ZeroRanger is, more than anything else, a passion project. Two guys and a few other collaborators ground out ZeroRanger over TEN YEARS and they're still working on it. The thread for Final Boss, the original version of ZR, was started on the shmup forums in 2009. And you can really tell. An absurd amount of details, easter eggs and references, ooze from every frame of gameplay, to the point im fairly sure any random screenshot of this game probably has a few hidden details in it. The presentation is fantasitc, with excellent sprite work and great art direction, and the music is some of the best work i've heard in a genre which possesses probably the greatest concentration of god-tier game OSTs.
For a decent bit of time though, I was kinda dissapointed by ZR, because as a Shmup, it's comparatively middling in gameplay terms - Don't get me wrong, it's still fine, and somehow the 2nd best Shmup not made in Japan because no one else has a frickin clue, but it's nothing particulary special - the game is kinda indecisive about being a classic style shmup, a puzzle-focused shmup (like Ikaruga), or a modern Bullet Hell, and the Weapon system I generally find a tad unbalanced and a bit too straighfoward for engaging gameplay - the choice between which weapon to use in which situation is nearly always blatant.
Stage design is also a bit meh. Stage 2 in particular is pretty bad, and a combination of it being very long and being a quite sizeable difficulty jump, particularly with the midboss Artypo, makes it a slog in both loops.
And oh yeah, this game loops. And due to SPOILER, the game fairly explicitly doesnt treat completion of the first loop alone as a true clear - which leads to a traditional arcade run of this game taking almost an hour - 2 to 3 times as long as a typical arcade shmup, which, depsite the game's relatively low difficulty, makes it frustrating to practice and actually put a run out there, especially as the loops have significant differences. The scoring is also very forgettable.
But fuck that. This game still slaps. Not neccessarily as a shmup - but as a tribute to shmups, and as narrative shmup, like something in the vein of Darius Gaiden or Metal Black turned up a few notches in the story balance - interweaving a narrative that's legitimately fantastic and rewards the player for diving into it, with the structure of a shmup, and it's absolutely inspired at times. When everything comes together, particularly in stage 2-4, very little else matches it.
In this "Narrative/Presentational Shmup" guise, I only really have one problem with it, and that's it's usage of References. They're absolutely everywhere, and whilst a lot of the time they're somewhere between cool and very cute, particularly in the Credits and the Dream Sequence, and frankly for most of the game, they are overused a little, and to extent I do think it compromises a bit of the narrative of the game itself, and prevents it really standing on it's own at times. This only truly rears its head in sequences where there's a heavy narrative focus, especially since the game leans on imagery a decent chunk - trying to unpick the truckload of references from the game itself can undercut it a bit.
Mind, this will definetly be something where milage will vary, and I do still love the reverance this game has for the classics. I just feel at times it almost lacks a bit of confidence in itself when what it's doing is fantastic and doesnt need to make nods to those before it.
Still, as I said, it's an absolute blast, and there's nothing i've played that's really quite like it. Definetly flawed, but at it's peak, very little feels as passionate and well executed as ZR.
For a decent bit of time though, I was kinda dissapointed by ZR, because as a Shmup, it's comparatively middling in gameplay terms - Don't get me wrong, it's still fine, and somehow the 2nd best Shmup not made in Japan because no one else has a frickin clue, but it's nothing particulary special - the game is kinda indecisive about being a classic style shmup, a puzzle-focused shmup (like Ikaruga), or a modern Bullet Hell, and the Weapon system I generally find a tad unbalanced and a bit too straighfoward for engaging gameplay - the choice between which weapon to use in which situation is nearly always blatant.
Stage design is also a bit meh. Stage 2 in particular is pretty bad, and a combination of it being very long and being a quite sizeable difficulty jump, particularly with the midboss Artypo, makes it a slog in both loops.
And oh yeah, this game loops. And due to SPOILER, the game fairly explicitly doesnt treat completion of the first loop alone as a true clear - which leads to a traditional arcade run of this game taking almost an hour - 2 to 3 times as long as a typical arcade shmup, which, depsite the game's relatively low difficulty, makes it frustrating to practice and actually put a run out there, especially as the loops have significant differences. The scoring is also very forgettable.
But fuck that. This game still slaps. Not neccessarily as a shmup - but as a tribute to shmups, and as narrative shmup, like something in the vein of Darius Gaiden or Metal Black turned up a few notches in the story balance - interweaving a narrative that's legitimately fantastic and rewards the player for diving into it, with the structure of a shmup, and it's absolutely inspired at times. When everything comes together, particularly in stage 2-4, very little else matches it.
In this "Narrative/Presentational Shmup" guise, I only really have one problem with it, and that's it's usage of References. They're absolutely everywhere, and whilst a lot of the time they're somewhere between cool and very cute, particularly in the Credits and the Dream Sequence, and frankly for most of the game, they are overused a little, and to extent I do think it compromises a bit of the narrative of the game itself, and prevents it really standing on it's own at times. This only truly rears its head in sequences where there's a heavy narrative focus, especially since the game leans on imagery a decent chunk - trying to unpick the truckload of references from the game itself can undercut it a bit.
Mind, this will definetly be something where milage will vary, and I do still love the reverance this game has for the classics. I just feel at times it almost lacks a bit of confidence in itself when what it's doing is fantastic and doesnt need to make nods to those before it.
Still, as I said, it's an absolute blast, and there's nothing i've played that's really quite like it. Definetly flawed, but at it's peak, very little feels as passionate and well executed as ZR.