History Main / TheBouncer

[[redirect:VideoGame/TheBouncer]]

[[quoteright:256:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Bouncer_PS2_art_7653.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:256:[[ThoseTwoGuys Wait a second! Where's Kou and Volt since they're also the protagonists?!]]]]

->''"Pardon my past discourtesies… I will forget the past… I no longer care about the indignation I have suffered!"''
-->-- Dauragon [[spoiler:Cross]] Mikado as he prepares to fight Kou, Sion and Volt on board the Galeos.

It's going to be a long night for a bar so empty.

''The Bouncer'' focuses on one really bad night at a bar called Fate. Despite being a slow place, it has three bouncers: Sion Barzahd, Koh Leifoh, and Volt Kreuger. On the night of Sion's one-year anniversary as a bouncer, a team of {{Ninja}}s busts in, out to kidnap their friend, Dominique Cross. When they make off with her, the three chase after her, to have a showdown that the bouncers find is way out of their league.

Developed by [[SquareEnix Square]] for the then-new PlayStation2, it did not do nearly as well as they hoped, although main character Sion seemingly lives on through his {{Expy}}, [[KingdomHearts Sora]].

The game has somewhat of a cult status with [=PS2=] gamers due to the story and the characters even though it didn't sell much to be in the top 10 games sold in the early 2000s.

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!!This game has examples of:

* AllThereInTheManual: Much of the bouncer's backstories is told through short dialogues found in the loading screens between stages. If one is not paying attention, or is using a system that loads quickly, then expect to miss a lot of what the heck is going on.
* AxCrazy: Mugetsu.
* BigBad: Dauragon, CEO of Mikado.
* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Sion's female buddy, Kaldea, is actually the same age as him, but genetic tampering by Mikado left her looking both 15 years older than him ''and'' able to turn into a panther.]]
* ChainedByFashion: Sion has a bunch of chains going on that serve no practical purpose. Dauragon also has one, that he uses to [[IAmNotLeftHanded make things "fair" for you]].
* DanceBattler: Echidna.
* DarkActionGirl: Again, Echidna.
* DefectorFromDecadence: Volt, former bodyguard with the Mikado corporation.
* EliteMooks: For every {{Mook}} type, there's usually an elite version that has more health, is more aggressive with it's attacks, and does more damage than the regulars.
* EscortMission: A particularly frustrating one part-way through the game. This game plays this trope painfully straight, and makes a mission that should be a breeze, an absolute nightmare. This is also one of the longest stages yet. See LuckBasedMission and TooDumbToLive.
* {{Expy}}: Nomura recycled much of Sion's design for [[KingdomHearts Sora]].
** Before that, Sion was considered by some to be an expy of 17-year old, brown-haired, blue-eyed, sullen [[FinalFantasyVIII Final Fantasy VIII]] hero Squall Leonhart.
** Volt bears a resemblance to [[FinalFantasyVIII Zell Dincht]], and Koh to Laguna Loire.
** Young Kaldea bears a striking resemblance to Rinoa Heartilly.
** And then Dominique has Selphie Tilmitt's green eyes and looped hairstyle.
** Kou's body tattoos and hairstyle shows up years later as [[TheWorldEndsWithYou Sho Minamimoto]]
* FragileSpeedster: Koh. He also gets more techniques to make up for his lack of power.
** Fragile only in the sense of power, however. He actually has the highest defense out of the three bouncers.
* GuideDangIt: Sion's bonus fight against his master, which requires you to make sure to '''not''' use him in certain battles. Technically, Koh's bonus fight also counts, but since the conditions are almost identical (the main difference being selecting Koh to fight against Dauragon), it's much easier to find that one.
* HopelessBossFight: There are a couple fights that are exceedingly hard to win the first time you play. They become much easier after a few runs, though.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: Dauragon chains up his right arm for his first fight against you, limiting his power and techniques. Somewhat.
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: Sion and Dominique. Though Volt's studded leather jacket with a [[FinalFantasy Cactaur]] on the back might be up there.
* LawEnforcementInc: Mikado's own security forces, including a unit of ninja commandos.
* LargeHam: "Koh Leifoh, Superspy!" To be fair, SteveBlum voiced him.
** Mugetsu as well. To be fair, R. Martin Klien voiced him.
* LoadingScreen: These give flashbacks to give background on the bouncer you've most recently selected.
** And a good condition disc can load so quickly you never manage to read it all.
* LuckBasedMission: Unless it's [[NewGamePlus not your first run through]], Dominique's EscortMission is nothing but this. How far you get is entirely dependent on how [[TooDumbToLive how suicidal she's feeling this particular go around]].
* MegaCorp: The Mikado Corporation.
* MightyGlacier: Volt. His power also is meant to compensate for his smaller move pool.
* [[spoiler: TheMole: Koh is actually a spy that was sent to Fate to keep tabs on Dominique. While his goals throughout the game align with the other two, he's feeding info to his superiors the whole time and is ready to act counter to the other bouncers' wishes if need be.]]
* ObviousBeta: Additional stages and the ability to use {{Improvised Weapon}}s were meant to utilized in the game, but were cut shortly before release. The game was also pretty much just a test to tweak and finalize a usable graphics engine for ''KingdomHearts'' and ''FinalFantasyX''.
* NewGamePlus: Carries over all the power-ups bought. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, Dauragon gets powered up based on your stats, and gets a final form if you've run through enough times.]]
* {{Ninja}}: The Mikado Special Forces unit led by Mugetsu. They just fight via unarmed combat.
* PowerTrio:
** TheKirk: Sion.
** TheMcCoy: Kou.
** TheSpock: Volt.
* PreasskickingOneLiner: A LOT, from awesome ones like:
--> Sion: You're not getting paid enough to die! Now get out of my way!
** To the more simplistic ones like:
--> Sion: I don't think so!
* PsychoForHire: Mugetsu, emphasis on the "psycho" part.
* PunchClockVillain: Hell, some of the mooks that you fight are actual rent-a-cops.
* RagdollPhysics: Hard to believe, but a game this old does indeed have them. Although it is somewhat goofy.
* ShapeShifting: Kaldea can change into the form of a surreal-looking black panther.
* ShirtlessScene: You control three bouncers, with one shirt between them. And Sion, the one with a shirt, wears it half-open. Volt leaves his jacket open, and Koh wears just an open vest. Dauragon eventually drops his coat and the top half of his overalls, as well.
* SpyCatsuit: Worn by all of Mikado's ninja mooks. And Mugetsu.
* ThisIsUnforgivable: Sion says this to Dauragon before the final battle.
* {{Stripperific}}: Echidna's outfit.
* TooDumbToLive: Dominique in her EscortMission. She will gladly stand in between you and a hostile robot that's trying to kill you, and eat an attack that takes away half of her health... then stand right back up and do it again.
* TomatoSurprise: [[spoiler: Dominique is actually a RobotGirl Dauragon built based on his DeadLittleSister.]]
* TraintopBattle: The location of your first fight with [[DarkActionGirl Echidna]]
* UnexpectedGameplayChange: If, during the sequence when the three are forcably separated by Dauragon, you follow Koh's path, you mostly end up trying to pass as a {{Mook}} while wandering the Mikado building.
* UnluckyChildhoodFriend: Kaldea, who became an unfortunate victim to Mikado's experimentation, was a friend of Sion's in their youth. Depending on who is used in which battles, it's possible that Sion won't ever learn it's her.
* WhiteHairedPrettyBoy: Subverted. The only white haired character is a robot with a red eye and a clawed whip hand.
* [[spoiler: WhoWantsToLiveForever: The credits show a montage of a forever-young Dominique visiting the graves of her friends from Fate.]]
* {{Zipperiffic}}: Tetsuya Nomura did the character design. Do the math.
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* {{Narm}}: Much of the dialogue, particularly anything said by Sion or Mugetsu.

* SpyCatsuit: Worn by all of Mikado's mooks. And Mugetsu.

* Ninja: The Mikado Special Forces unit led by Mugetsu. They just fight via unarmed combat.

-->-- Dauragon [[spoiler:Cross]] Mikado while fighting Kou, Sion and Volt abord the Galeos.

* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Sion's female buddy, Kaldea, is actually the same age as him, but genetic tampering by Mikado left her looking both 15 years older than him ''and'' able to turn into a panther. At least her human form managed to be hot.]]

** Young Kaldea bears a striking resemblance to Rinoa Heartilly. Her adult version still is a [[DarkerandEdgier darker]] and [[HotterandSexier sexier]] expy of Rinoa.

*** To put it in a nutshell, Nomura had just finished working on Final Fantasy VIII at the time, and he sure hadn't taken his mind off it yet.

* ThisIsUnforgivable: Sion says this to Dauragon before the final battle. In contrast to many examples of the trope, it was MostlyNarmless, ''despite'' the rushed delivery necessitated by matching the animation's lip flaps.

** And Volt has nothing under that leather jacket. 'Cept abbs.

** Volt bears a resemblence to [[FinalFantasyVIII Zell Dincht]], and Koh to Laguna Loire.

''The Bouncer'' focuses on one really bad night at a bar called Fate. Despite being a slow place, it has three bouncers: Sion Barzahd, Koh Leifoh, and Volt Kreuger. On the night of Sion's one-year anniversary as a bouncer, a team of {{Ninja}}s busts in, out to kidnap their friend, Dominique Cross. When they make off with her, the three chase after her, to have a showdown that [[spoiler: two of]] the bouncers find is way out of their league.

This game has examples of:

* {{Fetish Fuel}}: Seeing as it has ragdoll physics...

* TheMario: Sion.
** Though not to the letter, he has the smallest range of the three.
*** He also starts with the lowest stats out of the three bouncers.

* {{Zipperiffic}}: Tetsuya Nomura did the character design. Do the math.

* AllThereInTheManual: Much of the bouncer's backstories is told through short dialogues found in the loading screens between stages. If one is not paying attention, or is using a system that loads quite quickly (such as the PS3), then expect to miss a lot of what the heck is going on.
** Hell, just using a decent PS2 system can lead to this. Here's hoping you like speed-reading!

* ScrappyMechanic: Pressure-sensitive button commands for your attacks. You can change the sensitivity, but in the heat of battle, it takes quite a bit of practice to get down just how hard you need to press to initiate a certain combo.
** Enemies get powered up based on how much experience the main characters spend on skills. Only the character you use gets experience. The issue is that, the way it is calculated means that if you try to use each character equally, the enemies quickly become a higher rank than all your characters. The only two really viable strategies are to only use one character, since the amount of experience used to power up one character completely doesn't raise the rank that much. The other approach is to spend almost no experience, outside the bare minimum to avoid raising the rank of the enemies at all. In both cases you power up the other characters by using them for the easy fights and not spending experience on them until you can max out all three characters. In addition, the rank of the unlocked characters is the enemy rank when you face them. So, until you max out all of the main characters and beat the game multiple times (since you can't unlock every character in one playthrough), including getting the GuideDangIt characters, your unlocked characters will always be inferior to at least one of the main characters (unless you use the aforementioned level everyone evenly approach and somehow manage to beat most of the enemies). The character ranks and main character skill purchases always apply in multiplayer, which leads to the highest upgraded character being the best choice. By the way, this is a simplification of this mechanic.

* {{Waggle}}: Due to the game's use of [[PressureSensitiveInterface pressure-sensitive buttons]], it ended up requiring an unnecessary amount of finesse with how hard you press buttons to execute many of the game's combos, and ultimately detracted from the game's overall experience. Ironically, it's almost at its worst when attempting to use a standard PlayStation2 controller.

** Enemies get powered up based on how much experience the main characters spend on skills. Only the character you use gets experience. The issue is that, the way it is calculated means that if you try to use each character equally, the enemies quickly become a higher rank than all your characters. The only two really viable strategies are to only use one character, since the amount of experience used to power up one character completely doesn't raise the rank that much. The other approach is to spend almost no experience, outside the bare minimum to avoid raising the rank of the enemies at all. In both cases you power up the other characters by using them for the easy fights and not spending experience on them until you can max out all three characters. In addition, the rank of the unlocked characters is the enemy rank when you face them. So, until you max out all of the main characters and beat the game multiple times (since you can't unlock every character in one playthrough), including getting the GuideDangIt characters, your unlocked characters will always be inferior to at least one of the main characters (unless you use the aforementioned level everyone evenly approach and somehow manage to beat most of the enemies). The character ranks and main character skill purchases always apply in multiplayer, which leads to the highest upgraded character being the best choice. By the way, this is a simplification of this mechanic, SoYeah.

** Mogetsu as well. To be fair, R. Martin Klien voiced him.

* PsychoForHire: Mugetsu

* {{Fetish Fiel}}: Seeing as it has ragdoll physics...

* EscortMission: A particularly frustrating one part-way through the game. This game plays this trope painfully straight, and makes a mission that should be a breeze, an absolute nightmare.

* DarkActionGirl: Echidna.

* TheMario: Sion

* PunchClockVillain: Hell, some of the guys fight are actual rent-a-cops.

* PunckClockVillain: Hell, some of the guys fight are actual rent-a-cops.

* Stripperific: Echidna's outfit.