Great for fans of action-rpg style games..... Not so much for original Parasite Eve fans.
User Rating: 6.5 | The 3rd Birthday PSP
When I was a kid I grew up playing games like Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc etc and fell in love with them; Then around '99 I played Parasite Eve for the first time. A friend of mine had let me borrow the game and said "If you like FF and RE you've got to play this game" so I took it home, played it and about 10 minutes later I was hooked and addicted like a crackhead. Amazing storyline, great combat system, and a perfect blend of rpg/action & adventure/survival horror elements are what made this game so good. 2000 came around and PE2 came out and got me hooked just as much as the first one. Played it, beat it and craved more; Finally 11 years later I got my fix, only to be screwed over by the dealer that provided me with endless hours of enjoyment since I first played Chrono Trigger on the SNES. That disappointment came in the form of "The 3rd Birthday" (Parasite Eve 3) First off I'll start with the positives about this game Excellent Combat, The Overdive kill technique, Customizable Weapons/DNA (for enhanced health, armor, etc) great ost, and a good variety of unique enemies and challenging bosses (Some of them too challenging) Now the Negatives, nonsensical storyline, very linear compared to the first two (no exploration outside of the missions) can get very hard to the point were it feels like a chore at times, inability to play around your girlfriend or wife thanks to the "battle damage" feature and also lots of "sexual" grunting, the shower scene, and whenever theres a CG cutscene that shows her out of body about to overdive she's completely nude, and last but certainly not least Aya's no longer this tough, independent, and badass chick she was in the first two, but is now a fragile, scarred, helpless girl that looks about 20 yrs old but is really like 40 something I know it's because of her "mitochondria" but she looks younger in this one than in the other ones. To sum things up it would've have been a lot better if Aya was still tough and the damn story actually had something to do with the original Parasite Eve, so unless your either a pervert with no girlfriend and could care less about the actual gameplay and you just want to see Aya's breasts or your really big into action games and could care less about story; This game isn't for you especially Parasite Eve fans. However Everyone has there own opinion and there are some fans of the first two that do like this game I'm not one of those ppl though, so if your still willing to check the game out rent it first so you don't end up wasting $30 bucks on it like I did. 
