Daikatana

TL; DR: recommended for those who can't get enough of late 90's post-Quake FPS games, but only with the warning that [spoiler] THE UNOFFICIAL FAN PATCH IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY [/spoiler]. Pros: -extremely creative throughout its entirety (weaponry, level design, enemies, etc.) -shooting is responsive with good feedback -some great weapons that are terrific fun to gib with and make you wish you could have some of what the devs were having at the time -once leveled up the eponymous Daikatana is extremely fun to use -endearingly wacky story and its overall cheesiness is stupid fun in a Saturday Morning Cartoon kind of way Cons: -I wasn't joking about the fan patch: the vanilla game is still so buggy and broken that without it it's almost unplayable -even with the patch companion AI can still be frustrating and cutscenes can still break things at some points -some terrible weapons that make you grateful you can't actually have what the devs were having after all -the swordplay can be ...

It's worse than I thought. Unfortunately I can't be Romero's bitch

thank you square enix george romero is a world reknown film director and made me his lover

if you ever wonder why games ever feel the same in the 2020's, and devs even with multiple studios are """"lazy"""" amd "don't take risk anymore" just remember this game was made by one of the offices of ion storm YES the exact same ion storm that made deus ex, even though it was a different office made that game, but both offices worked for the same dev brand and same publisher. so sometimes it just doesn't work to "take risk"

Daikatana's reputation as one of gaming's biggest disasters overshadows what was actually a remarkably ambitious FPS that was simply ahead of its time. The Vision Behind the Infamy When John Romero left id Software after Quake, he wanted to create something more complex than the studio's "shoot and flip switches" formula. Daikatana was his answer—an episodic FPS with AI companions, RPG mechanics, and four distinct time periods, each with unique weapons and aesthetics. Ambitious but Flawed Execution The game's problems were real: buggy follower AI, ricochet weapons that could damage you, and a development cycle plagued by inexperienced staff and engine changes. But beneath these issues lay genuinely innovative ideas. AI companions with command systems, stat progression affecting gameplay, and varied episodic content were groundbreaking for 1999. Playing It Today With fan patches improving the AI and proper use of follower commands, Daikatana reveals itself as an engaging co-o...

The game got so hard to progress that I stopped playing. I shouldn't be responsible for other characters lives in the game; where if they die I have to start over from the last check point, and sometimes the other characters get stuck near a door, the door shuts and kills them. Doors shouldn't kill you when they shut; that's stupid and makes the game unnecessarily hard.

I hate the world today

To be honest, I purchased this game because I wanted to have it at hand for the moment I had time to play it. As far as I can tell, the best way to play it is with mods that remove the CPU companions. I have played it before (N64 and an old backup copy, back when I was younger), so I know how problematic are they. I can recommend it because we could play it more for the LOLs than anything else.

The game is so broken I had to install a patch to make it playable. I guess that makes me john romeros b.itch.