saying much comparing to the shit abyss that is E1) are in E2 and E3. E4 is so-so, the levels at least aren't E1 bad, and the fact that you've had all game to power up your stats means the enemies finally, finally aren't destroying you in a matter of seconds any more. Small blessings.

The part of Greece where you have to hunt down the letters to open the gate is quite the toilsome slog. It's like one biiiig level that wraps around on itself. I enjoy the game's music for the most part, but after an hour or so of trudging up and down the mountain looking for letters this part's sweeping music becomes almost maddeningly tiresome.

I found I can hurt myself with episode 2's serpent staff and trident. yet oddly enough not the boomerang Darius discs.

Finally in E2 I hear the music.

I noticed the music volume defaults to 30, which is barely audible most of the time. I usually keep it all the way up and turn down the other sounds.

I feel the Daikatana weapon really missed the mark in its execution. Obviously the intent was to make the player feel like this dextrous trained badass, but the implementation just makes you feel clumsy with extra unintended swings all the time that whiff at thin air and you holding or tapping the attack button waiting for the game to decide when you can attack again. The animation of the attacks also suggest a shorter range than the actual reach of the weapon, which adds to the awkwardness.

Something to try in Greece, step 1: equip the Daikatana (haha no really)

step 2: get a swarm of skeletons following you

step 3: jump on top of the first one's head and aim down

step 4: once you're up there keep tapping the jump key and just hold attack

step 5: watch them crumble beneath your feet while taking minimal damage

of course it works with the discus just as well but this is the only way I ever feel cool using the Daikatana.

I think the game's skyboxes look quite nice for the Q2 engine so that's something else going for it. If only the ad campaign had been John Romero's going to make you look at purdy clouds.

One more thing about the Daikatana, supposedly it deals double damage from behind. Too bad there's barely any place in the game to test this mechanic. Possibly it could be exploited against the final boss, where the Daikatana can be used despite the storyline stating that the world will totally end if the blades touch each other (I've read the GBC game made the sword unusable at the end).

The most appropriate way Ion could have made that work within the confines of the plot, in my mind, would be to make the game crash to desktop upon hitting Mishima with the sword.

I'm done with episode 2 I assume. A breeze through. It is a shame to see those last two giant empty yet architecturally interesting maps go to waste on awful gameplay. That AEGIS was the longest level in the game so far.

The bitch about that level are the switches, one in particular that was in darkness. I had to use some torch bomb to light the way.

The entire episode was just so easy outside of that level and not for the combat. The only time that I almost died was when Mikiko had the serpent staff. I'd get poisoned every few seconds. I learned to just let her deal with enemies.

Medusa was a sorry excuse for a boss fight. I was turned to stone before I even reached her room. Then when I fought her, she died almost instantly. I barely caught a glimpse of her, but I guess that is the point.

Now I'm in the plague village map. I have reached the second part, where then I fell into the river and needed to go back to the first part. Problem is I'm locked in the first part since I need my two AI partners to proceed to the second part again, to which they are stuck in that half waiting for me.

Hundreds of unplayed games in my Steam list. Whatever, gonna play and gripe about Daikatana some more.

Somehow Medusa manages to be an even less satisfying boss encounter than the Mother Brain knockoff was. Gee, what doesn't sound fun about fighting a boss you can't even so much as look at without being one-hit killed... besides everything about that. Fighting all the weaker enemies that bust out of stone afterward feels like it should have occurred before the Medusa fight instead of wedged between a boss and the end of an episode.

To my surprise I gained a level off of a Mikiko kill earlier. I'm not sure if this is due to a change made for the 1.3 patch or if I was just completely wrong about partners not giving you XP from their kills.

The status bar and load bar look really out of place in the other time eras. There were going to be era-specific status bars but that got nixed at some point.

In contrast to the scarcity of save gems in E1, E2 is drowning in them. Gems, gems everywhere. It's almost the same as having quicksave enabled. Lots of health too (except the beginning). Why wasn't E1 designed like this? It's stupefying.

Mikiko is so hideously ugly I don't understand why she can't fight Medusa with just her face.

I want to bitch about the titular weapon some more. I got it fully powered up shortly after entering Acropolis due to mainlining it for the majority of Greece. Once the sword is maxed out it it no longer gains XP, nor does it feed XP to your stats. It just wastes it. Essentially the most heavily marketed aspect of the game (so much that it's the game's name) is designed to obsolete itself. Why would a player continue to use it and deny themselves level-ups? It's not like the game needs to be harder than it already is. For a company founded on the mantra 'Design is Law' I really have to wonder why one of the most central design decisions is so hare-brained and poorly conceived.

If that wasn't enough, the Daikatana, the central plot point and game mechanic that is so heavily hyped and harped upon, is bestowed to the player simultaneously with (and immediately overshadowed by) the Almighty God Discus of Infinite Devastation, a weapon ten times as practical and fun to use. With unlimited ammunition it's an easy contender for best weapon in the game. It's like a merciful dev took pity on the player having a crappy unwieldy weapon forced upon them and said "Psst it's OK, I understand. Don't say anything and take this. If you're going to endure this hell then you should at least have a proper weapon to use instead of that perverse abomination".

The wide open spaces with lots of enemies are about the only times where I feel sidekicks add to the experience instead of detract from it or weigh it down. They can be beneficial in other settings as well but big arenas are their place to shine. Half-Life was on everyone's lips so they emulated that in the level design, unfortunately AI was nowhere near being sophisticated enough to handle that kind of intricacy smoothly (maybe it still isn't). Makes me wish I could convert some Serious Sam (or even Doom) levels to Daikatana.

So you had a level up off of Mikiko. I knew she was useful! She randomly died a lot on the level before Medusa's. I always thought it was odd the upgrade bar was always on the HUD. With larger resolutions, couldn't all of that just be put on the bottom?

The models are more ugly than others of the area to be honest, but maybe that's because the game is so big and there are so many textures. The Greek interiors were good and smooth textures though. Almost too pristine and clean, but that's my complaint. A horror game with spiders and mutants with a happy skybox and pretty palace interiors.

Plus their mouths don't move but they move in other Quake Engine games. It just seems half ass and reaffirms the fact there doesn't need to be cut scenes.

The lack of XP is astounding. It is such an underpowered weapon in general. I think THE Daikatana needed to be a lot more useful. Such as one hit killing enemies to enable a shockwave or five bullets as a spread. Then when you hold the attack, release it and it sends out the shockwave. Maybe even have you hold the attack button to charge the damage, but then that would get abused. Plus you'd need to cut down on the amount of other weapons. Maybe even upgrade the sword with poison, fire, ice.... but in any FPS its just better to kill the enemies not mess with them. If Jimi can do amazing things with his sword for a Quake hobby game, why couldn't they?

Heck they're Ion Storm, why not Ion Storm magic after enemies as a sort of precursor to Bioshock? Why no alt fire? I guess it makes things easier for me since I bound the use button to the right mouse. They could have made a dash attack with the right button or even a selectable attack.

As for playing Daikatana when there are more entertaining games, some people aren't happy unless they're complaining. :-) Daikatana is part of gaming history! Steam games are becoming less historical as there are so many games with zero hype. People harass my reviews for not recommending a game that I have 8+ hours into it. Yeah that's how I know no one else would like the game, but I play it to complete it. It doesn't help that on Steam people review the game devs more than they review the game or its just a joke as a review. 'John Romero made me his bitch 10/10' played 0.1 hours.

I have a weekly rotation of games. Currently my rotation is Daikatana, Quake 1, Volgarr the Viking and Dead Space 2. I've been working on Daikatana and Dead Space 2 for five or so weeks now. Most games like Volgarr, after 2 days I'm done with them and move on.

With the Medusa battle, she was turning me to stone before I was even in her chamber. I figured that it was the Medusa textures on the wall turning me to stone. It could have been a lot better, but the game could be a lot better. Like Mikiko you distract her and I'll backstab her. 1 2 3 GO!

When everything broke out of stone I thought of the vampire myth... Yep a disease is cured when patient 0 dies. Logical. I kind of thought there would be a level to find a cure for Superfly. Nope. That would take away from the pace of the game.

I like how Superfly, Hiro and the gang are wearing space armor yet they're so cold.

I'm back to playing Daikatana. Still stuck in plague village. Its a nice level, but it feels like it could be its own game. Its not a level, it feels open world.

I found the key house long before I ever found the keys. Not just that but I was stumped trying to get into the key house, because I thought that was the only way to go. I had to blind jump over cliffs around corners. I ended up having to destroy a cart to crawl through a house. Holy shit. If this wasn't a legendary game I would have stopped a long time ago.

Then I found the church and listened to the 10 minute long cut scene. Wow this game. Searching every house, knowing nothing can kill me having 250 armor and 250 health.

Now I'm stuck in the church basement. I swear that a ladder didn't go up when it was supposed to. I see the top of the ladder extending from the ground.

I've now been in this level at least an hour without dying.

There's a switch next to the ladder somewhere to raise it.

You are probably missing one of the keystones to unlock the level exit. The game has no mechanism to recall conversations or important details so if you forgot what Musilde (guy in church) said about the locations of the stones you could be wandering around the level for a very long time.

This happened to me the first time I played through. PROTIP: the most well-hidden stone he mentions being underneath a dragon. He is not necessarily speaking of a real live dragon.

I'm already into episode 4. I have some notes to type up later when I'm out of class.

I was missing all 3 keys at first. I think I found the door long before I found the key. Which I'm fine with I think people should find the door before the key, but this was one extremely hidden door. I'd say its better than any of the game's previous secrets.

A dragon? I assume its the statue, but a dragon would be cool of course.

Looks like I have some catching up to do, but if the other levels of Episode 3 are like this one, my interest for playing this game is dead.

I dont have pc version but I got daikatana for gameboy color. Got it for 5€ with box and instuctions from local gameshop. I havent played it yet.

Hey Waffenak, that one (GBC) is actually worth playing. You should try it out sometime.

I was wrong when I said the enemies finally aren't destroying you by episode 4; by episode 3 you'll be almost indestructible, even on Shogun, assuming you don't put points into lame stats like speed and acro.

Speaking of the stats I think the whole stat levelling system really just dilutes the gameplay and doesn't add much, if anything, to the experience. I respect Romero for trying to evolve the FPS experience in a new direction with RPG elements, but Elder Scrolls this is not. Playing through the singleplayer one gets the impression that the enemies haven't been balanced at all for the level up system; in episode 1 when you're weak the enemies are brutally tough, then as you start putting points into power and attack they rapidly become pushovers. It's like the enemies in later episodes are a literal copy-paste job of the ep1 enemies with regard to HP and attack power, and Ion just put different skins on them to make them appear like new unique enemies.

Then there's speed and acro. In multiplayer boosting those stats may be useful for some players; in singleplayer they are shit. Let's start with speed; the levels are way too small and cramped (guys, we have to be Half-Life!) to make zipping around like the Flash be comfortable. For the enemies with avoidable projectile attacks, they are plenty slow enough to be dodged without boosting speed. For hitscan enemies, you can't dodge it anyway. Useless again. Not to mention aiming gets trickier the faster you move. Now, I could see speed being useful for getting into a timed secret door that opens somewhere else in the level, like certain levels in Doom. But they didn't do that.

Then there's acro. Once again, there could have been a point to boosting acro in singleplayer if they'd given it even the tiniest smidgen of thought. For example, they could have put some high-up secrets early in an episode before the player has acquired a weapon capable of 'rocket' jumping. Instead the level designers explicitly put a temporary acro boost near any secret where you might need it to gain access. There is no secret in the game that can't be accessed with the lowest levels in speed and acro.

As for the temporary stat boosting items lying around some levels, they too are almost entirely worthless to the point that you wonder why they were left in the singleplayer levels at all (aside from acro which we covered already). I don't even remember if the temp boosts are in multiplayer. If they are that's cool; in multi they could actually be worth a damn, unlike single. For starters they only last 30 seconds, and since the levels all try to be Half-Life that means you generally don't cover a lot of ground in the span of 30 seconds (likely you'll spend 25 seconds crawling through a vent), which severely limits how many enemies you could engage while the boost is still active. With the temp vitality boost I'm not even sure I know the difference between that and a Goldensoul as far as effects go; I guess the vitality boost also increases your max health for 30 seconds so, uh, woohoo. With the temp speed boost, I can think of 1 in the whole game, serving no useful purpose whatsoever (which can be said of boosting speed anywhere else in singleplayer).

When they have that chat in the church about the keystones and Gharroth and blah blah, Hiro asks his companions if they've ever heard of the bubonic plague, and doesn't sound rhetorical. I guess history education has really fallen by the wayside come 2455.

One thing the 1.3 guys added that makes a subtle yet huge difference is regenerating sidekick health. Take 1.0: sidekicks couldn't even use the damn hosportals and (in Greece) healing fountains. Ran out of healthkits in the level and your sidekicks are near death? How sad, maybe you should be more expert. In later versions at least they can use the hosportals/fountains but the damn things still take forever to fill up health, and of course they have to stop to recharge in the middle so if both your sidekicks are near death expect to be waiting at the portal/fountain for ages, watching them get stuck on the floor for no obvious reason as you try to order them to go get healed, and then waiting for the recharge to repeat the process a few more times. Expert FPS = Line Standing Simulator 2000

So anyway that's all better now thanks to 1.3. Even on Shogun I haven't seen the partners lose more than a quarter of their health (except when they fall off a walkway and die, dumbasses), allowing Hiro to hoard all the medkits with impunity. It helps dramatically to keep the game's pace moving.

Daikatana is the only shooter I can think of where multiple levels are designed in a way that makes taking fall damage unavoidable, thanks in part to the fact that Hiro can't fall more than a few feet without twisting his sissy ankle (swordmaster my ass). Some sections of Ep2 are like that, and of course we can't forget Ep1 Vault's Hellevator (as much as we may want to). This game delights in finding and exploiting every damage delivery device imaginable.

There's one part of Ep2's Acropolis where you can find a save gem underwater right before a load break. If you go through the load and double back to the water you can pick up a second save gem in the same location. I just thought it was funny.

I found something else interesting in the Acropolis. I got to the end and saw I was missing a secret. I did a few laps around the level racking my brain, and I thought I remembered the level having only 11 secrets total, but here was the scoreboard telling me there's 12.

Eventually I noticed (pretty close to the underwater gem I mentioned) a doorway set into a balcony overlooking a stairwell. It's positioned in a place where it'd be very easy to miss if you're just trying to get to the end of the level and not looking around at every corner. I recalled seeing the door and balcony before, and when I checked it out in 1.2 the doors wouldn't open, which is hardly unusual in this game seeing as there are mysterious unopenable doors and gates all over the place, like so much level designing floatsam.

So after trying to find this last secret for almost an hour I see this balcony, trident-jump up there and to my surprise the door actually BEGINS to open, but gets stuck for no apparent reason. No amount of shoving or jumping against or whacking the door helped, but I did eventually discover that firing a bunch of tridents at it was enough to jar something loose. The doors didn't immediately swing wide open, but one side did eventually give way enough to let me through and finally trigger that last secret, to my great relief. And what did I find on the other side? Why it was none other than our old pal Charon the ferryman (ferryskeleton?) from earlier in the episode. He doesn't seem to have anything to say, just sits there and stares at us. That's so Charon.

I'm guessing this secret area was 'restored' by the 1.3 team, but that door sure could use some work. Off to Charon's left is an Eye of Zeus, allowing us to receive that weapon maybe TEN WHOLE MINUTES before you'd get it normally. Exciting stuff.

I'll split the rest of this mental diarrhea into another post.

Found Mishima's growhouse.

What's that? You never asked to see Daikatana at 1440p? Well that's just poppycock.

(The Christian Devine Salon article I linked mentioned that there were frequent 420 breaks at Ion, so I can reasonably assume this room is intentionally designed to resemble an indoor grow because the devs were literally high. Besides, why does a big evil samurai guy with robot fauna and soylent green fast food and fancy time travel swords decide to expand into horticulture?)

(edit: on second that thought would make just as much sense as anything else in this game.)

I'm still going to continue my Daikatana spiel that nobody asked for eventually; I wouldn't want to let down the two readers of this thread myself included.

I don't remember there being environment mapping on that pistol (or any weapon, actually). Was it added in the unofficial patch?

SuperflyJohnson said:

robot flora

Fauna?

SuperflyJohnson said:

robot flora

Ion Storm Dallas had to be high to make this game; I have to be high to play it and post about it.

As for the environment mapping it probably looks a lot better in a screenshot than it does in motion. There's a toggle in the video options menu for 'shiny weapons' which, for a long while, was broken on modern graphics cards (like geforce 7 and up), which is why you generally don't see the effect in any videos of the game. Unofficial 1.3 patchers got it working again.

It's pretty cheap and tacky looking which totally fits the rest of the game so I leave it on.

fun fact: before 1.3 if you had it turned on the 'shiny' effect covered not just the weapon, but the hand and arm as well.