Category: PSX

Soul Reaver

Soul Reaver wasn’t supposed to be set in Legacy of Kain universe at all. It just so happened that Amy Hennig, best known for Uncharted series, was helping with Blood Omen, and then decided that the best way for her idea to get approved is to shoehorn it into existing universe.
Another fact I didn’t know is that there are two versions of the game: PC and PSX have the same models, while Dreamcast had them reworked. Then there’s the remastered version from 2024.

At first I tried the original. I can see how this game is the precursor of the entire action adventure genre on PS2, with its acrobatics, almost mandatory finishing moves and gathering of souls out of dead enemies to replenish your health. Nowadays, though, it’s mostly unplayable, since it was designed before twin sticks became the norm. So camera is an issue.

And since the only way to permanently dispatch of enemies is to throw them at hazards such as water or sunlight, without second stick it becomes a pain.

And you can’t even look up or down. So Remaster it is.

I quickly discovered that the easiest way to dispose of vampires is to always carry a spear with you. Once you impale one, you can always reuse it.
Box puzzles are a genre staple. But it’s actually rare to see you are allowed to get boxes over obstacles and stack them to solve puzzles.

The game shows its age: the locations are pretty small to fit PSX memory, and the view distance, albeit better than in the original, is still quite limited. The blood effects are on PSX level as well. When you traverse corridors, camera follows Raziel closely, so you wouldn’t feel discomfort when you couldn’t control it.

Tags Soul Reaver

PSX Sony

Blood Omen

Completed Blood Omen.
I must give credit where it’s due, they actually managed to recreate a battle pretty well. Two or three full screens covered in red and white soldiers, actually fighting and killing each other, with the king fighting at the front.
Then we transported to the past, to kill William the Just before he became Nemesis (another “inventive” name). The nice play there is the huge statue. At first we pass by it standing, then in the past we see it half finished, then once we are back it’s shattered.
Turns out this was all Mobeius plan, so he could hunt all the vampires in present. Although I’m not sure how Nemesis prevented that, as Mobeius was also manipulating him.
The Mobeius fight is weird, because it’s almost the end of the game, and he sends a few whimpy villagers at us. Also, you need to be very specific where you step, or he wouldn’t open the gates to the next arena for you.
The necromancer that resurrected you turns out to be also the one who sent assassins after you, which makes no sense, as Kain was a random minor noble. You beat Mortarius once, he turns into a daemon with a single attack, you beat him again, and given a Dark Souls kind of ending, where you can either restore the world or take control of it.

This was one of the worst games I managed to complete without dropping. Probably the most annoying aspect is that Kain is useless without mana, as he can be easily interrupted or even stunlocked, but mana recovers slowly, and there are no mana potions, only this orb that gives you infinite mana, then brings you back to zero again.
But yeah, I wanted to experience it, I experienced it, it was bad, very bad. The constant need to switch between weapons through the menu, because with half of the weapons you can’t heal or cast spells. So you see an enemy, switch to single handed sword, cast shield, go back to the menu, switch back to two handed 🤦‍♂️.
The collision detection, the lack of feedback, you don’t know if you’re hitting someone or not, which is annoying especially with bosses, the visuals, everything is bad. Can’t recommend at all, even as a joke.

Tags Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain

PSX Sony

Blood Omen

Malek is killed offscreen in a cutscene, but you still pitted against two magicians at once. Not a bad idea, although the Druid just places water puddles, which is hilarious. I suspect that they rolled those bosses together due to time constraints, since when Kain brings their “mementos” to the pillars, he repeats “and the pillar accepted” three times in a row.
Because there’s no experience or currency in the game, fighting enemies is just a waste of time. Moreover, the further you get, the more annoying the enemies become, often stunlocking Kain with ranged attacks or poisoning him, while there’s a limited number of antidotes available. Kain has magic shield that completely negates ranged attacks, and mist form that ignores most melee attacks and floor spikes. Both require mana. If you don’t have mana, it’s best to wait around the corner for it to replenish, since enemies AI is lower that ghosts from Pac Man. They would literally try walking towards you through a wall.
The boss of the cathedral, Azimuth (sic!), is terrible. She fires homing missiles that have a knockback of a missile, and teleports before you even manage to get close. You just need to get lucky to hit her with the Soul Reaver, which you also get in the cathedral.

I found a way around slow menus: you can set CD-ROM speed to x8, which improves it by a lot. Setting CD-ROM to x16 breaks the game, though, menus stop opening altoghether.

Tags Blood Omen

PSX Sony

Blood Omen

Malek castle is quite terrible, but at least it has a point: there are no one alive, so there’s nowhere to get fresh blood. I’m lucky I stocked on healing items.
The fight with Malek is one of the worst boss fights I can remember. He has literally a single attack with windup.
I was puzzled at first that while using axes, Kain can’t cast spells. Are those anti-magic axes? No, turns out he needs a free hand.
First time I got really stuck was in Vorador’s Mansion. There’s a bridge where you aparently need to take control of a human, but how? Turns out you can walk on water in your mist form, which isn’t explained anywhere.
The Mind Control itself implemented very amateurishly. First, when you hit someone with it, their corpse sometimes appears. Then, you have to travel with the mind-controlled person between screens. But when Kain travels between screens, enemies respawn. So you can bump into “yourself” when you come back 🤡

I’m playing the PSX version, because I wanted shaders and save states. But it has its own problems. First, there are no subtitles, so you forced to listen to repetetive audio for any clues (although I think the subtitles in the PC version are a fan made patch as well). And second, each time you switch your weapon, it takes you to a loading screen, and each time you switch your form, the game just freezes for a couple of seconds. Annoying.

Tags Blood Omen

PSX Sony

Blood Omen

While people rave how good Legacy of Kain games are, I’m puzzled by how bad this game is. You have no indication if your hitting your opponents or not, no indication if people are hostile or neutral.
The intro is confusing: some vampire kills some mages, while a knight runs to save them? And that knight is either immortal or made into immortal as punishment for not saving them? Then some woman is stabbed? Then we play as another knight, that walks out of a tavern, gets killed, then is resurrected by a necromancer that descends into hell where he’s bound and pulls the sword that impaled him our of his back, which turns him into a vampire, although he doesn’t seem to be hurt by either sun or rain, despite saying he is.
Then you find 9 pillars, and a ghost of a woman that was killed in the intro tells you that each pillar is connected to a mage, and you need to kill all of them to restore balance.
What is this? Student’s project? Also, the writing:
“The wind was carrying screams from the west. I smiled. Someone was suffering more than I”. So edgy 🤡
At it’s core, it’s Legedend of Zelda. You get disposables, like shourukens, you get some spells, and you have different forms. Although one of the forms is basically just fast-travel, and one of the spells is basically return-to-checkpoint.
The first boss is environmental boss, I’m not even sure it has HP. It fires walls of projectiles at you, but some of them dissipate, so you need to dodge through the gaps multiple times to get to him. As a reward, you get a mace to break stones. Just like in Zelda games.

Tags Blood Omen

PSX Sony

“Why Nintendo Hates Fire Emblem’s Creator”

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 15, 2026

Didn’t know the original creator of Fire Emblem series released a Fire Emblem knock-off called TearRing Saga on PSX:

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 26, 2025

Completed Ace Combat 3.
This wasn’t easy, but not because the game is hard. To get the True Ending, you need to beat all 5 scenarios, and save them on the same memory card. I didn’t know that, so I used two memory cards, and had to repeat at least one scenario. I was also afraid that I was missing some missions, due to the way save states and memory cards work in RetroArch. But it worked out in the end.
I know I complained a lot about boss battles in this game. But “Ouroboros 1” scenario is probably the best boss battle in the entire series. First, Rena goes crazy, and you fight Night Raven. Then Keith comes to your rescue and sticks his plane in Rena’s (Night Raven is like a biplane from WW1).

In the Fi/Neucom ending, Dision mentions Yoko, but we have no idea who she is. Turns out, she was a scientist and Dision’s lover that performed Sublimation on him. It’s not a concience transfer, but a concience copy. So when General blew Dision and Yoko up, Dision-clone could watch how his original dies.

Keith/General ending is surreal, and I say it after the cyberspace battle from Dision’s ending. You fight Rena after failing to collapse geofront ceiling on her and Dision. Keith is shot down, but not before he shoots down Dision too. Then you need to fight 8 more Night Ravens! But once you beat the first, you somehow hack it, and then pilot it for the rest of the battle. No explanation is given, and the cockpit is shown to be empty.

In Dision/Uroboros ending, Dision mentions Simon, but it’s not clear why. In the True Ending, we get an explanation, and it’s a good one. Nemo is a computer program (that’s why Rena at the very beginning asks you why do you fly just like her), and the purpose of that program was to erase Dision from cyberspace. And alternative scenarios are alternative paths that the program takes to erase Dision. Talk about breaking the 4th wall.

Ace Combat 3 story is not just unparalleled for a flightsim. It is one of the best storylines in games. Dision plot made me think of Soma (which I hated) and Tides of Numenera (which I’m fond of), while multiple conflicting storylines reminded me of Zero Escape games, which, when I think of it, also dealt with conscience transfer.

Tags Ace Combat, Ace Combat 3

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 23, 2025

Next I decided to go back and shoot down Fi and Clarkson, which took me to the UFEO scenario.
Park, the UFEO commander, is corrupt and working with Uoroboros to pit General and Neucom in order to eliminate both.
There’s an interesting twist in he mission where you need to bomb nanomachines: Rena’s plane gets infected, and you need to hit it with a freefalling bomb 😬

It’s explained that Dision onboarded Rena into an experimental program convincing her to install neurolink so she could pilot Night Raven. Then he was killed by General either because Neucom split or for another reason, but managed to preserve himself in Electrosphere.

He offers Night Raven to Rena, but she uses it to shoot the zeppelin out of the sky. She crashes, but survives to be picked up by Nemo (the protagonist) and Erich. The strange helicopter you blow in the English version turns out to be Park trying to flee.
This ending is much more positive, and also the entire scenario is easier: Su43 you get from UFEO is far better than the aircraft from Neucom, and there are no annoying boss battles or tunnel runs at all.

Tags Ace Combat, Ace Combat 3

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 21, 2025

At the mission where you need to escort the UN diplomat, Fi is onboard with him when you’re ordered to shoot the aircraft, because Clarkson is about to defect to Neucom. Rena doesn’t care, but Erich objects. Another choice.

Joining Neucom we’re introduced to Cynthia, Fi’s edler sister. Turns out she is a Neucom ace, and obsessed with “Sublimation”, or in other words transcending into cyberspace.

Another choice, either follow her and join Ouroboros, or stay with Fi and Neucom. I didn’t save that broad just to let her go! So I stay with Fi.

In the underground, we fight Rena, then Dision. Now at least I understand who I fought in the English version. And that’s it, end of Neocom scenario. No delirious fight in Electrosphere. I thought that fighting Dision for a second time would be better. It wasn’t.
Rena receives a message from her sister telling her that she’s happy in cyberspace. The end.

I mentioned that Ace Combat 3 was the longest Ace Combat I played, and now I understand why. They mashed together missions from different scenarios. So I didn’t get to blow a train or to fight a virus or to free a path for a falling zeppelin. A single campaign in the Japanese version takes under an hour, pretty standard for Ace Combat games.

Tags Ace Combat, Ace Combat 3

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 20, 2025

It’s time to compare the English disgrace with Japanese original. First, there are two fan translations: Project Nemo and LoadWordTeam
Second is considered superior.

The experience from the translated Japanese version couldn’t be more different from the English one. In English you are thrown into the fight with little to no exposition. In Japanese version, you sit for 5 minutes watching news reports (animation is by Production IG, Ghost in the Shell) and getting codec calls, as you are introduced to Rena, Erich (Erik?) and Fiona. Rena is Motoko Kusanagi of this universe, a pilot prodigy that is allergic to sunlight, so she muses why would she need human body at all. Erich and Fi are your peers at UPEO (which is like NATO), and Park is your superior.
In the English version, you almost always fought alone, and when you did have allies, they were anonymous. Here the aircrafts are clearly labeled.

There are more planes available, both initially and as you progress. The weirdest airplanes, like a Catamaran one, are not playable at all in the English version.

The first branching path is as soon as Mission 4. The way you chose between branches is which of the aircrafts you follow.

At first you fight with General against Neucom Neocon. Then you defend Neucom from General. Then Rena asks you to come with her to reclaim an aircraft she was testing as a child, Night Raven. Only with full version the mission names start to make some sense. “Paper Tiger” refers to the fact that everyone thinks NATO is a joke. And “No Clearance” is both a piloting term, and refers to the fact you are following Rena despite your orders.

Tags Ace Combat 3

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 14, 2025

Completed Ace Combat 3.
English version of Ace Combat 3 is a complete mess. It’s like watching a silent movie from 1920, where every few missions you’re interrupted by a paragraph of text that makes little to no sense.
It’s the longest Ace Combat in terms of number of missions by far: 35 missions, compared to about 25 in most other titles.
Once you get used to the controls, the game is relatively easy, until the chase in the Geofront. Every Ace Combat game makes you fly through a tunnel. But that’s the only game I remember that has you do it for 5 minutes straight. It’s a torture.

And then you need to duel a X49 superfighter, similarly to Ace Combat Zero. But it’s very hard to tell if you hit it or not. And all that without saving in-between. I call it “superfigher” for lack of better term, as it is able to take ridiculous number of missile hits, and instead of firing missiles back it uses some kind of a laser.

After that there’s a long an unfulfilling fight against both X49 and UI4054 Aurora, that feels just random in the way they avoid missiles. During my first attempt, I simply ran out of missiles, and I had almost 200 of them, and gave up. Second attempt took me 18 minutes of chasing one then the other.

Didn’t enjoy it? It’s a shame, because you’ll have to repeat it two more times, beating Aurora first in another dogfight, then in Virtual Reality (the eponymous Electrosphere).

In terms of game length, it’s hard to measure, as it doesn’t let you save for the last 5 missions. 30th mission was 2:30 hours, and considering that just mission 33 took me 18 minutes, I’d say it’s around 3:30 hours of play time, which is again, longer than most Ace Combat games.

Tags Ace Combat

Emulation PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 5, 2025

They did simplify the mini games. In Ace Combat 2 I didn’t to manage to land once. Here I managed both landing and refueling in air.
There are a few very inventive missions, one of which has you pilot a stratosphere fighter, and another a spacecraft taking down satelites.

Chasing a train is fun and stupid at the same time, as this mission can be completed in 30 seconds.

“Swarm” mission throws so many enemies at you, I was afraid to run out of missiles. But at least they are finite, unlike Ace Combat 2 and Ace Combat 4 missions. Also, you have an ally in this mission, that is even helpful and downs some enemies, but you have absolutely no context who that is.

Tags Ace Combat

Emulation PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date September 4, 2025

Technically, “Fragile Cargo” will be repeated by Ace Combat 5, where you need to destroy antenas on the way of the landing aircraft. Here, you need to destroy chimneys on the way of zeppelin. But the way they errupt fire as if it’s Blade Runner is super impressive, considering it’s PSX.
This is the only Ace Combat game I remember that lets you choose between different machine guns. Also, the choice between missiles is much more interesting. In most Ace Combat games, you always fire two missiles. Here, you also have the ability to fire 4 missiles, but with a shorter range.

The approach to aircraft is what I call in shooters “M4 with neon lights”. Those are “futuristic” versions of modern aircraft. So we’ve got F/18U HornetAdv (real aircraft is called F/18 Hornet).
Ravine mission here is interesting for two reasons. First, it’s more of a maze, where you need to follow F117. And second, they created a reflection for F117 in the water. Impressive.

Tags Ace Combat

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 27, 2025

One thing I never had trouble with before are the controlls being slugish. But here, I have to pull very hard in order for my aircraft to do anything. Ironic, considering that the machinegun mechanic feels much more lenient, after nightmarish machine gun mission from Ace Combat 2. Hitting even multiple targets with a machinegun is no big problem. But turning your aircraft is.

Ace combat 3 Controls vs Ace combat 2 Controls
byu/gsifdgs inacecombat

I thought that only Fat PS2 could play PS1 games, but then I learned that my PS2 Slim could do that as well. So I gave it a try. Even on original PS2 analog gamepad, the game still controls differently than any other before or after. And it hangs on a second mission. Not sure if it’s because of my disc, or playing on Slim instead of Fat, or the game in general.

Tags Ace Combat

Emulation PSX Sony

Ace Combat 3

Everyone should know this story by now, but still. English version of Ace Combat 3 should be the definition of “self fulfilling curse”. Namco developed this insanely ambitious arcade flight sim only to get scared that it won’t sell well in the west, so they literaly cut more than half of the game for the English release, and after that, it obviously didn’t sell well.

I decided that I’ll start with the English version first, and then compare it to the fan translation. And what a strange experience that is.

Maybe it’s because the Japanese version comes on two CDs, and English just on one, but there is no intro, at all. After you start your first mission, you get a bit of text on a black screen telling you that you are UPEO pilot protecting General Resource corp from Neuwork corp. There is no voiceover. It all feels like I’m playing a ripped version in the 90s.

Speaking of the game itself, though, the visual jump is incredible, considering there was one already between Ace Combat and Ace Combat 2. But now the land textures are even more detailed, sun is reflecting on the water, there are lens flares, and clouds, and explosion waves (something I don’t remember even in PS2 titles). The first mission is such a power move overall.

Tags Ace Combat

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 2

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 15, 2025

Most interesting mission is where you need to chase experimental bombers above the clouds. A lot of aircrafts would stall at those altitudes, so you need something like MiG-29.

In some missions you also find named pilots, like Goose alor Razorback. Downing them brings a reward to the collection.

Again, we need to fly into a base through a tunnel to blow a reactor. With a twist that a tunnel opens only after 3 minutes of real time, and closes after another minute.

The hardest mission is probably the one where you need to destroy radars with your machine gun. Not so much because of the machine gun part, despite radars placed on buyous at sea and the need to fly through inlet to locate some of them, but because the way enemy planes spawn right behind you as soon as you try to make a pass. And unlike your missiles, those planes seem to be infinite.

Last mission, I didn’t enjoy at all. You need to chase a cruise missile with a machine gun, and that target is tiny. Good luck not getting motion sickness. Not sure if playing on a real hardware would help, but on emulator, this mission is a nightmare.

And of course there is another tunnel with a reactor you need to blow at the end. Luckily this time it’s enough to hit the reactor, you don’t need to fly out for the tunnel as well.

One bit that confused me is that I never unlocked the F22, that’s why I was playing final missions on YF23. There are also more aircrafts to unlock when you play the campaign for a second time, but after that cruise missile mission, I’ll pass.

Tags Ace Combat

PSX Sony

Ace Combat 2

It’s genuiniley impressive how much the game has improved over the first installement. The drawing distance is now comfortable, and I don’t need to look at the radar anymore. The speed and altitude is now also shown in the 3rd person view, so there’s no need to switch to 1st person much. The afterburners are now also visible, so you can see when you are speeding up.

The game is also more colourful. It is strange statement, considering in the first game you flew purple jets.

Of course there is a ravine mission. It looks better than in Ace Combat 1, but weirdly, it plays worse, because with potato graphics of Ace Combat 1 it was very easy to see the path, whereas in Ace Combat 2 I wasn’t sure if I’m flying into a wall.

Tags Ace Combat

PSX Sony

Resident Evil 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 5, 2025

Completed Resident Evil 3.
The final episode, Factory, is obtrusive. It may sound funny, but there isn’t that much backtracking in Resident Evil 3. Unless you get confused, of course. But Factory is designed is such a way that you have to go back and forth multiple times, while game throws at you enemies in rooms you already cleared, sometimes twice. Also, there are some unskippable cutscenes before the boss fights that can get pretty annoying.
I’m not sure how environmental the final two boss fights are. In the first, Nemesis is in humanoid form, and you need to shoot acid valves when he’s near. Not sure if that’s the only way to damage him, or if it just helps. Funny how at some point he loses his head, but still goes on.
Then the final fights is against Nemesis-frog. I usually say that ammo is more important than health items in Resident Evil, because you can’t heal a boss to death, you need to shoot him. But this is another environmental fight, as far as I can tell, where you need to turn on a railgun, then lure Nemesis a couple of times so it gets smashed by it.
The entire game took me around 6 hours of game time to complete. Which isn’t bad, I thought it would be shorter. I remember that Leon’s scenario in Resident Evil 2 took me around 2:30 hours.
By the end of it, I still had plenty of healing items, but not that many bullets, I must admit. So the game is more enemy heavy than Resident Evil 2 for sure.

Tags Resident Evil, Resident Evil 3

PSX Sony

Resident Evil 3

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 5, 2025

The trolley sequence is pretty tiring. Funnily enough, that’s the only part I remember from my playthrough those 20 years ago, the huge worm in the sewers, akin to Alone in the Dark. But you have to evade Nemesis, escape from the worm, then beat Nemesis, and he is though, taking whole Magnum, and then some.

At first, I found dogs to be pretty annoying. But then I noticed that they don’t have invincibility frames on the ground anymore:

By the time I reached the clocktower, I started combining all the gunpowder I had into Magnum ammo, and got 48 of it. That’s plenty. Also, got both part of the gun from Nemesis. Despite it’s named Eagle, it’s a 9mm gun, not a Desert Eagle. But it does has a better rate of fire than the standard gun, and allows to put any spare 9mm ammo to good use.

Nemesis shots down the chopper (that’s how I understood I played this game without videos, because I would have remembered such an epic scene), the Magnum ammo comes in handy.
Then we switch to Carlos. Playing as him is a bit tricky, as you have almost no pickups. If you run out of ammo – you’re done.

Tags Resident Evil, Resident Evil 3

Emulation PSX Sony

Resident Evil 3 (PSX)

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date August 3, 2025

After comparing Dreamcast version with all enhancements RetroTink 4K can offer with RetroArch/SwanStation, I must admit that playing on a physical console doesn’t worth it at all.
While colors might be attributed to how my capture card processes HDR signal, it’s undeniable that models and textures rendered in x5 resolution look significantly better.
The most important parameter to get this quality of picture is PGXP CPU Mode. It is supposed to be slow, but very accurate way to represent 3D models. Something that PSX was never good at.

Interestingly enough, Dreamcast has some new textures, for some reason (notice the plaque has moved a bit):

Back to the game, it is interesting how you meet Carlos at different points in the game, depending on which location you visit first. On Dreamcast, I’ve met him in the restaurant. But on my PSX playthrough, I wanted to avoid Nemesis and went to the newsroom first. And here Carlos was waiting for me again, with a different cutscene.

Speaking of cutscenes, the game has QTE events, even before Shenmue! Sometimes when Nemesis appears, you are given a choice, between fighting, running away or hiding.

Tags Resident Evil