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Racing Lagoon (PS1) Playthrough [1 of 2] English - NintendoComplete
0A playthrough of Square's 1999 racing/role-playing game for the Sony PlayStation, Racing Lagoon.
This video is the first part of a two-part playthrough, showing through the end of the fifth night. The second half can be found here: https://youtu.be/0o3sVyvVGyQ
Prologue Night: Crimson Moon 6:02
1st Night: Midnight Plus One 16:07
2nd Night: Revenge Race 2:33:22
3rd Night: Pieces of Dream 4:12:49
4th Night: Star Fall Night 5:35:12
5th Night: ODDS Against 7:45:21
The game was a Japanese exclusive, so I am playing the game using Hilltop's recently released English translation patch. If you'd like to look into how to play it for yourself, check out https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6352/
Square was known for their somewhat experimental approach to game design back before they hit it big with the Final Fantasy franchise, and after their massive success with Final Fantasy VII, Square found themselves flush with resources.
Like many of the games Square produced in the latter half of the PlayStation's life, Racing Lagoon was the realization of a daring concept made possible by this success, signaling a look back at some of the company's earliest creative ambitions.
The game puts you in the role of Sho Akasaki, the rising star of Yokohama's Bay Lagoon street racing team. It's up to you to help Sho realize his dreams as he works his way up the ladder, but there are sinister forces at work that would stand in the way of Sho's success. If he and his friends are to survive and succeed, Sho's going to need to all the help he can get.
Racing Lagoon is an odd mishmash of elements. It's a JRPG first and foremost, but the overworld is made up of the streets of Yokohama and its surrounding areas, and random encounters take the form of street races initiated by a quick flash of the high beams. As you win races, you upgrade parts of your car to improve its performance, and hopefully, with enough practice you can overtake your rivals.
The action is all framed by a hyper-enthusiastic plot that feels like it has been ripped straight out of a manga. The characters are all over-the-top caricatures who regularly make speeches about their feelings with dramatic hand motions, every tense situation is escalated to a ridiculous degree, and acts of betrayal lie in wait around every corner, literal and figurative. Imagine a highlights reel of an Initial D story arc.
So, you might be asking yourself, does it all work? Did Square pull it off? Is Racing Lagoon an under-appreciated PlayStation classic to be put on a pedestal alongside the likes of Brave Fencer Musashi and Vagrant Story?
To be blunt, no. It's a fascinating effort that oozes charisma and big production values, it rocks an amazing visual aesthetic, and it features one of the best soundtracks to ever be put into a Square game. It also feels like a house of cards that might collapse at any moment under the weight of the game's idiotic plot line and its half-baked gameplay systems.
There is a lot to love about Racing Lagoon, but I'd classify it more as a beautiful disaster than I would a good game.
The game is absolutely gorgeous. The dialogue scenes are a combination of CG stills and prerendered animation loops that look as slick as the characters look goofy (notice how big everyone's hands are?), the top-down exploration bits all show off nighttime Yokohama in a dramatically lit green glow, and the graphics in the racing segments could pass for a PS2 game if not for the dithering artifacts that give it away as a PS1 production. Toss in a God-tier jazz-electronica soundtrack and you've got one helluva feast for the senses here. Even the UI manages to project class with its meticulously styled, high resolution neon lines and razor sharp fonts.
But the rest of the package just can't keep up. The controls are sloppy, the racing is slow, and the encounters and the unofficial races often feel as though they exist primarily to pad things out. The upgrade system is needlessly overwrought given the relative simplicity of the driving model, and the plot isn't nearly smart or compelling enough to sustain the game's 15-20 hour playtime.
The Japanese gaming press tore it apart back in 1999, and it didn't sell well at all. After finishing it, I get where the critics were coming from.
I did enjoy my time with Racing Lagoon, but it's not a game that I'm likely to revisit. Its sense of style was enough to drive me to finish it, but the lack of substance makes for a pretty empty experience.
_____________\nNo cheats were used during the recording of this video. \n\nNintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!