Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

Beyond Good & Evil is an Action-RPG originally released in 2003 on PC, PlayStation 3, the original Xbox, and GameCube, with this remastered version of the game releasing over 20 years later in 2024, on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game takes place in a futuristic setting on a remote world embroiled in a war with attacking aliens seemingly being held off by a military dictatorship… although it soon becomes clear that there is more going on than the peaceful people of the planet are aware. In this game, players take the role of Jade, a young woman who becomes a photojournalist for a resistance group seeking to uncover the truth of what’s really going on.

This release of the game improves the visuals and sound (more on this in a bit), adds a gallery of making-of materials, and gives players a new speed run mode. On the other hand, it pushes players hard to sign up for Ubisoft Connect, making it a hassle to play the game if you want to refuse. Given that this is a single-player game without any online content whatsoever, this seems like a pretty irritating addition.

As for the presentation, the 20th Anniversary Edition takes the 3D visuals of the original game, which were pretty good at the time of the original release, and brush them up with improved textures, better overall resolution, and some nice lighting. The result is a game that looks good, but definitely shows its age. It also bears mention that, while other versions of this release of the game got a framerate boost, the Nintendo Switch version is stuck at 30FPS, and it can’t even maintain this consistently, with framerates getting particularly rough during some cutscenes. And that’s not even getting into the graphical glitches I saw at times here.

The sound was supposedly also remastered, with some re-recorded music, but mainly the difference I notice is just in the sound quality. Still, this game has never sounded better, with a great mix of atmospheric music like In the Beginning and Organic Beauty, instrumental themes like Hillyan Ballad and Hillyan Safari, and eclectic tunes in a variety of styles like Akuda House Propaganda and Salud Juanito!. Along with this, you have good voice acting from most of the game’s main cast and particularly for protagonist Jade, though you do occasionally have odd voices like resistance leader Hahn.

Okay, so after going over everything that’s changed, the question that remains is whether this is a game that still holds up after twenty plus years. And the answer is… yes and no.

On the one hand, even though the graphics are a bit dated now, the world of Beyond Good & Evil is still beautiful and fascinating – part Star Wars, part Pixar, part libertarian dystopia, with some elements of the Jak and Daxter franchise, yet with a scrappy conspiracy theory photojournalism angle that’s all its own, the game’s world of Hillys absolutely feels like a place with a history of its own and a lot of personality, with plenty of interesting inhabitants to match.

Even beyond this, Beyond Good & Evil has some clever Zelda-style puzzles, well-crafted Graphic Adventure-style puzzles, and multiple fun upgrade systems. Plus, one of the game’s signature mechanics, the camera, is used so well that I can’t help but think that games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were inspired by it.

However, this game has its share of problems, too. The camera is a relic of the past that players will often feel themselves struggling against. The combat is sloppy and not very fun. There are stealth sections that are tedious to get through. The game’s areas are often mazelike and unnecessarily confusing, and this can make it easy to get lost, or to be unsure where you’re meant to go next.

Then there are technical issues, beyond the framerate stuff. Friendly AI characters can stupidly wander into danger, or get stuck on scenery. And then there’s one of the most frustrating issues with this game: areas in the game are often fairly small, and every time you go to a new room or area, you have a brief load time, with these load times adding up quite a lot.

I can’t speak to how many of these issues are on other modern platforms, but on Nintendo Switch, they add up to what feels like a lot of unnecessary frustration. And what’s even more frustrating, you have all these issues and the framerate problems, for a game that is over two decades old. It’s hard not to feel like this could have been done better here.

Still, despite all the game’s dated flaws and the issues the Nintendo Switch release has, Beyond Good & Evil is still a solid game, well worth playing. It may not be quite as deserving of the reverence many people treat it with, but it’s a solid Action-RPG, and one that is original enough that it has plenty to offer that’s still highly unique, even to this day.

tl;dr – Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition is a remaster of a classic Action-RPG that updates the presentation and adds a lot of behind-the-scenes content, although on the Nintendo Switch this comes at the cost of framerate issues, and there are other problems like load times and some dated design. Still, despite these flaws, this is still a fantastic Action-RPG with a unique and beautiful world to explore. Dated though some parts of it may be, it’s still well worth a look.

Grade: B

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