Japanese Cover
European Cover
The original OverBlood was a fairly short, experimental attempt at doing this new “survival horror” thing in the style of early 3D adventure games. It had a simple story it told with some limited cinematic flair and had very bare bones gameplay and mechanics. It wasn’t something many remembered for flattering reasons, its lasting legacy being funny, out of context lines and a grown man crying to the heavens over his little robot friend being broken with dramatic strings cue in the score. Very goofy, and little else, its one notable accomplishment being a survival horror game made up almost entirely of 3D areas instead of relying on image backgrounds.
OverBlood 2, released just two years later, was an environmentalist epic inspired by Final Fantasy VII, used a style of gameplay that up to that point only existed in western PC games like System Shock while mixed in the foundations of their adventure game roots, and still found time to swerve into flashy anime nonsense in the final act. There is at least an hour of cutscenes in this game, if not more. You can visit shops to buy bazookas, go to the random store that sells a 30,000 credits costing Japanese katana with Stalin decorated window glass, and hang out at a movie theater to learn about in-game lore. Also, there is a cyborg dinosaur and it is remarkably unimportant. Things had changed.
Akihiro Hino, who would found Level 5 just a short few months later and go on to have a long and acclaimed career, was given a great deal of creative control for OverBlood 2 after acting as programmer for the first game. You could compare it to SUDA 51’s directorial debut with Moonlight Syndrome, a game that tossed up everything that the Twilight Syndrome games had built up, to the shock of many (he did direct some Twilight Syndrome games, but only to finish work the creative head had already started). However, where that game became a cult gem that Danganronpa developers cite as a point of influence, OverBlood 2 has only gotten any real attention in the past few years.
You can thank this to The Gaming Brit, who released a feature length video on the game in 2020. It covers a lot of the game, and even finally gives some information on a game breaking bug in the European release that required a second printing to fix years later. The torch has also been carried for years by a man known as “Ben,” who has been running a fan site for the game, complete with a lot of useful information not found anywhere else online, along with a full walkthrough (which was invaluable for this article). Since so many people kept asking him for help with this weird game few had played and less had made walkthroughs for, he sort of became the internet’s best source for information on the enigmatic title. The fact he remembered it for so long isn’t surprising, as it’s hard to forget something this odd.
OverBlood 2 is a weird, weird game. It is extremely ambitious, and equally clunky. Add in that severe crashing bug on the original European release, and it’s almost complete non-existence online for two decades starts to make a lot of sense. How can someone really take it in if they’re forced to stop on the second stage, before the game really starts to show its hand? If you manage to play further in, you’ll see why OverBlood 2 should absolutely be remembered as a piece of gaming history, and as a genuinely good game in its own right.
The story takes place in the year 2115 after a mass environmental collapse, requiring large cooling towers to keep the remaining forty something livable places running. Arcano, a junk blade pilot, has come to East Edge City to find his fortune in his chosen sport. An encounter with a scientist and a squad of goons looking for said scientist, including one turning into a monster form familiar to OverBlood players, causes those plans to go out the window. After having his hands on a capsule given by the scientist, Arcano makes a run for it and soon discovers the capsule is a type of recorder, and a jumbled message on it leads him to a bar. In said bar is the protagonist of the previous game, Raz Karcy, who is initially combative (with a shotgun), until the capsule is dropped and plays the message proper.
Arcano soon finds himself mixed up in a complicated conflict, where a group of scientists are trying to uncover a plot by Hayano Industries that involves their past research, not to mention a mysterious third faction who seem even more on top of what’s happening. That’s not even getting into Arcano discovering a mess of surprises from his own past, suggesting he’s a far more central player to all this then anyone first realized. Oh, and don’t think too hard on how Raz is here if you have finished the previous game, there is never a satisfying explanation, and it really doesn’t matter for the bonkers places this story goes to. Forget that sterile lab, we’re gonna be dancing at a gala and shooting a tiger in a South American prison.
OverBlood 2 is no longer a claustrophobic horror game, but an immersive sim style adventure that uses a wide variety of items to solve problems and uncover secrets in stages. It even has unique set-pieces, like vehicle escapes, turret segments, and a dance minigame that includes the difficulty option “let us burn passionately.” It always keeps throwing something new at you, easily its biggest strength. This is even reflected in the plot, throwing out twists and reveals all over the place. The sort of grandiose feeling that Hino would bring to Professor Layton and Dark Cloud was already present in his first lead project.
The game needs that ambition and fence swinging in order to make the sheer clunk and messy execution easier to accept. The game’s performance chugs when too many 3D models are on screen, and there’s usually quite a bit. The camera is still awkward and doesn’t have a satisfying option to make it easy to keep your eye on action, of which there’s a good deal of this time. The inventory system is handled in real time with multiple tabs, making it difficult to find what you want from your large piles of stuff in heated situations.
The game often feels cluttered, with some clear art direction drawing from light bits of cyberpunk and steampunk with modern commercial design. However, the limitations of the console and heavy focus on using 3D models results in a lot of details being hard to read in the moment. When you can make things out, it looks great, even with the more limited character models, but a lot of moments just look busy in an unintended way.
The voice acting in the dub also suffered behind the scenes. The original script given to the voice team was apparently originally translated by Italians, which caused a good few problems. You can still see issues in the final product with the odd weird line or the handful of times where the wrong line is said (one by the wrong character). It is honestly better than most dubbing from the time, though, all the actors doing what they can to give their characters personality. The one-off characters come out best, especially the really goofy ones (like the guards in chapter five).
All that aside, what has given OverBlood 2 a sort of mystic feel is how different it plays to basically any other game. It’s a mash up early 3D action, platforming, and puzzle solving, where the core focus is problem solving and knowing how to use your tool set. You can wear different boots and clothes to get different benefits and perks, like a shield jacket that lessens damage taken from explosions that make using bombs to propel yourself viable. You have a mess of different weapons to find that are all good for various situations (though the big magnum is a bit OP). Most importantly, you have a ton of items to use that can give you new options, like a gravity device that makes you jump higher, or affect the area, like packs that freeze or dry up water.
You won’t get a Deus Ex level of complexity, sadly, what with the limited enemy AI and simplicity of the uses of said items. Beyond shooting out glass with guns or using bombs on destructible objects, it’s all fairly standard, as it says on the tin stuff. To encourage you not to use the most useful items, like healing items, the hook shot, or the area skipping plates, the game has a ranking system.
There’s a secret chapter after the end of the game that can only be unlocked with 2000 completion points, which are earned from good performance on stages. You gain points from defeating enemies, overcoming challenges, finding items, and causing destruction. However, you can also lose points from over using items that heal you or let you skip over major segments of the level, among other things. This changes the pacing a bit, making the play less about going from point A to B, but doing it as well as you possibly can.
It’s still a bit half baked an idea (especially with grading you on the escape sequences, where not hitting something is nearly impossible), but it’s difficult to point out any other game that’s designed like this from the era, or even now. These are unique ideas that have some clear thought to how they’re structured and contextualized. This extends to little touches in cutscenes and how stages are chopped up.
For example, chapter five has a two person team, one doing the brunt of the stage, but the other rowing down the river until they can find a generator to destroy that was jamming your gravity device. Chapter two also had a little extra scene before you hit the computer room that shows a bridge giving out, only for another scene during your escape showing light constructs replacing said bridge later (explaining how Kondo got down there).
The rush of the game’s develop still shows in the limitations of these touches, like the multiple playable characters gimmick being not thought through that well (Arcano gets all the good clothing) and few stages taking advantage of it. The fact that it is there, though, and occasionally shows a spark of creativity and even solid execution, still makes it appreciated for being included.
That describes OverBlood 2 quite well. It’s a flawed game, but it has soul and spunk, and it executes on its ideas better then you’d first think. This goes especially for the story, which jam packs the final stage with a slew of juicy twists and unexpected spectacle. It had a message, told it, and still found time to entertain and surprise. This isn’t just a dinky little sequel to a game nobody really liked. It’s not just some survival horror footnote. It’s not even just memes and goofs, though there are many here (“I can’t believe I got capped by a guy who can waltz!”).
What a weird journey it has been. We started with Doctor Hauzer‘s bare bones and slow as molasses adventure game spook-a-thon, moved onto OverBlood‘s goofy dub and awkward presentation, and finally ended with a game that was clearly born from the both of them, and yet so, so much more. OverBlood 2 is what happens when a team is given control of a project beyond their capabilities, and they still go for it anyways. For every bit of jank, for every messed up line, for every garnish assist, there’s something just around the corner to find that will make you forget about it, if even for a moment.
