After a bunch of 5 or 6 out of 10 games, this is the first shmup I've played that made me go "damn this is cool".

I will be forever spoiled by the power up mechanics here. You can get 3 levels for each type of beam, and each level gives you one extra hit. This made me realize that I'm not a fan of the "die in one hit" approach, standard for the genre. Just having unlimited continues is already fairly progressive tbh.

In true late 80s/ early 90s though, the final stage is an obnoxious difficulty spike. I managed to beat it legit however, no rewinds, though I had to use a specific strategy. Hint, your "bombs" are your best friend.

I just know I'll forever be chasing this high in other shmups, never to find it again.

I'm not going to lie. I love this game.

This was, by and large, one of my favorite games back when I was young, and is still a game that holds a tender spot in my darkened heart.

The speed, the ferocity, the sheer numbers of wave after wave of space invaders, the power-ups, the music, the absolutely amazing visuals and sprit-work! Everything about this game in my eyes was fine-tuned to shmup perfection, and I've yet to play one that tops it for me.

I could re-play this silly space-plane game any time, and still have a great time. I may have taken more of a liking to extreme action games and RPGs as I grew older, but this shooter will always remind me of my roots as a gamer.

Revisited this after playing the other PCE Star Soldier games and it's hard not to feel this is the apex of the TurboGrafx Hu-Card library; it's both the most visually-exciting and tightly knit of its trilogy. Something as simple as having a rival who boasts 'I'll Be Back' after eating shit adds so much raw power to an already exhilarating run. The difficulty curve is rock-solid (until the last stage), the option-bomb system is handled perfectly, and the soundtrack has an 'oomph' that surpasses most other HUC6280 by miles.

One of my favorite shooters.

Love the weapon system and how much depth there was to routing the stages out thanks to it. I love all the little changes they made to enemy and boss patterns in Hard! Really felt rewarding to understand the game's systems well and kick it up to finish that difficulty.

1CC'd it once, will 1CC it many more times, it's just a great time all around.

I've played so many shooters this past year that sometimes I forget them right when I finish playing them. Thank God for a game tracker or I would never be able to remember if I beat Phalanx or not, let alone anything specific in the game itself. My criteria from now on for judging a shooter is, at the very least, the final boss has to be cool. All you have to do is make me remember your final boss. This game? Well, I suppose it's a little better than the last, and most of the bosses and baddies are like cool anime mechs. What I thought was going to be the final boss, which was just a brain alien encased in a weird mask thing encased in a tank, was an okay fight, until in fact the very last boss was another huge mech. I was ready to be disappointed until I realized the fight takes place on the moon, with the view of earth in the background, and the boss saying "I'll kill you!" every time he fires his superweapon. And I mean, yeah, I'll remember that for a while. Good on you, Soldier Blade.

I really shouldn't have been so hard on R-Type III in retrospect, since that was maybe only the third shooter or so I had played back then. I still shake my own head at my past ignorance. Buuuuuuh, I said in that review like a fool, like a complete imbecile, what do I write about for R-Type III, the screen scrolls and your little shootey ship goes bang bang on the other little ships. Meanwhile I had just gotten done beating the coolest shooter final boss of all time, a Venus flytrap alien beast with six arms prying itself out of an interdimensional tear in one last effort to kill you. Fuckin idiot, Garrett. What's the matter with you? Stupid asshole.

O PC Engine é recheado de STGs dos mais variados, com alguns títulos mais reconhecidos e aclamados que outros.

Nesse meu ato de desbravar toda a biblioteca de um console como o TurboGrafx-16, é perceptível que a Hudson Soft (em parceria com a NEC, criadora do console em primeiro lugar) sustentou MUITO do gênero.

Comparar Soldier Blade com seus antecessores de releases anuais, essas sendo respectivamente, Super Star Soldier e Final Soldier, é notável a evolução e o aperfeiçoamento na fórmula.

Enquanto Super Star Soldier, embora muito bom, é lento e sem muitos powerups, Soldier Blade é muito mais rápido (já no primeiro stage), possui mais powerups, a mecânica de nave acoplada é melhor (e tem diferenças baseadas no powerup/coloração) e a forma como você pode acelerar o movimento base da nave é melhor e mais útil neste título.

O visual não mudou muito, entretanto, esteticamente é mais agradável aos olhos e o design de inimigos e bosses está bem superior, ainda mais detalhado e bem animado.

O único contra é definitivamente a OST. O título tem uma boa OST e uma boa coletânea de SFX (especialmente o tiro em raios de três direções e os efeitos de explosão/colisão) mas, quando comparado a OST de Final Soldier deixa a desejar um pouco - é esquecível.

A curva de dificuldade também foi ajustada. Enquanto nos anteriores era bastante acessível (o que não é um problema, claro) aqui é um pouquinho mais complicado (justamente por mais complexidade) e logo após alguns stages pode acabar rolando um game-over ocasional.

Na época, a NEC e a Hudson Soft em conjunto estavam trabalhando ao máximo para apoiar o PC Engine trazendo grandes títulos First Party (especialmente que fariam sucesso no público nipônico, afinal, sabiam que o console era relativamente fraco no Ocidente e, nessa época 1990~1993 o Sega Genesis e o Super Nintendo estavam amassando qualquer concorrência) enquanto mantinham seus Third Party em outros sistemas de vídeo-game contemporâneos, e funcionou! Até o momento, grande parte do catálogo deles que joguei no PC Engine é extremamente sólido, não me encontrei com nem um jogo realmente ruim deles.

Enfim, um bom shoot'em up para os padrões da época e do console, com uma trilha sonora frenética, gameplay responsiva e visual crocante.

My history with vertical shmups on the PC Engine is really inconsistent in ratings for me. First was Super Star Soldier which I was never really that big on, I just found it very underwhelming, like even the Famicom Star Soldier was more fun to me. Second was Gunhed/Blazing Lazers where it was very good but had some flawed levels and I remember it having an annoying boss rush. Third was Star Parodier which was a nice Parodius like take on Star Soldier with its awesome level themes but I felt like it was too easy leaving me to go on autopilot near the end though it’s still really good despite its baby difficulty. Fourth was Nexzr where I felt like one of the only people who wasn’t too impressed with it. Fifth was Spriggan which was great though I wish 1 or 2 of the stages were designed better but the gameplay like the weapons are 10/10. Lastly there was Detana!! Twinbee which was a pretty good shmup, not my favorite from the vertical shmups but I like it a lot. Now we have Soldier Blade which was the last of the Star Soldier PC Engine games and I was a little worried it wouldn’t impress me but oh boy Hudson knew how to make one of the best shmups for the console.

Soldier Blade is a vertical shmup that will take you through 7 operations (which are basically just stages but with a different name) and will fight a variety of enemies and bosses that will try to stop you. This game’s weapon system is very similar to something like Musha Aleste and Spriggan where you collect these items that are 3 different colors representing a different weapon. You can hold up to three and your weapon is the one that is used on the very right. If you grab a 4th one then the one on the left is removed. If you collect a color that is the same one you use, you get an extra hit point and your firepower is upgraded. You can press a button to get rid of one of the weapons and it’ll do a special attack. Red homes in on enemies, green will send a big projectile onto the enemies, and blue will shoot a short lasting but massive laser. When it comes to the actual shots though, they got uses. Red is a shot that is the weakest of the three but the more it’s upgraded, the more directions it shoots at once. Green uses these arrow-like projectiles that hit in multiple directions going in an upright and upleft motion. Blue will shoot lasers that are pretty powerful though they give the least coverage so make sure your dodging skills are up for the task. Your ship also has an option that follows you and shoots along with you. You can even change your speed from low to high with the select button.

The levels in this game are really solid, there’s not really any big gimmicks in this one compared to others but it didn’t bother me personally. The enemies patterns and bullets are done perfectly with what you’re offered on offense and defense. I always appreciate shmups that use the speed mechanic well, I felt like it had a good balance for using the low and high speeds. You’re given lots of weapon pickups meaning you’re always switching them up and using your specials many times and they are a big help for the stages and bosses. Everything is just so engaging and there’s never a dull moment with this game. While I did play on the normal difficulty, it still felt somewhat challenging near the end especially with the bosses. I wanna point out how good the last stage is at getting you ready where it gives a big alert and then murders your team as you head off for the final level, now that’s how you get someone ready to finish a game. I do think some levels can feel like they go on for a little too long but I think I only felt that way on one stage early on, I started to not really think that but I’m sure some think differently of that. Really there’s just no complaints from me here.

The bosses are pretty good too even if their designs aren’t the most fascinating. I love how the first boss is where you meet the main villain who once you beat, he retreats and tells you he’ll be back which is so chilling. It made me go “Oh god, he must be the final boss, scary…” which is always a good sign. I like how you do have to try on these and can’t just spam those three weapons you have and say GG. No you actually gotta do some effort for yourself so learn those patterns or they’ll make easy work of you. Some of them can be pretty tough but with enough practice it can be done with ease and I like how none of them feel unfair and go through a wonderful difficulty curve. I can’t think of a single bad boss in this game. I also like when the game has to give an ALERT for when a boss shows up to get you prepared!

There’s also a caravan stage where you play for 2 or 5 minutes to get the best score possible. You can’t use those special moves in this one so try your best to kill as many enemies as you can. I’m guessing this originally had a contest back in the day but I wouldn’t know and I’m not really one to get into this kind of stuff, I’m all about going through a journey to see an end. Still if you like that kind of stuff then this game has you covered and plus it’s nice they made a stage just for it.

Soldier Blade looks fantastic for a Hucard game. The backgrounds just look so good for the console and all the sprites are nice and some are even huge. There’s not even technical problems that I could think of which is excellent. Sadly there isn’t really much in terms of the cutscenes so if you were hoping for that then you won’t get it here, that’s usually kept for CD games. Still you can’t really complain with what they did graphically for this game. The music is pretty good too, not my favorite stuff but I like it anyway. It even has voice samples even if there are barely any and I can’t even hear what the final boss is saying. I also really love this cool touch they did where in the 6th operation you fight this boss where you get put in this weird wavy pink land and the music actually gets a little screwed up as the background waves around which is a touch I’d never expect.

The game was a big surprise for me. I would have never imagined something already beating Valkyrie no Densetsu for number 1 spot on my PC Engine list. I just finished that one not too long ago and to see it already beaten out is crazy. Soldier Blade impresses and just never lets go and delivers on a great experience. It may not have cute Anime girl designs and it may not be the most original shmup on the console but it gets that gameplay so great that it’s a big recommendation. Anyone who wants to play games on the PC Engine has to play this title and it shows Hudson knew how to make some amazing stuff for the console later in its life. If you still haven’t played this then give it a go because it’s worth your time for sure!