Acclaimed PS1 Hit ‘Fear Effect’ Is Coming To Switch In 2025

“Of all the sensations, pain is the purest”

Once thought lost to time, Kronos Digital Entertainment’s PlayStation cult hit Fear Effect is at last getting a rerelease in 2025, and it’s coming to Switch.

Limited Run Games announced that the 2000 action-adventure, which is known for its striking cel-shaded visuals and motion video, as part of its LRG3 2024 showcase earlier today. The publisher is partnering with Square Enix — who took over former publisher Eidos in 2009 — to release the game physically and digitally.

In Fear Effect, you play as one of three mercenaries — Hana, Deke, or Glas — in the year 2050, after the disappearance of the daughter of a powerful Hong Kong Triad boss. The plan is to kidnap the girl and hold her for ransom, but things don’t come to plan.

The game’s name is a referenced to the pulsing EKG ‘health bar’, representing a heart beat. If you take damage, you need to calm your character down to essentially regain health. Stealth kills, sneaking, and other puzzle-based gameplay elements will affect this, too.

Fear Effect is beloved among PlayStation fans, and the game did get a prequel in 2001 called Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, but Kronos shut down shortly after its release. The third game in the series, Fear Effect Sedna, switched up the gameplay in favour of an isometric perspective, and it didn’t go down particularly well with critics. A remake of the first game was in development but was cancelled back in 2023.

Have you played Fear Effect at all? Will you be grabbing the game on Switch in 2025? Sneak down to the comments and let us know.

Alana has been with Nintendo Life since 2022, and while RPGs are her first love, Nintendo is a close second. She enjoys nothing more than overthinking battle strategies, characters, and stories. She also wishes she was a Sega air pirate.

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