Daikatana is the tale of Hiro Miyamoto and, as you get further into the game, his two sidekicks, on a quest through time to save the world. The plot is passably interesting; involving a mystical bad-ass sword (the Daikatana) and lots of Bad Guy Weirdness (tm), but in the end,
Daikatana is a first-person shooter, through and through. You blow the crap out of things, open doors, and blow the crap out of more things.
Unfortunately, Daikatana starts out poorly and only slowly improves, eventually reaching a point where you’ll be moderately interested in what’s going on, but never really getting excited. The first episode, set in Japan in 2455, will make you want to scream. It feels like it was made early on in Daikatana’s extremely long development cycle, and as such, plays almost shamefully poorly. You will fight lots of mosquitoes, frogs, and a crocodile or two. And that’s honestly about it, until halfway through the second “mission,” which is actually five or six map-changes in. Daikatana sports some of the hugest levels of any FPS, but they’re more meta-levels than levels in and of themselves, as you’ll see a load screen or three in each mission. Luckily, the engine being Quake II and not Quake III, you’ll find your load times almost nonexistent on any modern machine.
The level design and enemies get a lot more interesting by the time that you get to the past, along with the weapons, although you’ll never find yourself really in awe of the game. Sure, some of the architecture (especially in ancient Greece) is gorgeous, but not enthrallingly so; some of the enemies are interesting, but never really awe-inspiring. The weapons also move away from the completely generic “gun” as you move to the past, but the game still just never seems to get the pep needed to keep it going. The A.I. (or lack thereof) of your teammates doesn’t help the situation; watch them completely ignore health packs, ammo, and anything else remotely useful as they bumble around the level with you. And since you can’t let them die, you’ll find yourself annoyed to no end once they come on board.
