Great horror RPG
The year is 1997 and it's Christmas Eve. You play as Aya Brea, a 25-year-old NYPD cop who just arrived at Carnegie Hall (which is featuring an opera) with her boyfriend. The show is a disaster from the start. No, the actors didn't forget their lines. It was something more - serious. When the lead singer (who we believe is Melissa Pearce at first) starts her solo, everyone in the audience bursts into flames, except Aya and her date. When everyone in the theater is pretty much dead, Aya whips out her pistol and confronts the actress who identifies herself as "Eve."
To make up for the relatively short game, the producers put in an ex-game, which is only available after completing the normal game at least once. The ex-game is the same as the normal game except you gain entrance to the Chrysler Building. In there, you have to climb 77 floors and encounter a boss every 10 floors. During your climb, you gain items that are not available in the normal game and you get more powerful weapons and armor. On the 77th floor, the final boss awaits you. Defeating it will unlock the second ending to Parasite Eve.
This game is one of the first games I've played on Playstation and I loved it right away. I do believe that this game will be played by many gamers for years to come but when I played it and beat the game, I was still confused by a few parts of the game. Maybe this is just me but I had to rent the 1997 Parasite Eve film (which covers the Japan incident as mentioned by Maeda) and that helped me answer my questions. I believe that a video game should answer all of the gamer's questions and that someone should not have to refer to a film to get those questions answered. But still, this game is fascinating and I highly recommend it. 8/10 overall.