Parasite Mutant by developer and publisher IceSitruuna—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a demo available through Steam.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes.
“This is a bio-horror RPG featuring a retro third-person semi-fixed camera and an ATC combat system that blends real-time and turn-based elements. You play as Nova, a Psionic Agent sent to investigate a mysterious abandoned city-island, ultimately uncovering the hidden truth and rewriting fate.”
- Steam page description
Clocking in around 30~40 minutes, the demo for Parasite Mutant already has me sold. Blending classic ideas with modern techniques, the content currently available was just as smooth to play on my PC as it was on my Steam Deck in either docked or handheld modes.
Parasite Human caught my attention, similarly to the recent Code Violet, as a spiritual sequel to titles that have been dormant for quite some time. Now full disclosure: While I own both Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve II physically for the PS1, and as PS1 Classics through the PSN, I've only ever played the introduction to PE1… they are still in my backlog.
Now that said, I know enough about Parasite Eve that I was able to appreciate the time I’ve currently spent going through Parasite Mutant’s demo a couple times. Yes, several. I wanted to make sure I was understanding everything the demo had to offer.
Parasite Eve, and now Parasite Mutant, play in a multi-view forced perspective making you often question what you’ll find around the corner. Combined with the somber colour palette and the soft rain falling as Nova explores these first areas, there’s an unsettling atmospheric horror vibe that quickly settles in.
What I think can further the unsettling vibe is that you have what “I believe” are random encounters. Quotations are because I’m not yet entirely certain. Some areas continue to spawn enemies while in others it was more of a BAM, fight! Let’s call it a 50/50 split of random and scripted battles. In either case if you don’t want to die, you’ll have to be quick on your toes and use the environment to your advantage.
Combat is an expansion of the ATB (Active Time Battle) called ATC (Active Time Chains) where you can sync up multiple actions for Nova to perform. Allowing one bar fill up will let you use either your equipped melee or ranged weapon. Filling up two bars will allow for a combo of two melee attacks, two ranged attacks or a hybrid of each. It’ll always depend on what the situation calls for.
If things get dicey, you can always use two ATC bars to access items in your inventory to restore hit points or energy that you can use for powerful skills. Now where this type of combat has always been cool is that everything happens in real time until you’re ready to make a choice. During that time everything pauses. Until you make that choice, you’ll have to run around the field and try to not get hit, which can be really hard when you’re on a bridge with multiple enemies and there’s barely space to squeeze by.
When you’re not in combat, you’ll be exploring and trying to find a way forward which may not always be the most evident. Thankfully you have a map to help note if there’s still something left to be done or picked up in a location. Sometimes that will be an item such as a weapon or armor upgrade, other times it’ll be a hint that lets Nova know “ah, well now that I know x, y, z is blocking the way, I’ll just move it.”
What I appreciated is that even if some of these may not be the most obvious, they aren’t so convoluted that I had to wonder if I was just rolling 1s on my Int checks. The map letting me know that there’s still something to do also helps out on that front.
Otherwise, at this point in time with only a half an hour to go off of, I don’t have any negative points to highlight. While I wish you could dodge, not having that ability, or at least not currently having that ability, fits in that classic horror-esque vibe making me remember all the times I high pitched screamed while playing Resident Evil 2 back on the PS1.
With still no planned release date, I’m happy to have had time with the demo. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for the full release!
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