J•E•S•U•S

JESUS was on my list of games to check out as a GOTY contender for 1987. Like probably countless other suckers back in the day, I was much impressed by the amazing PC88 (MSX2, etc.) art. I bet in my fantasy life growing up as a Japanese gamer, I would have picked this up in a flash just based on the back cover art alone. You see, back in the old days, the cover was all we had to go on to decide what to buy (or in my case rent). Thank goodness we have the likes of Shitaku and IGN today to save us from such folly. (Must... contain... the laughter...!!)

SOLD!

While the kids were busy playing DQII (barf) on the kiddie FC from Enix, the adults were probably plunking down wads of cash to buy their other lineup. And Enix quickly delivers within the first hour or so of gameplay with some nice fan service that of course makes up the bulk of Google image search for this game today. While I didn't play the later FC port, I have to wonder if it has the same content.

There, happy? Now, this is just like every other blog post on this game...

However, this is not your typical PC88 hentai game. It's Enix after all and that's about the only real fan service you'll see for the rest of the game. Oh well, at least I was soon impressed by a very familiar type of puzzle to those who have played 999 or some other similar game. So far, this game was looking to be a very strong contender for GOTY.

I'm not a PC88 expert (yet) but this is the first puzzle I've seen so far on it

Unfortunately, this just sets some inflated hype as if you might be playing some super early predecessor to a ADV/Puzzle hybrid game like 999. Alas, this is the first and only puzzle (detecting a pattern here...) and the rest of the game is a very standard affair for ADV PC88 games of this era. Yes, I'm talking about randomly trying out menu option after menu option. On top of that, to make it extra annoying, you have to walk around the halls, which while cool looking, just makes things more cumbersome.

Walk? Do I look like some hipster health nut?

Fortunately, it's not a command line interface, so no painful kana typing and you can control everything conveniently from the numeric keypad. So it's a fairly easy game to play but I wouldn't go as far as to say it was fun.

Given that the gameplay is nothing special, you would hope the plot would make up for it. But no, to sum up the story, it's like an anime version of Alien but WAY more boring. If anything, this game highlights how amazing the movie was all the way back in 1979.

It's 2018, you don't actually have to play yourself!

Score: 2 hallelujahs out of 5

JESUS is a good looking game, there's no doubt about that. And unlike the first Wingman, it even has some real nice music including some DQ jam. But behind the pretty facade, there is almost nothing interesting about this game and so it barely qualifies as a 2 just on its nice visuals. Hopefully, the sequel or some of Enix's later titles fare better. I'm particularly looking forward to ANGELUS cause that bath scene. I'm still a sucker, after all.


Some extra screen shots for the devout Christians?

I'm sure the title would have gone over well here.

Shameless product placement? More likely blatant trademark abuse

This is the other art. Now you don't need to play the game. You're welcome.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely