Beyond Good and Evil still plays really well, even when certain aspects of the game keep it from reaching its potential.
Cons: The end of the game forces you to complete several side missions nonetheless; A very flawed story; Weak ending portion of the game; Very little reason to go back
I have to hand it to Michel Ancel-the man is weird. First he creates a limbless protagonist who uses his ears to hover, and then he creates a female protagonist who lives with a pig in a mostly anthropomorphic world under attack by an alien force called the Domz. The latter game is Beyond Good & Evil, and luckily its weirdness is backed up by entertainment.
As mentioned before, Beyond Good & Evil sees Jade and her pig friend Pey'j attempting to uncover the truth of a recent alien invasion by the Domz. Although Jade is no action hero, she does have a knack for photography, allowing her to capture evidence of a conspiracy on film. It's an interesting set up, particularly since the protagonist is just a regular woman rather than some super-buff space marine, but the story just does not follow through. The writing is frequently very cheesy, and yet the game frequently takes itself seriously. This only gets worse each time the game tries to throw a plot twist at you. While I won't spoil any of these twists, each one just gets more ridiculous and stupid than the last, culminating in a ridiculous twist that practically destroys the story's credibility by the end.
Fortunately, for what Beyond Good & Evil lacks in good storytelling skills it makes up for in strong gameplay. Beyond Good & Evil could be classified as an action-adventure game, but that would fail to capture the game's variety. At different points you might be fighting on baddies in a simple button-mashing combat system, solving environmental puzzles using your partner's abilities, chasing after enemies on a hover boat, sneaking into restricted areas, taking pictures of wildlife and much more. To the game's credit, even though each one of these activities is pretty simple, they are intertwined so as to constantly stay entertaining.
Even better, Beyond Good & Evil's side missions are carefully crafted and independent from one another. There are no real copy-paste side missions-each one is unique. Combined with the ability to buy a device that lets you find side missions easily, the game makes it feel fun and worthwhile to go out of your way to do extra missions.
Unfortunately, the game requires that you do most of the missions anyway, which kind of screws with its pacing. Early on this is mostly used as a breather between major areas: do side missions, obtain pearls, use them to purchase hover boat upgrades and then carry on with the main plot. However, towards the end of the game, as if Ubisoft was running out of content, they force you to buy multiple upgrades before going to the final area, requiring you to do almost all of the side missions. While the side missions are good, this still screws up the game's pacing and the finale is pretty disappointing, making for a lousy reward for all that work.
But still, the game taken as a whole is quite entertaining, if it is lacking in replay value (one difficulty level, and mostly puzzle based gameplay? I doubt I'll return). Furthermore, the production values are nice for their time (although some graphics haven't aged well, particularly those of hilariously deformed teammate Agent H). The music score in particular stands out as being well-made and complementing the action well. Even as disappointed with the story and the end of the game as I am, overall it's pretty hard to stay displeased with a game that is equally weird and fun.