Beyond Good & Evil

Expose the conspiracy. Capture the truth.

NA release: 11th December 2003
NA release: 27th February 2004
JP release: N/A
Developer: UbiSoft
Publisher: UbiSoft
NGC Magazine Score: 86%
Mods Used: Zoom Shader

Beyond Good & Evil is a game that became a cult classic, and one that manages to become more than a sum of its parts – giving long term good memories of the game. I didn’t play until the HD version on the Xbox 360, but I still have very fond memories of it. Revisiting it, the game still has a ton of charm but you really do see the issues while you play the game – it’s just that the good parts of it stick in your memory while the bad parts fade over time.

The best part of the game is the story, characters and the overall world. It’s surprising how little you actually see – the main city is a bar and two shops – but it manages to feel like an entire community. It’s set on an alien world with a mixture of species, but a strange monstrous alien race keeps attacking, with a strange security force supposedly protecting the citizens. Jade, a photographer, gets roped into investigating and drags along her pig-like uncle Pey’J. The characters and world are extremely likable.

The game is sort of structured like a Zelda game, with you finding collectables in the overworks and hunting for dungeons. While there’s a fair amount of combat (which is fine, with a couple of fun boss fights), many of the encounters are stealth based, and this is sadly the game’s biggest weakness. The camera isn’t suited for stealth and Jade just has a basic crouch. Most of the time it’s best to just run in, hit an enemy in the back twice and run away into a convenient hole and wait to repeat until you’ve dealt with all guards in the area. It’s really not fun.

A lot of the time will be spent in a hovercraft, which can be upgraded to reach more locations. This is quite fun to pilot and is used in a neat way in one of the dungeons. These upgrades require pearls, which means you’ll have to complete additional activities such as taking photos of all the creatures and some races. People in the city will also give you some hints on where to find them, so it won’t be too much trouble if you just want to complete the game.

Near the end of the game, you need to upgrade the hovercraft twice, which feels like a dungeon was simply missing – especially as there’s only four in the game, two of them quite short. The game is over before it really feels like it should. There’s a lovely world in this game, and it’s full of charm and joy, but the gameplay itself doesn’t match it.

Fun

Beyond Good & Evil is all solid adventure game territory, then, but it’s all been wonderfully worked. The atmosphere and gameplay are pitched spot-on throughout, with a satisfying blend of both action and stealth elements sitting alongside some wonderfully diverting extras such as hovercraft-racing minigames.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #71

Remake or remaster?

A remaster was made, it works quite well but I don’t think the higher detailed visuals fits the game’s style that well.

Official Ways to get the game

The remaster is available on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch.