YMMV / Parasite Eve

The Book

• It Was His Sled: The Big Bad is sapient mitochondria that wants replace humans at the top of the food chain. Adaptation Displacement will do that.
• Squick: Anything Eve does, like creating a body, or raping Toshiaki, or raping Mariko.
• Values Dissonance-Deliberate Values Dissonance: Even though Kiyomi was the one who signed up to be an organ donor, the procedure cannot proceed without the consent of her husband and parents after her death; in America all that is needed is the consent of the individual. The book also takes a bit of a critical stance towards Japan's, at the time, more conservative and cautious views of organ donation, noting that due to many Japanese finding organ donation uncomfortable and objectionable, and especially the reluctance to consider "brain death" as genuine true death, the country has a severe shortage of viable organs for transplants, and they are forced at times to rely on organs from oversees. Also plays into the anxiety Mariko feels over her transplant and the bullying she experiences at school.

The Movie

• Special Effect Failure: The fire is even awfully designed for its day, not appearing anything like fire or flames actually look. Even contemporary music videos were better at depicting CGI fire at the time.

The First Game

• Adaptation Displacement: You mean there was a movie? And - gasp - a book? It probably didn't help that their international releases were delayed several years, and weren't around for long once they were. The novel was actually not published in English until 2007, and it's rather rare in a lot of North America. To be precise, the game is written to function as a standalone sequel. Maeda makes a few mentions to a similar incident in Japan happening before, which is referring to the events of the book and movie.
• Angst? What Angst?: Ben goes through a lot of shit for a kid; first he sees his mother getting assimilated into the gooey blob created by Eve and then the next day, the police dog he grew to love mutates into a monster in front him he begs Aya to kill it. Despite that, Ben is pretty chipper by the end of the game and wants to enjoy the opera show with his father and the others.
• Awesome Music: The game has an excellent soundtrack, courtesy of Yoko Shimomura herself
  • The Main Theme is a gentle, haunting, sad, yet heartwarming piece that plays at a few choice moments, usually pertaining to Aya's identity crisis and memories of Maya.
  • Primal Eyes, full stop. Also, Kyrie.
  • The awesome final boss theme, "U.B.", and also "Escape from U.B.", a creepy song which really provides extra tension during the final escape sequence. Escape from U.B. in particular got a kickass remix in The 3rd Birthday.
  • Arise Within You, the main battle theme, is an excellent track that is both ethereal and intense at the same time.
• Complete Monster:
  • Mitochondria Eve-2 is a sadistic collection of sapient mitochondria who formed into a singular, powerful figure. Having materialized in Maya Brea's kidney after being transplanted into actress Melissa Pearce, she later takes over her body by killing competing mitochondria and attaching to her cells. She plans to use Melissa to give birth to the Ultimate Being, a lifeform far more powerful than her with the power to instantly destroy humankind. Taking complete control over Melissa's body during an opera performance, she causes everyone's cells to burn up and combust. Knowing that Aya Brea is after her, she uses her powers to turn animals, both alive and undead, into vicious monsters to kill her. Working with Hans Klamp, she has him create special sperm to help her give birth, later having him gather up a group of people—including Daniel's ex-wife and son (though he ends up escaping)—to Central Park, where she melts them into a slime and has it hide in the sewers to later serve as her uterus. Having made Manhattan a complete ghost town due to her actions causing a widespread evacuation, she later raids the police station, having her mutated animals murder and injure the surviving cops. Obtaining a sample of Klamp's mitochondria-free sperm, she later gives birth to the Ultimate Being, tempting Aya to join her in her cause before trying to kill her after she refuses.
  • Hans Klamp is an anti-social misanthrope working with Eve-2 on her plan to eradicate humanity and allow mitochondria to take over, seeing them as superior to humans. As a teenage intern at St. Francis Hospital, he transplanted Maya Brea's kidney and cornea into Melissa and Aya before getting fired over selling patient records. Partnering with Eve-2, he removes mitochondria from his own sperm to allow Eve-2 to easily give birth to the Ultimate Being, prideful to be involved in its creation. He later invites people on an HLA list to a play in Central Park, where they are turned into slime by Eve-2 to be used as her uterus, causing the deaths of many, including Daniel's ex-wife Lorraine, with his son, Benjamin, escaping just in time. When Aya discovers his plans, he tries to kill her with a scalpel. Refusing to face arrest, Hans orders Eve-2 to burn him, chastising Aya for wanting to save him. Before his death, Hans engineered Maya's body to unleash another Eve once Eve-2 gives birth to the Ultimate Being, starting the plan all over again should Eve-2 not succeed.
• Disappointing Last Level: Day 6 starts with a multi-stage boss, which, while impressive, is no match for the Suspicious Video-Game Generosity that immediately precedes it. Defeating it leads to a chase through the maze-like interior of a ship which, while certainly tense, requires no wrong moves whatsoever through the unmarked tunnels, with the slightest mistake or deviation being punished with a One-Hit KO. And failing to realize one has to activate the boiler along the way just makes the chase Unwinnable. Also, you'll have to re-fight the final boss and sit through unskippable cutscenes and dialogue first each time you try.
• Demonic Spiders: Flyman and Bacterium, which have the ability to spew out green acidic puddles which slow Aya down to a crawl and fire a red round projectile which poisons her.
• First Installment Wins: The first game of the series, and the one with the least debate about its quality.
• Game-Breaker: The Super Toolkit available in New Game Plus (aka "EX Mode"), although the upgrades are still limited by the attribute "donor" items and the upgrade capacity of the target. And whether you collected all of the Rare Trading Cards for it; miss a few and you'll be awarded a lesser version that destroys donor items.
  • You play your cards right, you can put together a pretty cheesed up weapon on your first playthrough. How about a handgun that fires two salvos of flaming shotgun rounds? Yes please!
  • In an LP, the player managed to put together a gun that fired grenades full of acid and liquid nitrogen in shotgun spray.
  • Upgrading a gun's ammo capacity and range to high enough levels can let you attack monsters from any spot on the battlefield (unless they fly/dig off screen) and never having to reload.
  • Adding the shotgun effect to regular rifles or handguns makes the things effectively fire flechettes for full effect in a cone, neatly breaking the rate of fire problem noted in Awesome, but Impractical.
  • Guns that have the "Enter 2 (or 3) Commands" effect can offset the rate of fire problem described above, allowing you to shoot multiple times but have the attack power be based on a single bullet per shot instead.
    • Even moreso, you can and do use a Power as a command, meaning that that mod can have you fire off multiple powers, possibly mixed with gunfire.
  • Powering up your armor enough can let you be completely immune to damage from almost every enemy attack and you will need it when tackling the higher levels of the Chrysler Building.
  • You can also modify your armor to make you immune to every single status ailment in the entire game, with the exception of Defense Down.
• Good Bad Bugs: You could get dozens of Trading Cards at St. Francis Hospital in Day 4 by clicking on the space below the x-ray on the wall several times until your inventory is full. This would be useful in maximizing the slots on numerous desired weapons and equipment, making them potential game breakers as early as the first playthrough.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" meme. Turns out there's a reason why it became the powerhouse of the cell...
  • A Colt M1911A2 could be acquired in Chinatown during Day 5, an actual gun wasn't developed until 2004. In a way, the game did some minor predicting of the future.
• Mis-blamed: Thanks to Adaptation Displacement, gamers have actually assumed Square-Enix wasn't giving it a remake, rerelease, or an HD Remaster out of laziness. It's actually a mixture of licensing - Square-Enix doesn't actually own the license to Parasite Eve, and any rereleases will likely have to change some of the Product Placement. However there was a trademark filed in October of 2022, suggesting it might have been rescued from licensing hell.
• Nausea Fuel: The Body Horror mutations looks sick, in both good and bad ways.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Technically, Parasite Eve is a licensed game - most people actually didn't know it was one.
• Paranoia Fuel: You have a mitochondrion in every cell of your body. They're the chemical engines of life, and without them you'd die in minutes. And they're of such alien origin that they even have their own DNA, rather than being coded in the nuclear genome that describes every other aspect of your phenotype. What if one day they decide they hate you, and they should revolt?
• Squick: Hans provided scientifically altered sperm to Eve. How he donated it is the question...
• That One Attack: Most of the last bosses faced in the game have attacks that can only be evaded with either quick reflexes or by making sure Aya has her Haste activated in order to outrun them. And in true JRPG fashion, there are attacks that will bring Aya's HP down to 1. Hopefully you have some medicine or enough PE for a quick heal or else it's Game Over.
  • Eve's penultimate form has a grab attack that can reduce Aya's HP to One or inflict a random status effect depending on the aura's color. Thankfully, these are easy to avoid just by staying far away enough from her.
  • Eve's final form has an unavoidable attack that causes damage and inflicts Stiffness, which can be a pain since she flies around very quickly around the field. Her other noteworthy attack is an energy spear fired from the sky that can be tough to avoid as the screen cuts away, preventing you from seeing where it will land. If Aya gets hit by the shockwave, it causes Defense Down.
  • The U.B.'s third form is the most difficult battle in the main game, especially for an unprepared player. When he jumps into a corner, he will fire purple energy blasts at Aya that can hit her twice for a lot of damage. The easiest way to avoid being hit by it is by running as fast as possible to get to the same corner, which can be tough without Haste. If it jumps into the center of the field, it will unleash a shockwave that cuts Aya's HP by half and naturally it has a grab that will reduce her HP down to 1, but thankfully, these two are rarer than its two-hit combo and energy blasts.
  • The Queen Bee faced in the Bonus Dungeon has another unavoidable attack that roots Aya in place for a few seconds, then causes a heavy amount of damage and Defense Down. If that wasn't bad enough, the bee's minions will continue to wail on Aya while the player waits for the animation to finish.
• That One Boss:
  • Fighting Maya isn't terribly difficult until you start to whittle her HP down. She can perform several kicks that you can't avoid at all and she can also do a charged up flying tackle that is both unavoidable AND doubles as an HP to One move. What's even worse is due to the game employing Collision Damage, if you get stuck on top of her after her tackle attack ends, you can take additional damage and possibly die. When Maya has her helpers summoned, attacking her has a second helper appear that heals her for 1000 HP and additional healing raises it by an extra 1000 points (And good luck figuring that one out). You NEED Auto Heal and plenty of Medicine 3 and 4 to be able to survive the fight since your turns will never come up fast enough to let you heal yourself manually.
  • The Spider boss is a pain in the neck. It will root the player in place with a hard-to-dodge web attack that paralyzes them and deals damage over time, and actually shooting it means getting in range of its powerful melee attack. And it's followed and preceded by a looooot of unskippable dialogue and a Kaizo Trap that the game does a very bad job of explaining how to escape.
  • The cockroach boss in the Bonus Dungeon not only has a good amount of defense, it'll also lay an egg that will hatch into another cockroach if you don't kill the first one fast enough. If your gun's strength isn't up to snuff, you can easily be caught in an endless loop of wailing on the boss, the egg hatching, killing the first boss and then dealing with the newly hatched boss who can also lay eggs, rinse and repeat.
• That One Level: Both the major Escape Sequence levels, including both the aftermath of the aforementioned rooftop Spider boss and the flight through the ship pursued by the Ultimate Lifeform. Both have very tight margins for error, involve having to undertake very precise actions the game does an atrocious job of explaining, and require you to start all over again, chewing through unskippable dialogue and cutscenes, if you slip up and instantly die.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The graphics during the mutations were really ahead of their time, and still hold up today.
• The Woobie: From what we learn of her, Melissa Pierce. She was ill since her youth and all the way up to adulthood was hooked up on medication. Despite that, she struggled to become an opera singer and had to share her part with someone else. And then on her opening night, she was taken over by Eve thanks to a kidney transplant supplied by Maya back in her youth as well as further medication by Klamp that would make her body even more susceptible to Mitochondria Possession.

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