I think I either have a cramp, or my hand fell off...I don't know, I can't look away from the screen
Jogo fácil da porra, zerei com a tela desligada
(Winner of the "1CC Award" for best SHMUP of all time, speech below)
Ikaruga is the "answer" to the "question" that Radiant Silvergun presented. Cutting down Silvergun's wide variety of weapons to only two: a linear shot and a bomb-style homing laser.
It also adds-nigh invulnerability in swapping shot-polarities, and the game makes you use them all to their fullest.
Ikaruga needs none of the RPG-style grinding, power-ups, customization, and so forth seen in other "innovative" shmups.
It is a true S.T.G.at its core, stripped to the bone and refined to its extreme. Drawing power from the earliest classics and inspiring others that came after it, Ikaruga remains a Treasure for the hardcore gamer.
The same hardcore gamer who asked Radiant Silvergun this question: "Even through all of the developer frustration, retailer manipulation, and outsider protestation: Do you love me?" Ikaruga answers: "Yes. I do love you."
Ikaruga is the "answer" to the "question" that Radiant Silvergun presented. Cutting down Silvergun's wide variety of weapons to only two: a linear shot and a bomb-style homing laser.
It also adds-nigh invulnerability in swapping shot-polarities, and the game makes you use them all to their fullest.
Ikaruga needs none of the RPG-style grinding, power-ups, customization, and so forth seen in other "innovative" shmups.
It is a true S.T.G.at its core, stripped to the bone and refined to its extreme. Drawing power from the earliest classics and inspiring others that came after it, Ikaruga remains a Treasure for the hardcore gamer.
The same hardcore gamer who asked Radiant Silvergun this question: "Even through all of the developer frustration, retailer manipulation, and outsider protestation: Do you love me?" Ikaruga answers: "Yes. I do love you."
This was the first danmaku I've finished.
This isn’t a STG.
A game about the difficulties of playing both sides so you always come out on top.
This is my attempt at trying the bullet hell genre, and I just think I'm not fit for it. I can see what people like and enjoyed the first few levels. But once it starts picking up pace I ended up hitting continue more than I was moving my own ship. Besides that, it has great visuals and a great soundtrack. Definitely a game and genre that requires a lot of patience. I can see veterans of the genre having a lot of fun with Ikaruga if they have yet to play it, but I will try and find something a bit slower-paced for me so it doesn't feel completely like I'm hitting my head against a wall of trial and error.
Its sometime in the year 2000, and Treasure are finishign up production of the best games of all time, Sin and Punishment, and for some fucking reason, in their after work hours, Programmer Atsutomo Nakagawa and artist/director Hiroshi iuchi have put together a prototype for a new game. Masato Maegawa, founder of treasure and by the sounds of it, the best boss of all time, plays it and basically puts his own money on the line, hiring three guys from G.Rev, themselves scrounging enough pennies to make their metal black fangame to assist, and putting the game into full production.
It is one of those realities that is very easy to forget about Ikaruga, now 22 years into it's stint of being "the shmup", and with that has come some sort of monolithic presence. And certainly with it's truly bonkers level of polish, it is hard to imagine it's origin - an absolute flash in the pan, a game that some top level developers really wanted to make, and circumstance and a little risk taking gave them a shot at it.
And you can't say they didn't take it.
Perhaps it is a byproduct of the "one chance to do what you want" reality of Ikaruga that the game is downright pathological in it's approach. And that approach is really the kicker, and usually the thing that draws contention.
Because Ikaruga is rigid as they come. You really have to cast your mind back to the likes of very early toaplan titles like Tiger Heli and Slap fight to find a game where spawns, bullet patterns and stage layouts are essentially locked in, and the game is almost entirely built around really knowing the stages before you go into them, figuring out the best paths through them and executing it perfectly. There's really more resemblance to some fucked up kind of racing game than a wild game like say, Recca. And yes, a lot of shooting games have a strong emphasis on stage knowledge, but Ikaruga is a game that basically shows you the door unless you're prepared to meet it on it's terms. It is a game that can feel comically impossible on a first approach, with stages 3 and 4 in particular being filled with layouts of enemies and bullet hazards that are fast, complex, and will just kill you before you have a chance to properly assess the situation. It can feel outright unfair, and it's probably worth pointing out the Original arcade version came with something ive never seen in any other arcade game - a trial mode which let you play the first two stages with infinite lives on one credit, serving as an introduction for the player to apperciate the mechanics.
And yeah, Ikaruga is a bit gimmicky. I will admit readly it's a game that really took me a while to actually grasp - it's exceptionally easy to appreciate the things about Ikaruga that are obviously exceptional, but especially coming at it as if it's a standard STG, harder to have actual fun with it.
For me, what unlocked that fun was the scoring. Ikaruga is exceptionally tightly tuned, but the scoring is just wonderful - and for me the secret element that tends to go unmentioned is large parts of it are very in line with games like dangan feveron and thunder dragon 2 where enemy spawns are tied to kills, which makes optimising it's chains of 3 enemies and doing it as fast as possible, spawning more in for more points and then you can get more extends and then maybe, just maybe you can beat this thing, right?
And at least for me, when i unlocked that key, when i got my first good run of stage 1, I got it. And from there the beauty of Ikaruga really shows itself. Because yes, doing a cool run of stage 1 is good gameplay - but Ikaruga then pushes this gameplay as far as it will go, with the claustrophobic and more puzzle-y stage 2 and first half of stage 3, to the notorious, exceptional battleship raid of stage 4 with an almost rhythmical quality to it, to the peak caravan-scoring festival of stage 5, each stage with a completley unique and weird boss that puts different elements of the game's mechanics to the test, and really only the first one resembles a traditional STG boss at all. Oh, and you want to quick kill them all.
Learning all these stages, these bosses, understanding their quirks, and understanding the quirks of Ikaruga's own systems, is just about the most satisfying thing i've done in any videogame. And buried deep in there, amongst the routing and execution, the sponteneity and chaos you were sure that Iuchi and Nakagawa hammered out of the game rears it's head again - sometimes in elements of the game itself, like the completely bonkers bonus chain enemies at the end of stage 3 that Superplayers still havent optimised, and the snakes in the final boss' second phase - but more often in yourself. Ikaruga is a game challenging and demanding to the point that even the very best players cannot execute the perfect route every time, and it is in catching the small errors, the deaths, the chain breaks - like a snap of oversteer going down the back end of the nordschleife, they may be mistakes but catching them is part of the thrill.
I would be remiss not to mention Ikaruga's just unbelievable presentation. The key staff member of Ikaruga I havent mentioned yet is Yasushi Suzuki, who's art direction and particularly his mechanical design is absolutely impeccable. The ikaruga ship is as unique and offbeat as the game itself, the designs of enemies and their sihoulettes is perfectly balanced between flavour and function, and on a simple level, the game is just pretty much the best looking 3D STG out there. And I know it really doesn''t matter but goddamn is his Key art, featured in the steam version as backgrounds, just the best.
And yeah i've got to mention the music. Director of Ikaruga Hiroshi Iuchi is not a composer. His main thing was making backgrounds and his jaunt in directing Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga already seemed like a stretch but just popping out one of the best game soundtracks ever as you do so and then not releasing another piece of music for 22 years is something else. And yes, a lot of it is based around that one motif from "Ideal" but that is fine when your game is 20 minutes long and ideal might be the very best in the long tradition of exceptional STG stage 1 tracks. I simply do not understand how you just do that.
The real cherry on top of Ikaruga is how it works thematically. It's clearly a sequel to the very dour radiant silvergun, a game about breaking the eternal cycle of torment humanity inflicted itself with some buddhist themes, which is hype as shit and awesome in it's own right, but there's also Radiant Silvergun's subtext - that of game development stagnating, devs repeating the same things and refusing to risk - that is really wha the stone-like represents, and Ikaruga takes glee in blowing it up, but it's the game's entire existence and style that refutes it best - and its worth noting in the years between the two, it wasn't alone. In the years between RSG and Ikaruga, in the STG space alone you had the wild Dimahoo, Guwange, Progear, Raycrisis, Mars Matrix to name a few. They, and Ikaruga, are proof that whilst the wheel of samsara might bind us, the capability to change it is there.
The end result of all this is just so special. A lot of STG development history has strokes of lightning in a bottle, but Ikaruga takes the cake. A small bunch of ridiculously talented creatives on the same page (nb. Iuchi has called Nakagawa his "wife" in relation to work on this game) given the chance to make the thing they really wanted to do and threw everything at it. In like a year dev time. I swear, the more you look into Ikaruga the more it feels like an impossible result. And yet it is here, and it is special.
It is one of those realities that is very easy to forget about Ikaruga, now 22 years into it's stint of being "the shmup", and with that has come some sort of monolithic presence. And certainly with it's truly bonkers level of polish, it is hard to imagine it's origin - an absolute flash in the pan, a game that some top level developers really wanted to make, and circumstance and a little risk taking gave them a shot at it.
And you can't say they didn't take it.
Perhaps it is a byproduct of the "one chance to do what you want" reality of Ikaruga that the game is downright pathological in it's approach. And that approach is really the kicker, and usually the thing that draws contention.
Because Ikaruga is rigid as they come. You really have to cast your mind back to the likes of very early toaplan titles like Tiger Heli and Slap fight to find a game where spawns, bullet patterns and stage layouts are essentially locked in, and the game is almost entirely built around really knowing the stages before you go into them, figuring out the best paths through them and executing it perfectly. There's really more resemblance to some fucked up kind of racing game than a wild game like say, Recca. And yes, a lot of shooting games have a strong emphasis on stage knowledge, but Ikaruga is a game that basically shows you the door unless you're prepared to meet it on it's terms. It is a game that can feel comically impossible on a first approach, with stages 3 and 4 in particular being filled with layouts of enemies and bullet hazards that are fast, complex, and will just kill you before you have a chance to properly assess the situation. It can feel outright unfair, and it's probably worth pointing out the Original arcade version came with something ive never seen in any other arcade game - a trial mode which let you play the first two stages with infinite lives on one credit, serving as an introduction for the player to apperciate the mechanics.
And yeah, Ikaruga is a bit gimmicky. I will admit readly it's a game that really took me a while to actually grasp - it's exceptionally easy to appreciate the things about Ikaruga that are obviously exceptional, but especially coming at it as if it's a standard STG, harder to have actual fun with it.
For me, what unlocked that fun was the scoring. Ikaruga is exceptionally tightly tuned, but the scoring is just wonderful - and for me the secret element that tends to go unmentioned is large parts of it are very in line with games like dangan feveron and thunder dragon 2 where enemy spawns are tied to kills, which makes optimising it's chains of 3 enemies and doing it as fast as possible, spawning more in for more points and then you can get more extends and then maybe, just maybe you can beat this thing, right?
And at least for me, when i unlocked that key, when i got my first good run of stage 1, I got it. And from there the beauty of Ikaruga really shows itself. Because yes, doing a cool run of stage 1 is good gameplay - but Ikaruga then pushes this gameplay as far as it will go, with the claustrophobic and more puzzle-y stage 2 and first half of stage 3, to the notorious, exceptional battleship raid of stage 4 with an almost rhythmical quality to it, to the peak caravan-scoring festival of stage 5, each stage with a completley unique and weird boss that puts different elements of the game's mechanics to the test, and really only the first one resembles a traditional STG boss at all. Oh, and you want to quick kill them all.
Learning all these stages, these bosses, understanding their quirks, and understanding the quirks of Ikaruga's own systems, is just about the most satisfying thing i've done in any videogame. And buried deep in there, amongst the routing and execution, the sponteneity and chaos you were sure that Iuchi and Nakagawa hammered out of the game rears it's head again - sometimes in elements of the game itself, like the completely bonkers bonus chain enemies at the end of stage 3 that Superplayers still havent optimised, and the snakes in the final boss' second phase - but more often in yourself. Ikaruga is a game challenging and demanding to the point that even the very best players cannot execute the perfect route every time, and it is in catching the small errors, the deaths, the chain breaks - like a snap of oversteer going down the back end of the nordschleife, they may be mistakes but catching them is part of the thrill.
I would be remiss not to mention Ikaruga's just unbelievable presentation. The key staff member of Ikaruga I havent mentioned yet is Yasushi Suzuki, who's art direction and particularly his mechanical design is absolutely impeccable. The ikaruga ship is as unique and offbeat as the game itself, the designs of enemies and their sihoulettes is perfectly balanced between flavour and function, and on a simple level, the game is just pretty much the best looking 3D STG out there. And I know it really doesn''t matter but goddamn is his Key art, featured in the steam version as backgrounds, just the best.
And yeah i've got to mention the music. Director of Ikaruga Hiroshi Iuchi is not a composer. His main thing was making backgrounds and his jaunt in directing Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga already seemed like a stretch but just popping out one of the best game soundtracks ever as you do so and then not releasing another piece of music for 22 years is something else. And yes, a lot of it is based around that one motif from "Ideal" but that is fine when your game is 20 minutes long and ideal might be the very best in the long tradition of exceptional STG stage 1 tracks. I simply do not understand how you just do that.
The real cherry on top of Ikaruga is how it works thematically. It's clearly a sequel to the very dour radiant silvergun, a game about breaking the eternal cycle of torment humanity inflicted itself with some buddhist themes, which is hype as shit and awesome in it's own right, but there's also Radiant Silvergun's subtext - that of game development stagnating, devs repeating the same things and refusing to risk - that is really wha the stone-like represents, and Ikaruga takes glee in blowing it up, but it's the game's entire existence and style that refutes it best - and its worth noting in the years between the two, it wasn't alone. In the years between RSG and Ikaruga, in the STG space alone you had the wild Dimahoo, Guwange, Progear, Raycrisis, Mars Matrix to name a few. They, and Ikaruga, are proof that whilst the wheel of samsara might bind us, the capability to change it is there.
The end result of all this is just so special. A lot of STG development history has strokes of lightning in a bottle, but Ikaruga takes the cake. A small bunch of ridiculously talented creatives on the same page (nb. Iuchi has called Nakagawa his "wife" in relation to work on this game) given the chance to make the thing they really wanted to do and threw everything at it. In like a year dev time. I swear, the more you look into Ikaruga the more it feels like an impossible result. And yet it is here, and it is special.
I helplessly flail my infant limbs and the universe laughs, not relishing my struggle but because she now awaits the day I climb the highest peaks and pierce the heavens.
When it comes to my experience with the shoot-em-up genre, a lot of it consists of me playing one of these kinds of games when I came across them in an arcade or as a minigame in something much larger rather than going out of my way to play anything specific. Most of my familiarity with the genre involves classics from the late 1970s and 1980s like Space Invaders, Galaga, or Gradius, as well as a few 90s gems like Pop'n TwinBee or Space Harrier, and while I had my fun with them, they never had me playing for very long. The first one of these games that I actually wanted to play from the beginning to the end, though, would be Ikaruga, as its basic gimmick and supposed high difficulty were enough to pique my interest, and thanks to my familiarity with its developer Treasure through Gunstar Heroes and Sin and Punishment, I became even more excited to check it out. My time with the game was quite short, but it was able to leave a huge impression on me, and while I still consider Sin and Punishment to be Treasure's best game, Ikaruga is a very close second.
Ikaruga is easy to understand, difficult to do well in, and even harder to master, but because the game took full advantage of its core mechanics, it ends up being an entirely rewarding experience rather than something rage-inducing. In this game, your ship can switch its polarity to not only do more damage to enemies of the opposite color, but also to absorb the attacks of those with the same polarity as you in order to fill up your energy meter and fire homing shots, as well as to simply not get killed instantly. While the game does still feature the knee-jerk reactions and fast pace that the genre is known for, this one mechanic adds a puzzle-like layer to its gameplay, as having the screen get coated head-to-toe in bullets and enemies of different polarities makes it so that you're less concerned with killing everything on the screen and more about knowing when to shift colors, where to go in order to fill up your energy meter as quickly as possible, and when to shoot out your homing attacks. The deceptive simplicity of Ikaruga meshes perfectly with the tough-as-nails level design, because the chapters and setpieces not only get harder as you go, but they also get more demanding of you and your skills, and having everything click as you figure out what moves to make in order to survive through a combination of memorizing enemy firing patterns and muscle memory is one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever felt in a video game. Despite how hard it can be, Ikaruga never resorted to cheap deaths or unfair tactics and instead made every single death feel like it was my own fault rather than that of the game, and that sense of refinement in both the game's mechanics and its level design made actually getting past that one hurdle and moving on to see what other crazy obstacle the game had in store for me made me immediately want to try again as soon as I ran out of continues rather than getting angry with the game and quitting for the day.
In all three of the games from Treasure that I've played so far, there's been at least one moment where the game fully leans in on the spectacle of its action and allows you to do something really impressive, and what's great about Ikaruga is that practically every moment of its five chapters has the potential for you to achieve that, and pulling one of these moments off rewards you with both a higher score and an unmatched sense of accomplishment. Since the game's central gimmick puts a strong emphasis on its visuals, it would only make sense for Ikaruga to be as stunning to look at as it is fun to play, as the gorgeous artstyle and effective compositions made the bullet hell moments and enemy formations into visual marvels. This especially applies to the game's hectic and immensely creative boss fights, with the battle against Tageri being my favorite moment in the whole game thanks to both how cool it looked and how satisfying it was. Ikaruga also features some amazing music from the game's director, Hiroshi Iuchi, and I especially loved how it was directly tied into the pace of each level. Ikaruga was an absolutely masterful game that not only became one of my favorite efforts from Treasure, but also my favorite shoot-em-up by far, and I really hope that I can check out the game that this served as the spiritual successor to, Radiant Silvergun, at some point.
Ikaruga is easy to understand, difficult to do well in, and even harder to master, but because the game took full advantage of its core mechanics, it ends up being an entirely rewarding experience rather than something rage-inducing. In this game, your ship can switch its polarity to not only do more damage to enemies of the opposite color, but also to absorb the attacks of those with the same polarity as you in order to fill up your energy meter and fire homing shots, as well as to simply not get killed instantly. While the game does still feature the knee-jerk reactions and fast pace that the genre is known for, this one mechanic adds a puzzle-like layer to its gameplay, as having the screen get coated head-to-toe in bullets and enemies of different polarities makes it so that you're less concerned with killing everything on the screen and more about knowing when to shift colors, where to go in order to fill up your energy meter as quickly as possible, and when to shoot out your homing attacks. The deceptive simplicity of Ikaruga meshes perfectly with the tough-as-nails level design, because the chapters and setpieces not only get harder as you go, but they also get more demanding of you and your skills, and having everything click as you figure out what moves to make in order to survive through a combination of memorizing enemy firing patterns and muscle memory is one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever felt in a video game. Despite how hard it can be, Ikaruga never resorted to cheap deaths or unfair tactics and instead made every single death feel like it was my own fault rather than that of the game, and that sense of refinement in both the game's mechanics and its level design made actually getting past that one hurdle and moving on to see what other crazy obstacle the game had in store for me made me immediately want to try again as soon as I ran out of continues rather than getting angry with the game and quitting for the day.
In all three of the games from Treasure that I've played so far, there's been at least one moment where the game fully leans in on the spectacle of its action and allows you to do something really impressive, and what's great about Ikaruga is that practically every moment of its five chapters has the potential for you to achieve that, and pulling one of these moments off rewards you with both a higher score and an unmatched sense of accomplishment. Since the game's central gimmick puts a strong emphasis on its visuals, it would only make sense for Ikaruga to be as stunning to look at as it is fun to play, as the gorgeous artstyle and effective compositions made the bullet hell moments and enemy formations into visual marvels. This especially applies to the game's hectic and immensely creative boss fights, with the battle against Tageri being my favorite moment in the whole game thanks to both how cool it looked and how satisfying it was. Ikaruga also features some amazing music from the game's director, Hiroshi Iuchi, and I especially loved how it was directly tied into the pace of each level. Ikaruga was an absolutely masterful game that not only became one of my favorite efforts from Treasure, but also my favorite shoot-em-up by far, and I really hope that I can check out the game that this served as the spiritual successor to, Radiant Silvergun, at some point.
Did you know?
Ikaruga was actually part of a super-soldier reflex training program, but as a joke it got released to the public.
Ikaruga was actually part of a super-soldier reflex training program, but as a joke it got released to the public.
if you have not played this game, no wonder you think shmups are boring
idk man its cool but its tricks arent that impressive, color switching is fun and the core of the game but there really isnt else more than that. feels like it has much less to say than other shmups and treasure games.
El tema de Ikaruga no es la voluntad, es la rigidez. Detrás de su teatral presentación y aires de superioridad se esconde un juego rígido, superficial y tedioso. Su desafío se centra en la memorización y en la ejecución estricta, alejada de la acción dinámica y profunda de los buenos juegos de naves. No es una buena entrada al género ni es representativo las virtudes de este.
Versión larga.
Mi 1cc
Versión larga.
Mi 1cc
This review contains spoilers
Thus achieve your mission without any regrets.
I will not die until I achieve something.
Even though the ideal is high, I never give in.
Therefore, I never die with regrets.
We were supposed to understand it...
Can we see the liberty and freedom?
I will not die until I achieve something.
Even though the ideal is high, I never give in.
Therefore, I never die with regrets.
We were supposed to understand it...
Can we see the liberty and freedom?
Desgraçadamente difícil
THIS GAME IS THE JOY OF MANKIND
difficult as hell but once you finally complete it, you feel peace and leave with a great experience
I booted Ikaruga up for the first time and was sort of like damn this opening comment about Ikaruga fighting for no reason is sort of Nier-y. Then one of my friends commented that the polarity system reminded him of XIV’s Nier raids. Then I got to chapter 2 with the obstacles and I was like damn this kind of reminds me of Nier’s bullet hell sections. So I looked up Ikaruga Nier on Google and sure enough it’s Yoko Taro’s favorite shmup.
I’m by no means a shmup junkie and I don’t think I’ll ever clear Ikaruga but this is a fun and very challenging game. The slow ship speed and emphasis on polarity and obstacles makes it feel more puzzle-y than the other shmups I’ve played (not many) so I think this is a shmup to try if you like puzzles because your ship isn’t careening all over the place. And if you like Nier, maybe like me you’ll want to psychologically torture yourself into trying to finish it so you can fully understand why Yoko Taro finds it so great.
I’m by no means a shmup junkie and I don’t think I’ll ever clear Ikaruga but this is a fun and very challenging game. The slow ship speed and emphasis on polarity and obstacles makes it feel more puzzle-y than the other shmups I’ve played (not many) so I think this is a shmup to try if you like puzzles because your ship isn’t careening all over the place. And if you like Nier, maybe like me you’ll want to psychologically torture yourself into trying to finish it so you can fully understand why Yoko Taro finds it so great.
Ikaruga
I played this at Galloping Ghosts Arcade.
Crazy cool game that Im glad its on consoles now.
Crazy cool game that Im glad its on consoles now.
"Reality has come in sight,
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you think?
What did you seek?
What did you do?"
Light and dark. Black and white. Left and right. On and off. Yin and Yang. 0 and 1. Almost anything in life can be reduced to a duality of opposites, and Ikaruga understands this not just from its famous polarity mechanic but the almost rhythmic flow of its level designs. Any shmup developer who's been there will tell you the importance of establishing a sense of flow to playing your game, and Ikaruga is the most striking example of this kind of design. Enemies will regularly be making you move to an invisible rhythm when playing Ikaruga, whether it be the starting enemies in stage 1 coming from the top-right/left corners of the screen, or the crushingly difficult "rose of madness" in the first half stage 4. Even the bosses embrace duality, such as the stage 1 boss shifting the polarity of its attacks between phases, the two-faced stage 2 boss which requires different polarities to take out each half, and the final boss' frenetic rush of overlapping bullet curtains.
This rhythm is amplified by the chaining system, which is much more proactive on the part of the player compared to Radiant Silvergun's one-colour restriction. Take out 3 enemies of the same colour in a row, regardless of which colour they are, and you'll add one chain to your current count. Each level and setpiece within is cleverly designed so that you can destroy every single enemy, including even extra enemies while not breaking your chain if you're good enough. Even though I'm not able to get S-ranks in any of the stages yet, pulling off the chains is very satisfying, with the maneuvers looking super cool when you time and position them just right. Ikaruga's chaining system feels more genuinely like building up a huge combo than any other shmup chaining system I've experienced, and gradually unraveling the chaining routes through each of the five stages is like peeling off the layers of an onion, giving the stages a new character and feel each time you get higher max chain counts.
A common criticism of Ikaruga is that the game is too slow-paced and "puzzle-like" for a shmup, especially in the first two stages, and frankly it's a criticism I agreed with for a long time, but this slowness withers away if you try chaining and get a greater feel for the polarity shifting. These slowly-scrolling setpieces become lightning fast, with you optimising frames in your movements even when going for A-ranks, let alone S-ranks. It helps that the ship movement speed in Ikaruga feels significantly faster than Radiant Silvergun's somewhat sluggish movement speed too.
You can't really talk about Ikaruga without bringing up its world-renowned presentational qualities. Although I like to avoid the rambling discourse over whether games are art or not, Ikaruga is definitely a game I'd consider to be oozing with artistic qualities. Speaking of art, this game is also blessed with some of the hardest going official artworks ever made, with a beautiful, grungy early 2000's cyberpunk anime kind of style. There's also the small but fantastic soundtrack by the director Hiroshi Iuchi, which while it doesn't quite reach the orchestral highs of Sakimoto's works for Radiant Silvergun, Iuchi's soundtrack perfectly matches the ebb-and-flows of the stages and bosses here, with a dramatic finish.
Admittedly Ikaruga can be a very difficult game to get into. It lacks the same immediate appeal of its predecessor, lacking the same scale in narrative, number of boss fights or even screen space taken by the game itself. The polarity mechanic is also even stranger than RS' 7-weapon system, with it feeling as though it's actively punishing conventional shmup gameplay patterns at points. Despite these idiosyncrasies of the game, for most of my time as a player of this genre, I've always respected Ikaruga, and as more time passes, I increasingly love it as well.
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you think?
What did you seek?
What did you do?"
Light and dark. Black and white. Left and right. On and off. Yin and Yang. 0 and 1. Almost anything in life can be reduced to a duality of opposites, and Ikaruga understands this not just from its famous polarity mechanic but the almost rhythmic flow of its level designs. Any shmup developer who's been there will tell you the importance of establishing a sense of flow to playing your game, and Ikaruga is the most striking example of this kind of design. Enemies will regularly be making you move to an invisible rhythm when playing Ikaruga, whether it be the starting enemies in stage 1 coming from the top-right/left corners of the screen, or the crushingly difficult "rose of madness" in the first half stage 4. Even the bosses embrace duality, such as the stage 1 boss shifting the polarity of its attacks between phases, the two-faced stage 2 boss which requires different polarities to take out each half, and the final boss' frenetic rush of overlapping bullet curtains.
This rhythm is amplified by the chaining system, which is much more proactive on the part of the player compared to Radiant Silvergun's one-colour restriction. Take out 3 enemies of the same colour in a row, regardless of which colour they are, and you'll add one chain to your current count. Each level and setpiece within is cleverly designed so that you can destroy every single enemy, including even extra enemies while not breaking your chain if you're good enough. Even though I'm not able to get S-ranks in any of the stages yet, pulling off the chains is very satisfying, with the maneuvers looking super cool when you time and position them just right. Ikaruga's chaining system feels more genuinely like building up a huge combo than any other shmup chaining system I've experienced, and gradually unraveling the chaining routes through each of the five stages is like peeling off the layers of an onion, giving the stages a new character and feel each time you get higher max chain counts.
A common criticism of Ikaruga is that the game is too slow-paced and "puzzle-like" for a shmup, especially in the first two stages, and frankly it's a criticism I agreed with for a long time, but this slowness withers away if you try chaining and get a greater feel for the polarity shifting. These slowly-scrolling setpieces become lightning fast, with you optimising frames in your movements even when going for A-ranks, let alone S-ranks. It helps that the ship movement speed in Ikaruga feels significantly faster than Radiant Silvergun's somewhat sluggish movement speed too.
You can't really talk about Ikaruga without bringing up its world-renowned presentational qualities. Although I like to avoid the rambling discourse over whether games are art or not, Ikaruga is definitely a game I'd consider to be oozing with artistic qualities. Speaking of art, this game is also blessed with some of the hardest going official artworks ever made, with a beautiful, grungy early 2000's cyberpunk anime kind of style. There's also the small but fantastic soundtrack by the director Hiroshi Iuchi, which while it doesn't quite reach the orchestral highs of Sakimoto's works for Radiant Silvergun, Iuchi's soundtrack perfectly matches the ebb-and-flows of the stages and bosses here, with a dramatic finish.
Admittedly Ikaruga can be a very difficult game to get into. It lacks the same immediate appeal of its predecessor, lacking the same scale in narrative, number of boss fights or even screen space taken by the game itself. The polarity mechanic is also even stranger than RS' 7-weapon system, with it feeling as though it's actively punishing conventional shmup gameplay patterns at points. Despite these idiosyncrasies of the game, for most of my time as a player of this genre, I've always respected Ikaruga, and as more time passes, I increasingly love it as well.
I can tell this is probably the best game ever made if you're good at it
I respect the bejesus out of Ikaruga, but after playing it for around 10 hours I'm not sure I think it's actually any fun. It's the video game equivalent of a fussy Michelin-star meal: impeccably designed and presented, a feast for the senses, so thrillingly complex that you know you'll be thinking about it days, months, or even years from now ..... but you might be pulling into McDonald's on the way home.
probably as good as video games can get if you're any good at this. while i can tackle the first two chapters pretty comfortably, and maybe stumble through the third one, the last two are just so hard in a way that makes me completely confused on what i have to do. gave this many tries playing with limited lives and continues before just succumbing to freeplay by the end, and with that i just received a really neat lightshow. the audiovisual presentation is breathtakingly cool and there's certainly a lot to appreciate about this game, but i need to get good before i can truly say i love it.
the most popular shoot em up and also the best one probably
I feel the same way about Ikaruga that people who dislike Radiohead must feel about Radiohead, which is good because it helps me understand them.
Jogasso, pena q me da náuseas
Fui web influenciado por Sonic Frontiers!
Ikaruga se mostra como uma anomalia quando se trata em game design sendo todo construído dentro de uma regra de três que dita o jogo e sua performance. Ainda existe um teor filosófico em sua narrativa que admito que ainda não adsorvi totalmente e talvez seja um bom motivo pra novas runs no futuro. O jogo me agrada demais esteticamente e então entendi do porque a Sonic Team usa desse jogoi pra finalizar o seu titulo. Um otimo jogo está por trás desse caminho árduo até o final.
Ikaruga se mostra como uma anomalia quando se trata em game design sendo todo construído dentro de uma regra de três que dita o jogo e sua performance. Ainda existe um teor filosófico em sua narrativa que admito que ainda não adsorvi totalmente e talvez seja um bom motivo pra novas runs no futuro. O jogo me agrada demais esteticamente e então entendi do porque a Sonic Team usa desse jogoi pra finalizar o seu titulo. Um otimo jogo está por trás desse caminho árduo até o final.