Speaking of the early PS2 era, I believe that non-ACT young and old players will think of the "Ghost Warrior" series. As one of the works derived from "Resident Evil", "Ghost Warrior" had a single 200W sales in the world at the hottest time, and in that era when breaking a million was already a super masterpiece, this series was undoubtedly a hot existence at the time, but why is it disappearing now? This time, let's look back at the tears of this era together - the "Ghost Warrior" series.
2001 Ghost Warrior 1: Wise Sasuke turned out to be a man
In the early days of PS2, Capcom not only explored "Devil May Cry" with the structure of "Resident Evil" and the creativity of the members, but also produced "Ghost Warrior" set in the Warring States Period, and a million-level masterpiece of the PS2 era was launched. The CG performance at the beginning of the game shocked a large number of players, and its graphic design followed the combination of the static CG background and 3D characters in the early days of Resident Evil, which was definitely a very eye-catching design in the era when 3D technology was still developing.
Although the system gameplay of "Ghost Warrior" is very general from the current point of view, it is still very fresh in the past. With three weapons each with a set of must-kill skills and ground COMBO, monster upgrading weapon growth elements, adventure puzzle solving, plus a flash system and a stable plot length and flow, "Ghost Warrior" successfully made a name for itself. Later, some new elements were added, and "Phantom Devil Warrior" was launched on xbox, but unfortunately it was not ported to the PC platform. The HD remake version launched in 2019 is only on the basis of the original high-definition of the picture, Capcom this cold rice fried, really to be more perfunctory and perfunctory.
2002 Ghost Warrior 2: New protagonists, new elements, fun to the next level
With a good foundation laid by a generation, the development of the second generation is naturally more hard. And not only in the weight of the process, the flash combat system also adds chain flash and charge flash on the basis of the previous generation, and the weapon itself also has a charge attack, and can freely control the tactical attack level to be released. The ghost warrior transformation was also changed to automatically transform with five souls due to the relationship set by the script, and the progress in all aspects was very obvious, and unsurprisingly, it also achieved good evaluation and sales in the end.
2004 Ghost Warrior 3: Takeshi Kaneshiro and Jean Renault's gorgeous co-performance
The third generation inherits the opening CG level of the first two generations, and goes further, according to the data, a large part of the funds are also spent on CG. In terms of the story, a generation of protagonists, Wise Sasuke (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro), was newly invited to the well-known French actor Jean Renault, and the two formed a luxurious double protagonist plastic surgery, and the game scene was also ambitiously adopted the interactive shuttle between Sengoku Japan and modern France. In terms of graphics, it abandons the static CG background that has gradually failed to keep up with the times, and thus changes to a full 3D picture.
In terms of system gameplay, due to the relationship that has generally matured, there has not been much change except for the addition of ten consecutive slashes, and Jack's chain-like weapons are refreshing. In terms of puzzle solving, a lot of ingenuity has also been added visibly, requiring players to advance through the mechanism of interaction and cooperation between the two protagonists, but compared with the pure ACT such as "Devil Cry", "Ghost Warrior 1-3" is relatively lacking in the mechanism of combo combinations, so the main feature is a relatively demanding high-play operation of one flash.
As the final chapter of the series trilogy, "Ghost Warrior 3" itself performed very well, but it may be due to the market situation has changed, and finally according to the information released by Capcom in 2011, sales were only about 150W. The first few weeks of the Japanese market were not as good as before, and the use of live actors can indeed create momentum on the one hand, but on the other hand, the cost and future licensing discussion may also be the reason why Capcom has no action.
2006 New Ghost Warrior Dream Dawn: The Last Attempt
The "Ghost Warrior" series, which should have ended and retired from the stage, did not expect to launch the "New Ghost Warrior: Dawn of Dreams" in 2006, which was changed to the toyotomi Hideyoshi era, both in terms of gameplay and system, and the publicity also seemed to have been bloody, not only invited Ayumi Hamasaki to sing the theme song, but even launched the anime of the same name. However, the protagonist Ghost and the suspected protagonist of the previous game did not consider the live-action performance authorization, thus changing to a low-key gray area.
It may be that the intention is to open up a new architecture to explore the wind direction, and many aspects of the new ghost warrior are completely different from the series, such as a total of 5 characters including the protagonist Ghost who can operate and switch, each with a different style, and can also be transformed and cultivated. Not only that, but also added RPG levels, fusion skills and other systems, weapon training has also increased from the original level 3 to level 10. In addition, the weapon system is no longer the traditional pure ACT gameplay that is fixed and then slowly strengthened in the past series, but has been changed to an ARPG-style multi-weapon collection system, and each weapon has its own attributes and style, and the armor equipment also adopts the same concept.
The combat system has also undergone great changes, first of all, the flash is no longer completely dependent on the player's operation and reaction as it was from the beginning, but the threshold has been lowered, and it has become a crash flash with average practicality but easy to trigger. Again, the move is obviously closer to the direction of "Devil May Cry", the original "Ghost Warrior" series is mainly the attack key plus the tactical shell and the arrow keys, the rest is the movement, secondary weapon props switch selection and other operations, a flash mainly depends on the player's mastery of various enemy actions. However, the five maneuverable characters of the new Ghost Warrior have their own characteristics, and their command moves are similar to the R1 + front/rear or joystick + attack input method similar to Devil May Cry.
The previous trilogy, while classic, also has obvious drawbacks: the fun and breadth of combat are slightly inadequate, and the reason is that the one-flash system is too passive. All the player has to do is to tentatively circle and then wait for the attack, while other alternatives are unusually lacking, each weapon COMBO is a set, can not be combined, there is no separate move for combo switching, at most a tactical shell, but the tactical shell is a fixed performance, watching more than a few times will inevitably be tired. So it's completely understandable that the New Ghost Warrior has made changes such as a crash and a flash, as well as an increase in everyone's command-active skills.
Tears of the times
Although "Ghost Warrior" somehow has no following, it may be difficult to continue this series, because "New Ghost Warrior" has written the plot to death, and if there is a follow-up, it can only be restarted or completely remade, and either situation is extremely tricky. Nowadays, because of capcom's pendulum, other companies have the opportunity to seize the market of Warring States/Samurai Style ACT/ARPG, so there is "Ren Wang" and then "Only Wolf", and then there are "Tsushima", which have their own strengths, occupying the market, and players naturally don't bother to care about what you have done to "Ghost Warrior".
And Capcom now has the invincible "Monster Hunter", the "Resident Evil" that stabilizes the multi-faceted development, and the "Devil May Cry" with stable quality and stable sales, and it is not necessary to consider the IP of "Ghost Warrior" anymore. Therefore, "Ghost Warrior" is destined to become the tears of the times, and we may not be able to see its return in this lifetime.