Cold_Comfort
2019
Back in the day, the Playstation Mobile version of Cytus was the first proper rhythm game I REALLY got into. Now i'm getting my teeth into the genre more properly, I thought i'd give it's re-release another go.
And holy shit the timing window is huge. It's something I failed to notice as a beginner, but now with the retrospect of at least kinda knowing a few things about these sorts of games, Cytus feels absurdly easy, with timing windows for goods is bigger than any other game i've played, and perfects even feel like 100ms+ windows even. It's a decision I don't really have a problem with on it's own, but even with it's additional TP system, which tracks accuracy more tightly, the leaderboards are absolutely flooded with max scores.
Which really, in a sense, shows the emphasis of Cytus. It's a far more casual game than most of it's counterparts, even on mobile, focused on an experiencial, almost concept-album like experience.
And in that regard, Cytus is very strong, with the framing device of the game being robots experiencing music as a way to experience human emotions being quite compelling, and the 10-song "Alive" album which forms the title track of each chapter and tells the story is quite compelling, and has some of the best tracks in the game at that. Many of the individual bonus chapters, specifically Chapters L, Knight and Timeline, also serve as individual little storyline concept albums, which is something I have basically not seen in other rhythm games.
And in general, the songs are good, which frankly, is the main thing. There's a good chunk of songs fro Rhythm game favourites like Cranky and M2U, as well as plenty of other good ones. Originally being a subscription thing, there are some issues in that you can tell the game took a while to find it's style, and whilst the early chapters are great and the final few are excellent, some in the middle are a bit dull and uninspired in comparison, though usually each of these at least has one fantastic track.
And in many ways, it is the legacy of this game being a game as a service that bogs down the new Alpha remaster most. The garbage song selection UI somehow managed to stick round 10 years, along with the weird insistence on secret tracks which are a pain to find. There's also only two patterns per song where even cytus 2 (which actually came out before this port) has 3+, and it leads to a huge gulf in difficulty between some of the easy and hard patterns in the same song occasioanlly, and is just overall dissapointing. There's a scant few patterns in this game that are very difficult, and im not even good at this game - more patterns pushing the envelope would help it a lot.
Frankly, the main thing the port adds is the new art and a little new unlockable story stuff. The new art is absolutely fantastic and helps address the haphazard style of the original game, and the story stuff helps the original sparse narrative get a little more meat on the bones. Its still limited, but it's nice.
The other new things in this port are online multiplayer and physical controls. Neither are worthwhile, with the multiplayer already entirely dead and the the physical controls just being fiddly and i feel would only really work on a keyboard or arcade stick where you could mash really fast.
Overall, Cytus is kinda rough, and Rayark would massively improve on polish and presentation in their later work, but Cytus is arguably still their most interesting and the focus on concept albums and narrative really makes the original in particular stand out. The timing window may be way too wide for a pro to take it remotely seriously, but it's an interesting, and rather special game in it's own right.
And holy shit the timing window is huge. It's something I failed to notice as a beginner, but now with the retrospect of at least kinda knowing a few things about these sorts of games, Cytus feels absurdly easy, with timing windows for goods is bigger than any other game i've played, and perfects even feel like 100ms+ windows even. It's a decision I don't really have a problem with on it's own, but even with it's additional TP system, which tracks accuracy more tightly, the leaderboards are absolutely flooded with max scores.
Which really, in a sense, shows the emphasis of Cytus. It's a far more casual game than most of it's counterparts, even on mobile, focused on an experiencial, almost concept-album like experience.
And in that regard, Cytus is very strong, with the framing device of the game being robots experiencing music as a way to experience human emotions being quite compelling, and the 10-song "Alive" album which forms the title track of each chapter and tells the story is quite compelling, and has some of the best tracks in the game at that. Many of the individual bonus chapters, specifically Chapters L, Knight and Timeline, also serve as individual little storyline concept albums, which is something I have basically not seen in other rhythm games.
And in general, the songs are good, which frankly, is the main thing. There's a good chunk of songs fro Rhythm game favourites like Cranky and M2U, as well as plenty of other good ones. Originally being a subscription thing, there are some issues in that you can tell the game took a while to find it's style, and whilst the early chapters are great and the final few are excellent, some in the middle are a bit dull and uninspired in comparison, though usually each of these at least has one fantastic track.
And in many ways, it is the legacy of this game being a game as a service that bogs down the new Alpha remaster most. The garbage song selection UI somehow managed to stick round 10 years, along with the weird insistence on secret tracks which are a pain to find. There's also only two patterns per song where even cytus 2 (which actually came out before this port) has 3+, and it leads to a huge gulf in difficulty between some of the easy and hard patterns in the same song occasioanlly, and is just overall dissapointing. There's a scant few patterns in this game that are very difficult, and im not even good at this game - more patterns pushing the envelope would help it a lot.
Frankly, the main thing the port adds is the new art and a little new unlockable story stuff. The new art is absolutely fantastic and helps address the haphazard style of the original game, and the story stuff helps the original sparse narrative get a little more meat on the bones. Its still limited, but it's nice.
The other new things in this port are online multiplayer and physical controls. Neither are worthwhile, with the multiplayer already entirely dead and the the physical controls just being fiddly and i feel would only really work on a keyboard or arcade stick where you could mash really fast.
Overall, Cytus is kinda rough, and Rayark would massively improve on polish and presentation in their later work, but Cytus is arguably still their most interesting and the focus on concept albums and narrative really makes the original in particular stand out. The timing window may be way too wide for a pro to take it remotely seriously, but it's an interesting, and rather special game in it's own right.
I know it's a derivative of Touhou but that doesn't mean the game has to be as well. Aside from some neat background visuals, boring as shit.
Mid-dra Union
1993
People will really ust make the most basic Raiden Clone ever imagined and give it a hard as hell name.
2014
How do the same devs that create awesome crash physics implement them in a game where the cars have health bars instead of realistic damage modelling and where the reset function is so lenient the optimal way to play the game is to reset your car onto the track before the crash you're in has even finished.
Not to mention that its also just pretty dull.
Not to mention that its also just pretty dull.
Epic, this tech demo could have been a video. I would have believed you if you'd told me it was all in engine in unreal 5 and I wouldn't have had to download 27gb for a 10 minute car chase and perhaps the lamest open world experience conceivable.
Ok in fairness, the car chase portion is decently cool. It's very matrix reloaded, and despite one or two framerate hitches it's pretty visually impressive, as are the recreations of keanu and carrie ann moss, which you really need to squint at to see the uncanny valley-ness of it.
But there's so little here to talk about. The tech demo opens with a statement from keanu about tech and reality converging and shit but then completely drops it like a minute after and doesnt seem to actually have a point to make other than "damn, unreal 5 is pretty sick huh".
The open world section after the car chase is so pathetic I have no idea what it's purpose is. And it doesn't even look that amazing! It looks like Watch dogs! And all you can do is rob cars and run about!
Just watch the car chase on youtube.
Ok in fairness, the car chase portion is decently cool. It's very matrix reloaded, and despite one or two framerate hitches it's pretty visually impressive, as are the recreations of keanu and carrie ann moss, which you really need to squint at to see the uncanny valley-ness of it.
But there's so little here to talk about. The tech demo opens with a statement from keanu about tech and reality converging and shit but then completely drops it like a minute after and doesnt seem to actually have a point to make other than "damn, unreal 5 is pretty sick huh".
The open world section after the car chase is so pathetic I have no idea what it's purpose is. And it doesn't even look that amazing! It looks like Watch dogs! And all you can do is rob cars and run about!
Just watch the car chase on youtube.
I have to commend Ratalaika games for giving this niche Shooting game a good port on modern systems, turning a game where even the Reproduction cartridges cost $200 into something pretty much anyone can play legally for $5 in a pretty good way.
But any mystique it built up of being this really rad, extremely rare gem, is quickly shattered by actually playing through it and finding out it's an ridiculously conventional console STG, even in the context of it's time.
At it's core, it's very similar to the Thunder Force games of the era. But kinda just worse. It's poorly paced above all else, with long periods of dead air, way too many stages, and just really not enough bits where you're actually dodging bullets or being under really any challenge at all. It's a pretty easy STG overall, thanks to the game giving you a million lives, but harder sections are just dropped into stages among minutes of simple stage hazards and simple enemy formations which you can mostly speedkill before they can present any difficulty.
So the strength is in the presentation right? Nah, not really. The game does feature these pretty nice pixel art CGs between stages 3, 6, 9 and after 11 (btw, a STG having that many stages is a red flag in the first place), but they're short, very sparse, and give very little context to the events of the game until the very end where it's revealed that the plot is literally the earth federation defeating "aliens". Great.
It does have nice stage backgrounds and is generally quite pretty, but its nothing special compared to say, the Pretty great Thunder Force III. And boy, does this game make Thunder Force III and IV look great in comparison. Of even better, even if you dont want to leave the console space, MUSHA Aleste, Super Aleste, Super Fantasy Zone, Bio Hazard Battle and a myriad of pretty decent arcade ports of things like Tatsujin, Hizousame, Darius 2. And if you're prepared to play arcade STGs, god help Gleylancer.
The mystique of this game shatters with high availability and low pricing, frankly, which is pretty pathetic. It's a game that cribs an awful lot from the Thunder Force games of it's era, whilst playing a lot worse and having less character or really, lacking any hook to be worth playing beyond some occasional great backgrounds and art cut ins you see every
20 minutes - which by the way, some of the games ive mentioned above handily beat it out on anyways as well.
God help the people that spent $500 on this one.
But any mystique it built up of being this really rad, extremely rare gem, is quickly shattered by actually playing through it and finding out it's an ridiculously conventional console STG, even in the context of it's time.
At it's core, it's very similar to the Thunder Force games of the era. But kinda just worse. It's poorly paced above all else, with long periods of dead air, way too many stages, and just really not enough bits where you're actually dodging bullets or being under really any challenge at all. It's a pretty easy STG overall, thanks to the game giving you a million lives, but harder sections are just dropped into stages among minutes of simple stage hazards and simple enemy formations which you can mostly speedkill before they can present any difficulty.
So the strength is in the presentation right? Nah, not really. The game does feature these pretty nice pixel art CGs between stages 3, 6, 9 and after 11 (btw, a STG having that many stages is a red flag in the first place), but they're short, very sparse, and give very little context to the events of the game until the very end where it's revealed that the plot is literally the earth federation defeating "aliens". Great.
It does have nice stage backgrounds and is generally quite pretty, but its nothing special compared to say, the Pretty great Thunder Force III. And boy, does this game make Thunder Force III and IV look great in comparison. Of even better, even if you dont want to leave the console space, MUSHA Aleste, Super Aleste, Super Fantasy Zone, Bio Hazard Battle and a myriad of pretty decent arcade ports of things like Tatsujin, Hizousame, Darius 2. And if you're prepared to play arcade STGs, god help Gleylancer.
The mystique of this game shatters with high availability and low pricing, frankly, which is pretty pathetic. It's a game that cribs an awful lot from the Thunder Force games of it's era, whilst playing a lot worse and having less character or really, lacking any hook to be worth playing beyond some occasional great backgrounds and art cut ins you see every
20 minutes - which by the way, some of the games ive mentioned above handily beat it out on anyways as well.
God help the people that spent $500 on this one.
2020
Suzerain's facade is very good. A beautiful map, a 4X-style UI, some resources to manage and distribute and pages upon pages of deepest lore and people to keep pleased. The further you get into the game, and especially on repeat playthroughs, the cracks in the veneer show hard, and it will dawn on you at some point - this game is way closer to a dating sim Visual Novel than any 4X thingy.
Suzerain is just text choices and basically nothing else, where you basically balance relationships, constantly doing everything you can to make the waifus of you preference back you. And by waifus i mean the oligarchs or the old faithful.
And viewed in that light, Suzerain is really dull. When you get past the awesome conceit of the game and the occasional cool things you can do, it mostly consists of endless, endless text boxes of slightly meaningful decisions punctuated by the occasional chance to drastically change the land in one swoop.
Though probably the main problem is the writing. For a game which is so text heavy it's characters are so stock and one-note it verges on parody. This isn't helped by there being so damn many and almost none of them getting a scene solely dedicated to themselves, but when the Vice President character does get a bit of that time and has no character traits beyond "Adulterer" and "Alcoholic", and he's the most well rounded of the cast, there's an issue.
And you will spend like 90% of your time in the game in endless meetings with these boring people making decisions which might eventually add up to something but probably not. All of this with extremely minimal artwork, and clicking between the 5 different places on the map the game lets you because it wants to pretend its a strategy game still.
The way choices are dealt with suzerain is very frustrating. The game follows a general order of events no matter what you do, which is not the best thing in the first place, with some slight weaves around this core line depending on whether you go full facist or not. This both really restricts how far the political stuff really lets you go (no matter how hard you try you can't really make any revolution happen in anything other than "we'll do it soon!"), but also feeds into that good old choice-game problem where one choice near the endgame can just take you wildly off course because the game still needs to have 9 endings. So near the endgame you can get some severe whiplash when one aspect of the story you've built up essentially railroads you and there's no way out.
If you go to war, for instance - that defines your run. Every other aspect of government ceases to matter and your policies and politics have no more bearing on the plot besides how much attention you paid to millitary waifu. And you'll get one of 2 endings from that point onward depending on whether you win or not.
Suzerain feels like a game that should have fallout style endings - reflecting on how each of your decisions effected different people, countries, branches. But it's not. And the more I reflect on it and the potential it had, the more it infuriates me.
It's all a facade. Those beautiful moments at the start of the game where you're watching the meters and going through the codex and making rational decisions thinking it will all add up - they end up meaning fuck all.
If the writing and story was good, I could easily forgive it. But when that facade crumbles there's nothing left to Suzerain.
Suzerain is just text choices and basically nothing else, where you basically balance relationships, constantly doing everything you can to make the waifus of you preference back you. And by waifus i mean the oligarchs or the old faithful.
And viewed in that light, Suzerain is really dull. When you get past the awesome conceit of the game and the occasional cool things you can do, it mostly consists of endless, endless text boxes of slightly meaningful decisions punctuated by the occasional chance to drastically change the land in one swoop.
Though probably the main problem is the writing. For a game which is so text heavy it's characters are so stock and one-note it verges on parody. This isn't helped by there being so damn many and almost none of them getting a scene solely dedicated to themselves, but when the Vice President character does get a bit of that time and has no character traits beyond "Adulterer" and "Alcoholic", and he's the most well rounded of the cast, there's an issue.
And you will spend like 90% of your time in the game in endless meetings with these boring people making decisions which might eventually add up to something but probably not. All of this with extremely minimal artwork, and clicking between the 5 different places on the map the game lets you because it wants to pretend its a strategy game still.
The way choices are dealt with suzerain is very frustrating. The game follows a general order of events no matter what you do, which is not the best thing in the first place, with some slight weaves around this core line depending on whether you go full facist or not. This both really restricts how far the political stuff really lets you go (no matter how hard you try you can't really make any revolution happen in anything other than "we'll do it soon!"), but also feeds into that good old choice-game problem where one choice near the endgame can just take you wildly off course because the game still needs to have 9 endings. So near the endgame you can get some severe whiplash when one aspect of the story you've built up essentially railroads you and there's no way out.
If you go to war, for instance - that defines your run. Every other aspect of government ceases to matter and your policies and politics have no more bearing on the plot besides how much attention you paid to millitary waifu. And you'll get one of 2 endings from that point onward depending on whether you win or not.
Suzerain feels like a game that should have fallout style endings - reflecting on how each of your decisions effected different people, countries, branches. But it's not. And the more I reflect on it and the potential it had, the more it infuriates me.
It's all a facade. Those beautiful moments at the start of the game where you're watching the meters and going through the codex and making rational decisions thinking it will all add up - they end up meaning fuck all.
If the writing and story was good, I could easily forgive it. But when that facade crumbles there's nothing left to Suzerain.
1996
Worse than Mission Craft
2017
I thought I'd check out the new switch version of this. I tend to like these complete versions of mobile rhythm games, without the hassle of paying microtransactions or trudging through an awful progression system - oh wait.
Arcaea Switch is a $40 game with the progresion system of a F2P one. That's basically what it boils down to. You start with 50 of the 150~ songs and to unlock any more, along with the support characters and so on, you need to progress through the world mode, which starts of slow for the first set of worlds, requiring about 5 song plays per getting a new song. Ok, could be worse, sure, and it'll get quicker as you level up support units for sure, right?
And then you get to the next set of worlds and unlocks take 3 times as long. And you still only have like 75 songs. And your character is probably maxed out. Oh, and the game still has the pointless decision to have like 5 different currencies you can earn in different modes that would have previously been stamina gated, but now just feels like it's wasting your time.
It's a shame because the gameplay itself is pretty good. The core gimmick, the Arcs, which are basically hold notes above the normal play field, im not huge on themselves, but when combined with notes that go under and around it, it can result in this contortionist finger play which is really fun.
Sadly, on a core gameplay level, it does also have some visibility issues. There's a colour blind mode, but it only effects arcs, and not the normal, light blue notes on white-ish background for half the tracks. I can get by, but having visibility issues at al in a rhythm game like this, which you cant adjust at all, is a huge no go.
Frankly though, it is the progression of the switch version that really kills it for me. The songs are good but you'll be replaying them like 8 times each if you want to unlock all the content, and that's assuming it doesnt get even slower later on.
There's just no need for it. I have played Mobile Rhythm games with progression systems less obnoxious, and it's a huge damper on the game as a whole. Doesnt help that there's basically a 20 second unskippable cutscene to actually show you your megre progress in getting to the stuff you spent $40 on.
Its a shame as the gameplay is good, there's some fun original songs, and the story seems fairly interesting, with a good aesthetic throughout.
But i've just come to the conclusion that it's just not worth it. There's enough good rhythm games that dont make jump through so many damn hoops to actually play the songs, which is at the end of the day, what really matters.
Arcaea Switch is a $40 game with the progresion system of a F2P one. That's basically what it boils down to. You start with 50 of the 150~ songs and to unlock any more, along with the support characters and so on, you need to progress through the world mode, which starts of slow for the first set of worlds, requiring about 5 song plays per getting a new song. Ok, could be worse, sure, and it'll get quicker as you level up support units for sure, right?
And then you get to the next set of worlds and unlocks take 3 times as long. And you still only have like 75 songs. And your character is probably maxed out. Oh, and the game still has the pointless decision to have like 5 different currencies you can earn in different modes that would have previously been stamina gated, but now just feels like it's wasting your time.
It's a shame because the gameplay itself is pretty good. The core gimmick, the Arcs, which are basically hold notes above the normal play field, im not huge on themselves, but when combined with notes that go under and around it, it can result in this contortionist finger play which is really fun.
Sadly, on a core gameplay level, it does also have some visibility issues. There's a colour blind mode, but it only effects arcs, and not the normal, light blue notes on white-ish background for half the tracks. I can get by, but having visibility issues at al in a rhythm game like this, which you cant adjust at all, is a huge no go.
Frankly though, it is the progression of the switch version that really kills it for me. The songs are good but you'll be replaying them like 8 times each if you want to unlock all the content, and that's assuming it doesnt get even slower later on.
There's just no need for it. I have played Mobile Rhythm games with progression systems less obnoxious, and it's a huge damper on the game as a whole. Doesnt help that there's basically a 20 second unskippable cutscene to actually show you your megre progress in getting to the stuff you spent $40 on.
Its a shame as the gameplay is good, there's some fun original songs, and the story seems fairly interesting, with a good aesthetic throughout.
But i've just come to the conclusion that it's just not worth it. There's enough good rhythm games that dont make jump through so many damn hoops to actually play the songs, which is at the end of the day, what really matters.
2016
Coming from Butcher after playing it's de facto successor Carrion is a miserable experience. And that's saying something, because Carrion itself is not a good game. But in it's light, Butcher feels so, so weak. It's a game that relies almost entirely on an aesthetic it's successor both replicates and improves upon. And for me, that just makes me look at the gameplay of Butcher more intently, and dang, this sucks.
Essentially, Butcher sells itself as a kinda hotline miami-y, kinda doom-ish blend in a 2d platformer with free aiming, and its awful. It's not quite as bad as the comparable my friend pedro, but its thoroughly uninteresting and by the time you've finished the first level the game is already out of tricks. Whilst on a basic level it's quite similar to some game's i've liked - frankly, young me put way too much time into Armor Mayhem - There's fuck all depth and the lethality is so high on both your and the enemes side it just turns into peaking out behind cover constantly.
This ties in particularly badly with the game's other core problem - it's difficulty. Despite the game doing its absolute darndest to try and seem tough and cool, it's really not. It's mostly just kind of annoying. Enemy AI is so weak and your weapons are so powerful that you can pretty easily just murder everything if you take your time and dont overextend. At the same time, if you do, you die stupid quickly.
It's just kinda lame. The game's vibe seems to encourage high aggression, but ultimately the really bad difficulty balance encourages very conservative, boring play, and rewards you with a full level restart if you dare to try to have fun. Whatever you do, there's nothing like movement tech or really oddball weapons to master anyway, and the console versions have un-removable lock-on aiming, so have fun corner peeking i guess.
To be slightly fair, the aesthetic does work here. Butcher is remarkably grim, as one cyborg's rampage to murder the rest of mankind should be. Whilst the effects arent as great as they become in carrion, and the character sprite's are bizzarely tiny for no good reason, its thick and outright nasty throughout. It's also arguable this grimdank vibe works much better here than in Carrion, which whilst also grim is also aimed a bit more sympathetically to the creature. Its only real problem in Butcher is that it has like, 3 shades of brown on offer for every sprite in the game and when human sprites are so small it's very easy to lose track of them. Kind of crucial for a game which requires fast reflexes. Also god help you if you decide to turn on the CRT filter included. May as well smear vaseline all over your monitor.
Maybe if i'd played this in 2016 on release i'd have seen some value in it, but at least now, six years later, it feels like a game that offers basically nothing of value, that's own schtick has been thoroughly superceeded and that game itself is only decent at best. It's far from an ireedemable game, but also throuroughly not worth bothering with.
Essentially, Butcher sells itself as a kinda hotline miami-y, kinda doom-ish blend in a 2d platformer with free aiming, and its awful. It's not quite as bad as the comparable my friend pedro, but its thoroughly uninteresting and by the time you've finished the first level the game is already out of tricks. Whilst on a basic level it's quite similar to some game's i've liked - frankly, young me put way too much time into Armor Mayhem - There's fuck all depth and the lethality is so high on both your and the enemes side it just turns into peaking out behind cover constantly.
This ties in particularly badly with the game's other core problem - it's difficulty. Despite the game doing its absolute darndest to try and seem tough and cool, it's really not. It's mostly just kind of annoying. Enemy AI is so weak and your weapons are so powerful that you can pretty easily just murder everything if you take your time and dont overextend. At the same time, if you do, you die stupid quickly.
It's just kinda lame. The game's vibe seems to encourage high aggression, but ultimately the really bad difficulty balance encourages very conservative, boring play, and rewards you with a full level restart if you dare to try to have fun. Whatever you do, there's nothing like movement tech or really oddball weapons to master anyway, and the console versions have un-removable lock-on aiming, so have fun corner peeking i guess.
To be slightly fair, the aesthetic does work here. Butcher is remarkably grim, as one cyborg's rampage to murder the rest of mankind should be. Whilst the effects arent as great as they become in carrion, and the character sprite's are bizzarely tiny for no good reason, its thick and outright nasty throughout. It's also arguable this grimdank vibe works much better here than in Carrion, which whilst also grim is also aimed a bit more sympathetically to the creature. Its only real problem in Butcher is that it has like, 3 shades of brown on offer for every sprite in the game and when human sprites are so small it's very easy to lose track of them. Kind of crucial for a game which requires fast reflexes. Also god help you if you decide to turn on the CRT filter included. May as well smear vaseline all over your monitor.
Maybe if i'd played this in 2016 on release i'd have seen some value in it, but at least now, six years later, it feels like a game that offers basically nothing of value, that's own schtick has been thoroughly superceeded and that game itself is only decent at best. It's far from an ireedemable game, but also throuroughly not worth bothering with.
All the jank, technical issues issues, and rubbish stages of a ZUN game without the overwhelming charm those games have. FDF2 is a fan remake of Perfect Cherry Blossom that is just a waste of time.
I will say there's some good stuff here. The character artwork is fairly nice, and it's quite interesting to see a game basically be extremely faithful to the ZUN formula, but with a bit of a twist in that it almost seems like a mirror world touhou where ZUN got away with tracing the art well past EOSD, or maybe had a bigger support team.
And if the game had the polish to go along with it's artwork, it would be fine. But it's not. Controller compatibility is an absolute mess, resolution only goes up to 720p for no apparent reason, you have to use an awkward setup every time you boot the game - the UX in this game is as bad as the early windows XP touhous, which is very bad for a game from 2019.
And frankly, the game would just be better off doing it's own thing. The team here clearly has some aptitude, the art's nice, the remixes are good, and there's definetly room in this world for a more polished fan approach to Touhou - see Luna Nights. This is just the worst of both worlds.
I will say there's some good stuff here. The character artwork is fairly nice, and it's quite interesting to see a game basically be extremely faithful to the ZUN formula, but with a bit of a twist in that it almost seems like a mirror world touhou where ZUN got away with tracing the art well past EOSD, or maybe had a bigger support team.
And if the game had the polish to go along with it's artwork, it would be fine. But it's not. Controller compatibility is an absolute mess, resolution only goes up to 720p for no apparent reason, you have to use an awkward setup every time you boot the game - the UX in this game is as bad as the early windows XP touhous, which is very bad for a game from 2019.
And frankly, the game would just be better off doing it's own thing. The team here clearly has some aptitude, the art's nice, the remixes are good, and there's definetly room in this world for a more polished fan approach to Touhou - see Luna Nights. This is just the worst of both worlds.
2018
Dear lord why is the UI so bad.
2007
Imagine paying £80 a year for an 800 year old game. What a fucking scam. That alone earns the .5 star review, just use Lichess.
Or like, still don't. Chess has a weirdly insanely toxic community, has been driven to become a game of more and more memorisation and opening theory, and it only becomes more miserable in both the better at it you get. Play chess with your dad or friends over the table, don't play it fucking online.
Or like, still don't. Chess has a weirdly insanely toxic community, has been driven to become a game of more and more memorisation and opening theory, and it only becomes more miserable in both the better at it you get. Play chess with your dad or friends over the table, don't play it fucking online.
2022
Lets get this straight from the off - The original Andro Dunos is bad. It's a very boring Horizontal STG with frankly, very few redeeming qualities. Whilst not abjectly awful, it completely lacks character, has horrible pacing (which to be fair, was almost a standard for Hori STGs from it's time), and just has absolutely no hook at all. Even compared to when Platinum pulled Nichibitsu's mostly just ok Cresta series out of the pile for Sol, making a successor to AD is a very weird decision. Where the Cresta series at least has two good games for their times and a unique mechanic to jump off with it's docking, Andro Dunos is just a worse Zero Wing, and Zero Wing isn't even good.
So, as bizzare a decision as making a sequel to AD in the first place is, it's not a surprise that it's better than the first. Infinos Gaiden Dev Piccorinesoft is at the helm here, and the game feels a lot like that one, with similar feel and aesthetic, with lots of sprite scaling enemiesl, as well as similar level design. Gameplay wise it feels more remake than sequel, with the exact same set of weapons and switching through them as the original - just generally balanced much better, without AD1's awful rank system which disentivised actually using multiple weapons, and a generally well thought out game flow between using it's powered shots. It's fine.
But that's about it. Maybe its in attempt to be authentic to the source material, but Andro Dunos 2 is still so very white bread. AD2 is in absolute desperate need of a hook. Aesthetically it's about as bland a space shooter you can get, it's only real gimmick gameplay wise is a weapon system that is basically a rip-off of thunder force's, the music is... fine again, there's no real presentational tricks. Where Sol Cresta went balls out on its soundtrack, reverance for the originals and with it's core gameplay systems - sometimes for better and worse - AD2 is so fucking safe. It seems it's only real hook is that "it's on the 3DS and dreamcast", and im sorry, that doesn't count.
Also doesn't help that despite a pretty good core, the Quality of life stuff on offer here is sub-ZUN levels of awful. You can only rebind controls in a certain number of setups, the training mode/stage select doesnt give you any starting power so is basically useless, there's no online leaderboards or replays, you legitimately just can't adjust things like the volume or display - it's maddening and makes it particularly tempting to drop.
Overall, yeah, the game's decent. Pretty good gameplay. But that's just not enough, not even close. There are so many Hori shmups that can either outmatch it entirely or have pretty good gameplay as like the last bulletpoint on it's list of virtues, and when the rest of the product is also just not backing it up, it's just not worth the time.
So, as bizzare a decision as making a sequel to AD in the first place is, it's not a surprise that it's better than the first. Infinos Gaiden Dev Piccorinesoft is at the helm here, and the game feels a lot like that one, with similar feel and aesthetic, with lots of sprite scaling enemiesl, as well as similar level design. Gameplay wise it feels more remake than sequel, with the exact same set of weapons and switching through them as the original - just generally balanced much better, without AD1's awful rank system which disentivised actually using multiple weapons, and a generally well thought out game flow between using it's powered shots. It's fine.
But that's about it. Maybe its in attempt to be authentic to the source material, but Andro Dunos 2 is still so very white bread. AD2 is in absolute desperate need of a hook. Aesthetically it's about as bland a space shooter you can get, it's only real gimmick gameplay wise is a weapon system that is basically a rip-off of thunder force's, the music is... fine again, there's no real presentational tricks. Where Sol Cresta went balls out on its soundtrack, reverance for the originals and with it's core gameplay systems - sometimes for better and worse - AD2 is so fucking safe. It seems it's only real hook is that "it's on the 3DS and dreamcast", and im sorry, that doesn't count.
Also doesn't help that despite a pretty good core, the Quality of life stuff on offer here is sub-ZUN levels of awful. You can only rebind controls in a certain number of setups, the training mode/stage select doesnt give you any starting power so is basically useless, there's no online leaderboards or replays, you legitimately just can't adjust things like the volume or display - it's maddening and makes it particularly tempting to drop.
Overall, yeah, the game's decent. Pretty good gameplay. But that's just not enough, not even close. There are so many Hori shmups that can either outmatch it entirely or have pretty good gameplay as like the last bulletpoint on it's list of virtues, and when the rest of the product is also just not backing it up, it's just not worth the time.