Undeadline
released on Feb 01, 1989
A quality fantasy-themed vertical shooter with RPG elements, the game let's you choose among three distinct characters. The warrior is good at throwing axes and knives and can use his shield for protection from bullets. The wizard excels in the manipulation of elemental spirits and Ice and can perform an invisibility / invincibility spell to dodge bullets (but not enemies). While using the spell, he can't move though. Finally, the female-ninja is specialized in using Fire and the Boomerang and she has the ability to jump. The choice of the character is really important because each plays very differently and each should have a dedicated ending sequence.
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Review is based on the Mega Drive game, not the MSX version. I'm putting this here only because it has a bit more traffic. Been having a lot of trouble with games with duplicate pages recently.
Undead Line (or Undeadline, whatever the fuck it's supposed to be) is a walking shmup similar to Elemental Master on the same system or perhaps Capcom's Gun.Smoke. It's more well-known among hardcore Mega Drive/Shmup aficionados for it's outrageously high player-hating difficulty.
Personally, my hot take is that Undead Line is mostly hard because it's poorly-designed. In order to upgrade your weapons you need to collect the same weapon, but in order to get the same weapon you have to shoot at the weapon in the chests until it cycles to the one you want. I personally am not a fan of this kind of system, and here it's a massive pain because it's hard to concentrate on this when there's a million enemies constantly swarming at you in some sections, and it's made worse when some of the weapons are just absolute trash. The same problem goes on with the power-ups where it feels like the best one is always the Barrier for the safety of taking three hits, but right before it is the Lead Boots power-up which slows you down temporarily. "I love power-ups with adverse effects", said the most incorrect person.
The other thing that's just horrible is some of the boss fights. The rock golem boss at the end of the Forest stage feels almost-impossible to beat without upgrades to your agility stat and/or perfectly guiding his gargantuan fucking hitbox around the stage that takes up about half of the screen. The boss at the end of Ruins throws giant scythe blades at you with colossal hitboxes, and there's a table behind him which you could accidentally get yourself caught on while circling around him since it's often hidden behind his huge sprite. Pretty much all of these guys feel like they demand perfect strategies to overcome, and the one example that just really hammers it home is the final boss. Pretty much every video I looked up of people beating this game used the same exact strategy for beating him by getting right in front of him and abusing his safe spot, anything else and you're basically dead. Say hello to the very beginning on the stage, have a nice day.
It's also worth note that I had a problem with visual clarity playing this on original hardware, the enemies who come after you while dived in the murky swamp water in the Forest stage may as well be almost invisible on my CRT screen, especially when they moved quickly and I ended up taking a mystery hit that left me bewildered. I didn't have this problem when I played on emulator, but is it a good sign when playing on emulator is a more fair experience?
It's a shame some of the visual effects and outstanding soundtrack are wasted on this game. I personally don't hate it, but I really don't think it's this sleeper game that people say it is. I ended up beating this on easy, because anything higher just feels more tedious to play than enjoyable especially when this game loves wasting your time with it's lack of checkpoints ala Super R-Type.
I like how this game has two pages on here, probably because of the mystery behind if the title is supposed to be spaced or not.
Undead Line (or Undeadline, whatever the fuck it's supposed to be) is a walking shmup similar to Elemental Master on the same system or perhaps Capcom's Gun.Smoke. It's more well-known among hardcore Mega Drive/Shmup aficionados for it's outrageously high player-hating difficulty.
Personally, my hot take is that Undead Line is mostly hard because it's poorly-designed. In order to upgrade your weapons you need to collect the same weapon, but in order to get the same weapon you have to shoot at the weapon in the chests until it cycles to the one you want. I personally am not a fan of this kind of system, and here it's a massive pain because it's hard to concentrate on this when there's a million enemies constantly swarming at you in some sections, and it's made worse when some of the weapons are just absolute trash. The same problem goes on with the power-ups where it feels like the best one is always the Barrier for the safety of taking three hits, but right before it is the Lead Boots power-up which slows you down temporarily. "I love power-ups with adverse effects", said the most incorrect person.
The other thing that's just horrible is some of the boss fights. The rock golem boss at the end of the Forest stage feels almost-impossible to beat without upgrades to your agility stat and/or perfectly guiding his gargantuan fucking hitbox around the stage that takes up about half of the screen. The boss at the end of Ruins throws giant scythe blades at you with colossal hitboxes, and there's a table behind him which you could accidentally get yourself caught on while circling around him since it's often hidden behind his huge sprite. Pretty much all of these guys feel like they demand perfect strategies to overcome, and the one example that just really hammers it home is the final boss. Pretty much every video I looked up of people beating this game used the same exact strategy for beating him by getting right in front of him and abusing his safe spot, anything else and you're basically dead. Say hello to the very beginning on the stage, have a nice day.
It's also worth note that I had a problem with visual clarity playing this on original hardware, the enemies who come after you while dived in the murky swamp water in the Forest stage may as well be almost invisible on my CRT screen, especially when they moved quickly and I ended up taking a mystery hit that left me bewildered. I didn't have this problem when I played on emulator, but is it a good sign when playing on emulator is a more fair experience?
It's a shame some of the visual effects and outstanding soundtrack are wasted on this game. I personally don't hate it, but I really don't think it's this sleeper game that people say it is. I ended up beating this on easy, because anything higher just feels more tedious to play than enjoyable especially when this game loves wasting your time with it's lack of checkpoints ala Super R-Type.
I like how this game has two pages on here, probably because of the mystery behind if the title is supposed to be spaced or not.