It is a little known fact that a quarter of humans on earth do not have souls. When a person loses their will to live, their soul goes to what is called the Bad Universe, a sort of mid-life purgatory, and their body lives on as an automaton in the world we all live in. Once in Bad Universe, the only way for a soul to return to its rightful body is to express such a will to live that it is judged right to live again by the higher powers. Until this is the case, the soul lives out several full lives there, spending a lifetime on the Bad Universe for every year its body does in the regular one. But there are loopholes in this system…
Blood Zero is some sort of cross between Diablo, Zelda and Final Fantasy. One or two players control a party of two to four characters. They can interact with the world with an action key, which is also used as an attack key. The interaction consists in talking to characters, pulling switches, opening chests, reading signs and using telephones to save the game progress.
Each character has a red bar for life, which is filled by using health items or by killing a rapid succession of enemies. By doing so, an orange bar is also filled, and when it is completely full, the character goes “Freak Out”, dealing more damage than usual. At the right top of the screen there’s a blue bar, which is the Magic Meter, used for some special abilities. Other special abilities use the special weapon inventory at the top center, represented by Crosses, Cells, and Bombs respectively. At the top left there’s a red bar called the Massacre Meter, which fills when a rapid succession of enemies is killed. If it is completely filled a special effect is triggered. There are several random effects, from lighting attacks to more money dropped by dead enemies.
By killing enemies the characters earn experience points and can gain levels. Each level gained adds one point to each stat (Strength, Defense, Dexterity and Intelligence) and and five points to max Health, plus five extra points to be expended at will. If an option called “Best Attack” is selected, the computer will expend the bonus points the best way according to the kind of weapon the character uses (melee, guns or magic).
The game features an unusual Menu key. While pressed, the player can press up to select a different character in the party to control, down to access the inventory and character sheet screen, left and right to select a different special power and the attack key to bring all party to the same spot. When players have more than four party members to choose from, pressing the Special Attack key will let them sort them out.
There are over sixty kinds of basic weapons, which can be upgraded and customized. Some weapons have stats requirements and will fit better some characters than others. Weapons shown in red cannot be used by the given character at that time.
There are seven possible endings to Blood Zero, seen depending on the character with the highest level in the party.
