Part of the ill fated Capcom Five, and the only one of the four not to be ported elsewhere, PN03 is anachronistic, both in design and structure. A third person arcade shooter with limited continues, unforgiving difficulty and tank controls, it gives a very bad first impression. The tank controls are the most immediate sticking point, with limited movement that contrasts with protagonist Vanessa’s fluid dance like animations. With twin stick aiming becoming the norm for shooters in the Gamecube generation, PN 03’s automatic lock and inability to move while shooting became common complaints. In short, it’s a shooter that doesn’t reward aiming.
PN03’s emphasis is instead on positioning and rhythm, with the developers intentionally aiming for a more defensive style of play. Attacks automatically lock onto enemies, rotating to you to face them if you’re in range, bullets have noticeable travel time, requiring you to time your barrages and giving you time to react to enemy fire. Vanessa launches her basic shots from her palm, with special attacks available but inputting specific directional combinations on the dpad. Vanessa can’t strafe, instead turning as you rotate the stick,with back on the stick making her twirl backward, quick turns snapping to her sides and back, and the shoulder buttons making her dodge left and right, which can be combined with crouching to roll under obstacles and duck into cover. Combat becomes a dance of weaving these options in and out of enemy attack patterns, mashing out attacks during your opportunities, and positioning yourself to find angles in between cover.
Taken in context alongside the development of Resident Evil 4, the system makes a lot of sense. Both PN03 and RE4 attempt parallel evolutions of the Resident Evil’s tank controls for a more action oriented approach, but RE4 pulls in the camera for a more intimate view, emphasizing aiming and diverse reactions to ratchet up the tension. With PN03’s faster pace, larger spaces and flashier movements, it's easy to see how these tank controls might initially seem out of place.
PN03 has its own distinct rhythm, however. Despite the emphasis on long range engagement, its beats are more akin to a brawler, where you control a situation by getting a barrage of hits in, then breaking it up with movement or special attacks to keep away other enemies. Energy Drives, Vanessa’s special attacks, range from single target obliterating attacks, to room clearing homing or ricochet shots, and more importantly, give you full invulnerability during their elaborate animations. Managing the meter required for these attacks, and choosing which groups of enemies to target with them becomes a major part of creating a route through a stage, especially if you attempt to engage with PN03’s scoring system.
That brings us to PN03’s biggest flaw--being on the Gamecube. Of the four games in the Capcom Five that actually completed development, PN03 feels the most restricted by the platform, with the Gamecube controller’s layout constantly getting in the way. The aforementioned Energy Drives are a huge component of the combat, but you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, since they’re input on the miniscule dpad of the Gamecube controller, which was so small and imprecise it was frequently used only for auxiliary functions. The motions for these specials are short--only two or three directional inputs--the dpad is imprecise enough that even inputting these in battle can result in a miss and end with you standing still and taking a hit. A major frustration in a game with enemies with one shot attacks and limited checkpoints and continues. There’s some satisfaction to inputting the commands just in time, but for consistency it probably would have been better to assign them to single directions or the C-stick.
The problem is exasperated by the default difficulty of the game, where enemies take a lot of hits, making your basic shots feel weak. Ironically it leads to a lot of button mashing--something the devs have said they wanted to disincentivize--since shots can be fired faster by mashing. Alongside the limited initial continues, learning curve of the movement, instant kills, and input frustrations it gives PN03 a miserable introduction.
Thankfully PN03's easy mode provides a gentler intro. Every frustration of the normal game is still there, but with enemy damage and health reduced you're given more leeway to make mistakes. The lowered enemy health also helps to speed up the pace, allowing you to move through stages faster and spend less time mashing. It's especially helpful before you upgrade your suit's damage, something that's hard to do efficiently on your first playthrough, since it requires you to play well enough to take advantage of the game's scoring system.
Take the time to learn the intricacies of the movement and the scoring system and there’s a compelling rhythm to it. It’s easy to see the origins of Resident Evil 4’s Mercenaries mode in it. The same focus on controlling crowds using invincible moves, using the environment, and creating a route through enemies to keep a combo going is here. But here precision play isn’t about picking shots, but picking moments. With good timing you can slip through fatal missile barrages, angle your shots to catch enemies approaching around a corner, and launch an Energy Barrage that’ll clear a room and rack up the combo counter.
Even with the low variety of enemies and environments, the basic loop of chaining together kills and aiming for high scores is strong enough to keep up the momentum through PN03’s short runtime. It’s clear this was a project with a tight deadline and budget, showing all the signs of a work whose ambitions were larger than the resources allocated. Director Shinji Mikami has even been on record stating that Vanessa was originally intended to use guns, but they couldn’t get the shooting animations working in time.
What’s left of PN03 is a skeleton of a game. It evokes so many of the future ideas that would be built upon it, and provides a strong structure for them, but its actual form is barren and thin. With a weak first impression and an audience more than ready to dismiss it for its deviation from third person shooter standards, PN03 was never really given a proper shot. In recent years there’s been a retroactive appreciation for it, but its lack of commercial success and subsequent rereleases have left it as more of a curio in the Gamecube’s library. Its lean construction makes it one of the easier titles to emulate, and with Gamecube emulation being the most advanced of its generation, it’s easy to get up and running and give it a shot--without the awkwardness of the Gamecube controls holding it back.
