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Oh boy....okay...the entire time I was playing this game I had two thoughts going through my head. This game is kinda cute and it's at least not as bad as Valis: The Fantasm Soldier on the MSX...which is pretty faint praise. I'll start with the positive stuff and move on to the issues with the game.
As I said before in the past reviews of the series, I never really liked the story, and with this game at least it was simple and very short of a story that it didn't bug me at all. I really liked seeing chibi style sprites of the old bosses and characters as well as Yuko herself. It's quite colorful of a game and felt like an anime shorts cartoon.
The gameplay is a double edged sword in spots, I'll stick to the positive. I actually adored the option to change armors on the fly and each of them had their own stats and also effected the sort of "beam" your sword uses, which you can also change whenever you like, it was a good way to give you some strategy freedom as well as reference the different outfits in all the past games and concept art.
That's about it for the good stuff, and it's not even like the bad stuff is massive either...
- The controls are waaay too floaty, you slip and slide and float jump everywhere so you take hits more than you should, because along with that, the screen should have been pulled back some so you can see.
- The bosses range from absolutely brain dead to complete frustration due to their beams and animations taking up too much screen with little to no option to answer their attacks, the game has no in-between balance there.
- I ran into a glitch were my "special power" was at 3 uses and it wouldn't activate no matter what I did or pressed, I used one at the start of the game by accident and somehow the game locked me out of using anymore the rest of the game.
- The music is forgettable, like nothing stood out at all and felt like background noise.
- I don't know if it's a translation issue but D- Power and A-Power are flipped I think...I would assume D-Power is defense and A-Power is attack, but it's actually the reverse...I only learned that due to the instruction book halfway through the game.
This game wasn't awful to play exactly, it just needed more to it and some balancing. I wouldn't be rough on it if it was a Game Gear or Game Boy release where it seems it would fit better, but it's a Genesis release and doesn't feel like the right amount of effort was given to it and I don't think this is a good example of the series...but again it's leagues better than the Valis MSX game, so it's doing something right.
As I said before in the past reviews of the series, I never really liked the story, and with this game at least it was simple and very short of a story that it didn't bug me at all. I really liked seeing chibi style sprites of the old bosses and characters as well as Yuko herself. It's quite colorful of a game and felt like an anime shorts cartoon.
The gameplay is a double edged sword in spots, I'll stick to the positive. I actually adored the option to change armors on the fly and each of them had their own stats and also effected the sort of "beam" your sword uses, which you can also change whenever you like, it was a good way to give you some strategy freedom as well as reference the different outfits in all the past games and concept art.
That's about it for the good stuff, and it's not even like the bad stuff is massive either...
- The controls are waaay too floaty, you slip and slide and float jump everywhere so you take hits more than you should, because along with that, the screen should have been pulled back some so you can see.
- The bosses range from absolutely brain dead to complete frustration due to their beams and animations taking up too much screen with little to no option to answer their attacks, the game has no in-between balance there.
- I ran into a glitch were my "special power" was at 3 uses and it wouldn't activate no matter what I did or pressed, I used one at the start of the game by accident and somehow the game locked me out of using anymore the rest of the game.
- The music is forgettable, like nothing stood out at all and felt like background noise.
- I don't know if it's a translation issue but D- Power and A-Power are flipped I think...I would assume D-Power is defense and A-Power is attack, but it's actually the reverse...I only learned that due to the instruction book halfway through the game.
This game wasn't awful to play exactly, it just needed more to it and some balancing. I wouldn't be rough on it if it was a Game Gear or Game Boy release where it seems it would fit better, but it's a Genesis release and doesn't feel like the right amount of effort was given to it and I don't think this is a good example of the series...but again it's leagues better than the Valis MSX game, so it's doing something right.