Everyone always brings up Mushihimesama, DoDonpachi, or Death Smiles while discussing CAVE games, entirely ignoring Espgaluda, which is a complete crime against humanity.

Here's the gimmick: You have two shooting styles: the primary one, which is just your usual, straightforward type, and the secondary one, which activates "slow mode." While in slow mode, enemy projectiles will become much slower, making it easier to avoid them, and your projectiles will deal significantly more damage. The catch is that in order to activate slow mode, you'll need to collect emeralds, which can only be acquired by destroying enemies with your primary shooting type. This forces you to use your primary shooting style most of the time, destroy as many enemies as you can, and get familiar with every stage, using slow mode only when necessary. In fact, abusing slow mode will lead to the exact opposite effect: enemy projectiles will get much, much faster, making them almost impossible to dodge. This mechanic has so much depth and allows for so much experimentation that it alone makes subsequent playthroughs worth it. I'm still discovering little tricks. 

On top of that, its action, coreography, and enemy projectiles are all so well crafted and thought out, so above much popular shmups that it makes me wonder... Why does this one not get the praise it deserves? 

The music is also fantastic. I'm not a big fan of techno but shit slaps.

There aren't many games in the already small Sega CD catalog that are universally praised, such as this one, so I gotta admit, I started Popful Mail with very high expectations, and to be honest with you, I ended up crushing into a wall.

If there's one way to describe 'Popful Mail', it would be clunky. You only have one attack that goes straight ahead, and since many enemies are usually either above or below you, it makes them really hard to hit. Enemy hitboxes in themselves are also random, which becomes a huge problem, especially in the fire prision scene. Here, you'll be forced to defeat a number of little flame enemies in order to escape while you are on a timer, and since their hitboxes are so finnicky and the time window to hit them so small, you can absolutely get stuck here, dying over and over again without being your fault. The worst, however, are the boss battles; all of them are basically the same: A big enemy that's going from left to right, waiting to be hit—some jump from left to right, some fly from left to right, some of them move only in one direction, and some don't move at all to try to change things up. It just gets old really quick. You can change characters at any given time, and you'd think this would offer more variety or a significant change in gameplay, but they are basically all the same. They also made the really weird decision not to set a fixed camera in the middle of your character, setting a 'dynamic' one instead that just scrolls when you are on either its far left or far right, so bumping into enemies is really common, such a strange oddity.

Where this game excels is in its presentation. Character sprites and animations are outstanding; the cut scenes are super impressive for their time; and the fantasy world with its comedic tone reminded me of something like Slayers. The voice acting is probably the best thing this game has to offer. Every character feels so alive, and their characterization is spot on. I don't lie when I say characters like Sven or Slick made the whole game for me; they have no right to be that funny.

The game, however, is mediocre at best. I'd still give it a chance for the story and characters alone; just don't expect thrilling gameplay.

Hype is one hell of a thing. Exhibit A is this game, which has been elevated to that almost unreachable realm of masterpieces after getting an English fan translation. And I don't think it quite deserves it. 

Don't get me wrong, I think Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is a very cute little game, but that's pretty much all it is. You can fish, catch bugs, swim, and explore parts of this island, talking with its inhabitants and getting to know them better until they completely open up to you. The stories are all super well written, and they are all common enough in real life that I'm sure players will at least connect with one of them. But that being said, neither the stories nor the character developments are truly remarkable or groundbreaking.

Where this game excels is in its vibes; its presentation perfectly conveys what being a kid in Japan circa 1970 would have been like, and it reflects Japanese culture quite well, featuring tons of their unique traditions. It's a time capsule on video game format, and it does a fantastic job being that. 

That being said, looking back, I don't think the 17 or so hours I put into the game were really worth it; there's just so many games to play and so little time that, as cute as Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 was, It just didn't quite rock my world. It also didn't help the fact that the pace is quite slow and there are days in which there's nothing particularly interesting to do.

I'd say, try it for yourself. It's a very unique experience, and I'm sure some people would fall in love with its small yet cozy world. Maybe you'd like it more than I did; just don't get your expectations as high as I did.

Never before, not even once in my life, did I have to mute a game because of the absolute stress and anger its audio caused me. Rocky and Bullwinkle has ear-piercing music, and Crazy Bus sounds like someone was fucking a Casio, but the dialogue in this game is just as bad if not worse. I'd love to tell you that the music at least makes up for it, but the thing is that the voices of your companions blend with it, making it almost impossible to hear it. They just never shut the fuck up and do nothing but crack up lame jokes and do stupidly redundant comments, all of that topped with some of the worst voice acting I've heard in my entire existence. It's not even ridiculously funny, like in the original Resident Evil or in Chaos Wars where it's so bad, it becomes great; this on the other hand it's just plain annoying.

Gameplay-wise, Silpheed: The Lost Planet is just a middle-of-the-road shoot 'em up with poor man's renditions of Radiant Silvergun bosses. Enemy coreography and bullet patterns are very mediocre and repeat several times throughout the game. Your attacks suck too, you have like a bazillion shooting types, each more useless than the last, to the point where the regular one is by far the best one. 

I dunno man, this game just makes me feel miserable. This is the worst Treasure game I've played by far.

I usually don't tell people what to do, as I think everyone is entitled to form their own opinion, but please, just don't play this game; it's garbage.

And I thought Knuckles Chaotix was bad.

Ok, let's just get it out of the way: Yes, the music is absolutely delightful.  Competition on the Super Nintendo is fierce, with games like Donkey Kong Country 1, Chrono Trigger, and Megaman X all having amazing music. But having listened to this one, I'd say it takes the cake. I know it may come off as exaggerated, but it's actually so technically impressive and catchy that I think it at least deserves to be mentioned in the conversation when it comes to the best soundtracks in the fourth generation of gaming.

Artistically, the game is beautiful, with a wonderful display of how superior the Super Nintendo's color palette was compared to its competitors (namely, Sega Genesis and PC Engine). With only selected titles, such as Yoshi's Island or Kirby Dreamland 3, defeating it in this aspect.

With both the visual and sound departments being absolutely outstanding, it's only to be expected that the gameplay would be on the same level. Sadly, is in this one; the most important aspect of a video game, where the title completely falls apart. 

I'd love to tell you that the issues with Plok are minimal and most of the time excusable, but this game has an impressive amount of flaws that pile each on top of another like a giant tower of garbage, which leads me to believe the developers were completely clueless when it came to figuring out what makes a game fun.

First of all, your attack fucking sucks. You attack by throwing all four of your limbs forward, and every time you throw all four of them, it leaves you completely vulnerable to enemies and hazards. That wouldn't be a problem if enemies didn't take like 5 or 6 hits to defeat, so you are pretty much forced to spam the attack button in hopes you can kill them fast or attack as slow as possible and wait for your limbs to come back to your body to throw them again, and yes, it's as tedious as it sounds. 

Second, your health bar is useless. This is one of those games in which, despite having a rather large health bar, it gets completely drained out after 3 or 4 hits. There are some fruits that replenish your health. But they are so rare and give you so little of your HP back that they never seem to make a difference. 

Third, there are really only two types of levels: the short and uninspired ones and the long and tedious ones. The flea levels, in particular, which make up more than half of the game, have to be some of the absolute worst I have ever had the disgrace to play. Yeah, sure, I'd love to explore a level full of hazards that drain all of my life in 2 seconds to kill stupid ass fleas that jump around all over the place, making them harder to kill than they needed to be for 2 hours. Fuck you, Plok.

Fourth, the difficulty is really cheap. Most levels force you to take leaps of faith; some are full of obstacles that require an incredibly fast, almost robot-like reaction to avoid damage, and some even start with something being thrown at you and draining half of your life. Fuck that. 

Fifth, the boss battles are an absolute abismal, with the Penkhos being probably the worst boss battle I have ever seen in an acclaimed game such as this. The gimmick is fun in theory, but yet again, Plok manages to make it as insufferable as it can possibly be. Your attack never seems to connect, yet theirs always does. Not only that, but you can just hit one of them at a time (you fight four enemies at the same time), making the battle last forever. And the last one has you jumping all over the place because Plok is wearing these stupid spring shoes that just make enemy projectiles harder to avoid.

Sixth, your attack sucks. Yeah, I know I already mentioned it, but it's such an absolute joke that it deserves to be complained about again. Like, at least let me shoot up and down for all that's almighty.

Seventh, no passwords, almost no continues; you die; it's back to square one. 

It's really sad because the game does actually get better in the latter levels with the addition of vehicles that completely change the gameplay and get rid of the annoying fleas for once, but at that point, I'm like... Who cares? It also doesn't help the fact that this is by far the shortest section of the game. 

If Plock was 40 minutes long instead of 2 and a half hours long, feauturing only
the latter levels, I'd call it one of the absolute best platformers in the system. 
As it is, though, it's actually one of the worst ones.

Once you reach 3/4 of the story, you are forced to play the worst Space Harrier rip-off in existence, in which you can't see the enemy projectiles until they are right in front of you, in which your ship moves as slowly as it possibly can, and in which your hitbox is bigger than the sprite of the ship itself. As if that wasn't bad at all, you also need to defeat the whooping number of 200 enemies without getting hit more than three times.

At first, I tried to dodge and use your primary shoot, but it's so tiny that it never lands on the enemies. Then, I tried to dodge and use your secondary shooting (which is a homing attack), but it's so slow that enemies just crash into you before you can blow them up. Then I started to alternate between shoots, but the results were even worse than before. Finally, I said fuck it and decided to look for an exploitable I could use to beat the damn thing, and after a lot of testing, I found out how you can totally cheese this section: You just have to keep using your homing attack while you move from the bottom-right edge of the screen to the bottom-left, from there, move to the upper-left edge, then to the right-upper edge, and finally to the bottom-right again. Rinse and repeat for around 10 minutes. Incredible stuff, really. 

Leaving that awful section aside, what we have here is a semi-competent point-and-click adventure with semi-good music, semi-good graphics, and characters with no personality that are just there to keep the plot moving from points A to B to C. The plot isn't anything particularly interesting either, just a poor man's version of Ridley's Scott Alien filled with meaningless exposition rather than actual action.

It's also one of those games in which you have to click everything on the screen before you can keep progressing in the story, and sometimes the things you are supposed to click are so tiny that they just end up blending in with the rest of the scenery.

If you want a good sci-fi visual novel, play Metal Slader Glory instead. Or Zero Escape. Or Muv-Luv Alternative. Or really anything but this.

This game gets talked about a lot, and honestly? I don't get it. 
There's so much better shoot 'em ups in the PC Engine catalog, let alone the rest of the systems. 

Your ship moves at a snail's pace, the enemy attacks are too fast, and the sound design is absolutely awful. I'd like to say something about the music, but there's a little problem: I can't listen to it over the disgusting sounds my projectiles make.

Level design is also whatever, with the sole exception of level 4, which is also extremely short. There are like two or three memorable boss battles, but everything in this game dies after you drop one or two bombs, so who cares?

The anime girls are cute and all, but c'mon guys, Touhou??? Deathsmiles???

I'm confusion. I played this on the Saturn, and I'm pretty sure it has a PS1 version as well, yet there's only a Super Famicom option?

Anyway, great, great game, and a massive improvement over the first one. Not only do we have a bigger roster of characters, all with their own unique moveset, but there's instant respawn as well. God bless the person who added it, since the original desperately needed it. The levels are just gorgeous to look at, too. I could stare at this game for hours, trying to find every little detail hidden in the background; it just makes the game feel so much more alive. 

Difficulty, enemy coreography, and level design are also big steps up. I really don't want to spoil anything, so if you are curious about how much more fun this game is compared to the first one, just play it and see it for yourself!

AND you can play as one of the bunnies from the first game now? absolute gaming 

I'm tired of pretending that shmups are not the best video game genre, suck it RPG's.

My favorite part was when the face on the cover said, "It's time to go beyond the oasis" and beyonded the oasis out of my life bar with his lasers.

In all seriousness, this is a super neat game; the puzzles are super clever; the summon system has a lot of depth to it; you can perform super crazy combos, and being able to jump makes all the difference (I'm looking at you, A Link to the Past). Also, the music by Yuzo Koshiro was really unique; I've heard nothing like it. 

That last boss battle is pure nightmare fuel, too.