actually, here's something interesting from LegaiaRules over at the Gamefaqs boards about another project Toriyama worked on:

"This sounds about right. In the Japanese Front Mission Evolved guide, there was an interview with Shinji Hashimoto about the game's development. An interesting piece I read was that the project's original concept was different from the final outcome. Initially, the project was being handled in-house by the Front Mission team and the project itself was intended to be a sequel to Front Mission: Gun Hazard. Square Enix management thought that this idea wouldn't sell, so they changed it and removed the Front Mission developers. What happened next was a manhunt for a Western studio to develop the game. Hashimoto scouts at least 10 possible studios, but management goes for the cheap labor route and picks Double Helix. Then they outsource visual art design to Imaginary Friends Studio and music direction to Garry Schyman. And finally, storytelling is "outsourced" to Motomu Toriyama within Square Enix.

Of these changes, most of them can be tolerated under the fact that Front Mission historically isn't afraid to experiment and "evolve". The artistic presentation almost always changes with a new visual artist and music composer per entry, 3 genre spin-offs were developed prior to Evolved, and several entries were partially outsourced to other studios (Gun Hazard for example). Hell, there's even the fact that before Front Mission, creator Toshiro Tsuchida and his core team were predominantly action/shooter developers! The one element that has NOT been subject to radical change and the only true constant for Front Mission lies in its storytelling.

Front Mission's storytelling has been handled in a three-man team that includes Toshiro Tsuchida, his right-hand Hideo Iwasaki, and a third writer whom Tsuchida contracts to help pen for a specific Front Mission and its expanded universe supplements in other media. These included the likes of Fumihiko Iino (Bad Tuning, 2007 Japan Horror Novel Award winner), Toru Akitsu (The Brave Harpy), and Yasuo Otagaki (Moonlight Mile). Although I wouldn't say they're the best novelists and scriptwriters out there, they are talented ones with strong portfolios. Anyways, this setup worked wonders for creating an expectation that despite the art/music/play mechanics/developers being subject to change, you can always expect a fine, well-written story in any Front Mission...

...up until Front Mission Evolved. When Front Mission Evolved had been announced in spring 2009, Square Enix's reps stated that story elements were still being handled in-house. Long-time fans weren't initially bothered by the outsourcing, for as long as the story was there, any game faults could be overlooked. There were also rumors at the time that Yasuo Otagaki was involved. This would have been convenient and made sense, as he worked on the Front Mission Mobile games, wrote Front Mission ~The Drive~, and was penning the Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style series. But no, this unfortunately never happened.

According to Hashimoto's interview, Wada thought that someone with "name recognition" could help sell the game and gave the job to Toriyama. With such awesome selling points like "penned by the writer of Final Fantasy XIII" and "written by the storytelling masters at Square Enix", how could it possibly fail in Wada's eyes? Well, the decision was met with extreme opposition from the Front Mission developers and writers, and they fought it as much as they could. In the end, Wada didn't budge and evidently Front Mission Evolved crashed right out of the starting gates. Not only did it fail the commercial success test, but it was critically panned on all fronts...including storytelling. Otagaki himself commented on his twitter account that Front Mission Evolved's story "was a complete mess that looked like it was written by a grade-school student!"

Whether or not the game played good or bad never mattered as much as how the story turned out. And since it was another Toriyama disappointment, word-of-mouth spread and fans outright avoided Front Mission Evolved. Conversely, Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style 06 earned rave reviews and positive impressions for Otagaki upping his writing game. So much that according to recent Otagaki twitter messages, that was the fastest selling volume in the series and the fastest one to get reprints since the Front Mission 4 expanded universe novel series. Sadly, with Toshiro Tsuchida leaving Square Enix, Front Mission has been given the kiss of death. It's virtually assured that no more video games will come out and Front Mission's works in other media, including Dog Life & Dog Style, are due to end within the next 2-3 years.

Morale of the story? Motomu Toriyama poisons whatever story he touches, and Yoichi Wada is anti-common sense and too hard-headed for his own good.

Here's hoping that Toriyama doesn't ever touch the Ogre Battle series since that's the only real thing left that I look forward to from Square Enix's video game line-up. I'm excluding Eidos' works because they're less likely to result in disappointments and are being handled by more competent developers."

Really goes to show how incompetent Toriyama is.

I was hoping that SE and Sony would manage to release the original PE on EU PSN prior to the release of T3B, but I wouldn't even bet on it being released afterwards.

I just gave in, bought a 10$ NA PSN card and bought the NA version.

I might do this myself - can you simply transfer it to your PSP and play it or is the PSP regionally locked against things like this. because my PS3 dosent like to play NTSE PS1 games. so for me its PSP or nothing.

tbh, i'm more interested in playing Xenogears, since thats got a lot of praise over the years.

Xenogears will last you much much longer

You can transfer from your PS3 and play it on any PSP that's synched to the PSN account in which you bought the game originally.

Xenogears has a much longer game time than PE, though personally I prefer PE over Xenogears  

Just finished the game, and I've got to agree with most of Mirsons impressions.

Utterly dissapointed with the story and the game duration. Not only was the story pretty far-fetched and rushed, without any kind of nexus behind it, it has massive plot-holes in it. 

Hopefully S-E uses 3rd Birthday as a spin-off only and not a new direction for Parasite Eve series or it will be a complete waste of an awesome game series. I mean, really, killing Aya like that? I still don't understand the reason behind it. Then again, the entire reason for the game was pretty ridiculous xD. Just one thing, thankfully Aya wasn't the protagonist at all, or her personality would completely be against what she was on the PE series. Eve personality on PE2 kinda matches her personality on T3B, so they (at least) got that right.

Oh well, it does have some good points, like the Combat system, which I completely loved (although it can be annoying, with enemies, bosses especially, having behemth sized HP bars and defense - Probably my fault, since I played it on Hard on my first playthrough). Also, I enjoyed the soundtrack as well, good job in keeping some of the originals, like Phrase of Aya, Primal Eyes and so on. 

Interesting Lestatdark, have more people had a chance to play it?

i have wanted to experience the PE series since i've heard great things about PE1, but T3B dosent sound too promising.

i think this is the next phase of the series Lestatdark, with Eve as the hero of the games and Aya gone forever. i dont think its a spin off but a reboot of the series with a completely new story arc.

from what i've heard i dont understand why they had to make it from Parasite Eve, why just not call it something else and have characters with different names. the game seems so far away from PE, it dosent make sense to call it that imo, especially since many of the fans seem to be upset. 

I agree, since other than the character's names, there's actually no link whatsoever to the PE series. No reference to the events that lead to Kyle and Aya to meet and marry, just obscure references that they worked together. No references to the parasite power of Aya, the 1997 manhattan incident, the 2000 Akropolis&Nevada incidents, nothing.

Same for Maeda (who talks like a character from Rapelay), he just falls out of the blue in the game. 

It's a pretty harsh departure from the PE series, if this is the case of a Reboot. Heck the pretty subpar ending doesn't give any kind of future for this kind of reboot. I'm still hoping that S-E has the vision to see that most PE fans aren't happy with it and that T3B is not garnering that largeamount of new fans. 

The thing that I find ironic though, is that if PE2 had the battle system of T3B, it could have rivaled PE1 as a whole package (IMO, I really love the battle system of T3B). Had they not butcher the story and the characters as they did, they might have had a good game.

I played it on normal, and I felt the same thing. The boss fight where you're floating in the babel annoyed me the most.

The Queen? Yeah, her health almost never drops, you've got to rely almost solely on ODK attacks. It took me a long while to kill her on my first playthrough, but now I'm almost at the point where I can get the feat for it (killing her without triggering the vaccum cutscene). 

With better weapons, even on deadly you do massive damageto the enemies (and if you have Power Surge levels 20-25, one Sniper shot can OHKO a Roller), but during the first playthrough all guns were craptastic, at best >_>.