Original Release: Squaresoft, 1999, PlayStation
An experimental “racing-RPG” from Squaresoft that manages to fuse a basic Ridge Racer-esque system with the Parasite Eve engine, race random cars instead of fighting random monsters for EXP, funds and upgrades
Racing Lagoon (PS1, Square, 1999)
Where to Buy: Play-Asia
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Aside from being a Japan-only Square oddity, and a rare attempt at fusing racing with RPG elements, Racing Lagoon is noteworthy in being one of very few games to focus on underground street racing in the pre-00s. The concept would become a lot more hot n’ popular in a hurry with the release of the first Fast & Furious movie a couple of years after this came out, but that whole milieu of games mostly played out on the PS2 and the sixth-gen consoles.
Sadly, this is yet another one of those “intriguing idea on paper but trips up in the finer points of execution” situations. The overall structure actually isn’t too bad, but high difficulty and some racing jank becomes too much to be asked to adjust to when paired with just a ton of ponderous unskippable bullshit between races.
Right from the first race you learn that any little mistake that slows you down at all is crushing, you’re pretty much done if you clip something and slow down too much even once. And since this is a “racing RPG” you’re given a booty car to start with that handles, corners and accelerates like trash and are expected to GRINDO to improve this situation.
We play as some schlub whose best hope is to finish in the middle of the pack in the introductory race (and even that’s a fair challenge at first); apparently you’re not the main character, this race was to BIRTH A NEW LEGEND but that isn’t you, and the guy who it is might possibly be a werewolf, it’s not super clear.
Though the main character doesn’t even hang out with you and you’re just some bumb who slapped a racing decal on Mom’s Chevette or something, you’re still somehow part of a major racing team in Bay City, in a big heated rivalry with the other major racing team of the area. As to how illegal street racers have this much organization and funding I’m also not sure. It doesn’t help that a bunch of the story and dialogue was apparently written in some weird samurai poetry style. Which could be a really interesting twist if handled right, but it seems the designer got a little too caught up in this literary pretension and the game won’t let you skip or even accelerate any of its dialogue or cutscenes.
Aside from just being slow and weirdly incomprehensible and having annoying driving action, the game really got off on the wrong foot with me giving me an aneurysm just trying to figure out how to save and quit once you’re finally unleashed on the world map (which is like a weird revamp of the one used in Parasite Eve). There’s one save point, but you have no clue as to where it is. The first rando you race will give you a street name to look for a gas station on, but that doesn’t help much as there’s no map that displays street names. So unless you commit to using save states, you drive around randomly trying to figure out which dot on the map is the gas station while constantly getting ganked by other racers and dragged off into little mini-races (that constitute the “random combat” of the RPG equation).
Oh, and I almost forgot: in races, there doesn’t seem to be a “reverse” button. So if you crash and wedge yourself in some odd corner, better hope you can jank your way out by accelerating and bumping stuff or you’re gonna have to reset the game. You definitely lose the race if you crash like this, but the game won’t let you out of it until you physically drive across the finish line no matter how long it’s been since the other guy finished.
The final shit ingredient in all this is the looting system, or as the game calls it REWARDS. Win a race, you get to pick a part off the opponent. But, if you lose, they do the same thing to you. And yes they will take rare / valuable / hard or impossible to replace things. What they pick actually seems to be random, but everything you’re holding is fair game. There are some random encounters on the map that just feel really unfair at the beginning, either because the other car is substantially faster or you wind up on a racetrack that has sharp corners your crap starting vehicle is just not built to handle (or both).
One positive thing I can say is that the soundtrack is definitely on the Games Undeserving of Their Soundtrack List, kind of a fun techno-jazz fusion thing well suited to the “bayside city in perpetual night” setting. Though I did get real sick of the OOOOO WEEEEE OOOOO every time you get dumped back to the city map after either a pointless time-wasting race or an unfair race that left you even more hobbled for parts.
This was really almost a good game. It could have been if it had more respect for the player’s time, a less cumbersome framework (VN-style menus between races probably would have been a wiser choice), if the driving action was a little more refined (just feels like a less fun Ridge Racer), and if the story and dialogue didn’t insist on being weird and obtuse.
Links
Fan translation to English
Videos