Someone actually defended Daikatana? It's not just a victim of hype, removing that it's still fully deserving of infamy on its own "merits". It's one of the worst games I've ever played. Rant time!
For a start, loading crashed the game and randomly corrupted saves so much that it appears to be literally impossible to complete without the patch (and, of course, I came across some irritating issues while trying to install said patch
). I made it to about level 6 (as in areas, not load spots) before having to restart again as I couldn't get past a load spot whatever I did. Even with the patch there were periodic crashes, although corruption was thankfully a thing of the past (and save crystals, thank god).
Next, the weapons, I'd go as far as to say it has the worst set of weapons I've ever seen in an FPS. Each chapter has only about 1-2 useful weapons at the most (with emphasis on that last part), and about three quarters of the weapons either do self-damage, or are outright suicidal (no, really). Even the "good" (E.G. the ones that shoot somewhat straight and don't kill you) weapons are terrible by the standards of any decent FPS.
Enemies are just as bad, take your pick; you get ones that are annoyingly small and fast, hitscan cheapness, or mediocrity defined. And that's without going into the fact that most of them don't even make sense; why the hell is Greece infested with mythical creatures? And why the hell is a time-controlling warlord guarding his fortress with a swamp full of robofrogs and roboflies? It's not even nonsensical in an awesome way.
Daikatana is THE poster child of quantity != quality
I found episodes 2 and 3 tolerable for the most part, but Episode 1 and 4 have some of the worst level design I've seen in a "professional" game, they're totally mundane (although Ep 4 had its moments), full of dumb gimmicks and cheap ambushes and design. Mishima's Lab in Ep 4 sticks out as possibly the worst "pro" FPS experience I've ever had.
The sidekick AI pretty much goes without saying, awful, awful, AWFUL. The irritating thing is that they would be tolerable if you didn't have to drag them to each load spot, but this is Daikatana, so of course you don't get some simple mercy like having them "teleport" at a load if you leave them behind. You can play through the game in Coop to avoid this, but then you don't get to "enjoy" the story.
The level up system is about as predictable as it gets, are power and attack speed the only truly worthwhile stats? If you said yes you'd be right (although vitality can be useful). Speed and jumping hinder more than help at higher levels.
The "story", well, someone summed it up as "anime fanfic" and I can't think of a better description than that (with added racial stereotypes). It's basically John masturbating over the page without any actual thought into how it comes together (it's full of gaping plot-holes and idiotic characters).
Oh wait, all this is excused because Daikatana is an Expert FPS for Hardcore players (yes, apparently John really said this) so you bitches are just going to have to suck it down
.
All this is without going into the fact it came out in 2000, when, 2-3 years ago, both Unreal and Half-Life had bettered it in almost every way.
I thought Daikatana might have been somewhat maligned by the hype and other factors (which is why I wanted to give it a chance), but, in this case, I was horribly wrong. In a way though, seeing how badly design can fail is pretty helpful.