I've never played the tabletop, so maybe I'm talking out my bum here but thanks mainly to the restrictions they had to work with at the time it came out, this - and, I assume, the rest of the Gold Box stuff - feels more recognisably an adaptation of a pen and paper game than the stuff that would come later like Baldur's Gate. You'll get told that some wondrous item is in front of you or that you did some sikk move, but they can't render all that, so you're just going to have to imagine it. If you find an important document or book or kobold shopping list, it doesn't throw all the text at you - you've got to consult the corresponding journal entry number in the tome that the game came with. And, of course, you're gonna break out that graph paper, pal. It's pretty cool!
It can get a little tedious with the sheer amount of trekking back and forth you're going to do, and even fights against weak one-hit mooks take ages because it throws so many at you, but even in this early effort there were clear ways you could cheese the hell out things and that is always satisfying to discover. I wiped on my first fight though, because I forgot you have to buy gear first. Whoops!

You play from the viewpoint of "The Hunter" (who I assume is some Firaxis writer's D&D character they've decided to bruteforce into Super Hero™ World [if you've ever crossed the threshold of a City of Heroes RP shard you know it, you've seen it, I'm sorry]) and go to Hogwarts where all your favourite Marvel characters hang out with you in the after-school clubs and tell you how cool and important you are in between bickering with each other like 8-year olds (except Captain America, who is in Dream Daddy mode here). This is exactly as contemptible as it sounds.
There's a vaguely acceptable combat system buried in there somewhere, though it's nowhere near up to the level of Firaxis' X-COM efforts. I'm generally not a fan of card-based stuff, but volleying mooks into breakable objects is never bad and it is fun to figure out the best possible turn you can have with the hand you're dealt, how many free plays you can steal and how much damage you can squeeze out. The problem is that once you've nailed that - and you'll do that pretty early on - that's it. Before you've reached the halfway point, you've pretty much seen and done it all. The arenas are always the same flat boxes, there's no varied level layouts that make positioning any more interesting or challenging. This, combined with the several hundred different kinds of currency and rarity and crafting bollocks makes the combat side end up feeling like it was initially supposed to be one of the endless number of Marvel mobile games out right now. Unfortunate.
Also, it's a comic book game where there are no classic costumes available outside of paid DLC (the Blade one doesn't count, signing up for a 2K account is payment in blood). You'll get the greebléd Made For This Game guff and that's your lot. Just harrowing. It's full of bloat and it's yet another attempt to try and trick you into thinking the Scarlet Witch is interesting. Why did I finish it? Because I'm a pea-brained idiot who claps when he sees Spider-Man, mainly. Excelsior!

This one's for the mothers, alongside the brothers: can't count myself amongst the lovers of Dariusburst CS. On the surface it seems like there's a lot of content here with all the various arcade and story and EX and hyper burst limit reverse and whatever modes, but all these actually mean is that you're going to be spending a lot of time replaying the same stages with the same enemy patterns, fighting the same bosses, over and over again. The whole thing just feels kind of shallow and listless - not helped by the somewhat sterile visuals of it all. Look, maybe it's unfair to compare everything to Darius Gaiden, maybe it's unfair to say that a game isn't particularly good because it doesn't match a crowning achievement of the human race, but this isn't as good as Darius Gaiden, is it?
I do think it's cool how there are ships from other famous shooters as DLC. I of course think it's cool that you can fight a giant Darius fish as Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone and collect coins from its stinkin' carcass. Obviously the music is still good, even if it doesn't weave in with the gameplay the way Gaiden's does (sorry). Love that boss track that sounds like Yakuza 2 battle music! Overall, though, this is just Okay, which is sometimes more disappointing than being Bad. At the very least, it's reinforced how much I would like to sit in a big wide Darius cabinet, so that's something!

Not shy about its DoDonPachi influence. I had some issues with visibility - medals can cover up bullets and even besides that there's a whole lot of blue bullets on blue background, which can at times be completely heinous - but otherwise this is a pretty impressive package for an indie shmup. Good scoring mechanics that are satisfying to hit, a lot of variety in weapon choice, a surprising amount of extra content in the form of the challenge missions, etc - it's good! Can't say I'm overly keen on the actual visuals but the soundtrack is pretty sweet. Had to turn on Free Play by stage 3 in Hyper mode as well - shameful. Just shameful.

Tons of people I know hold this one in very high regard so I gave it another go, but I don't like VNs or Suda51 so the chances were always minimal I was going to enjoy it. The presentation and atmosphere are cool and what I heard of the music was good - Masafumi Takada can do no wrong - but the minimal gameplay is just too clunky and I find the writing super irritating. Gave up halfway through the first Placebo thing. Was going to give Flower, Sun and Rain a go as well but don't think I'll bother after this.

The companion piece to Darius Gaiden, although it's not quite up to that level in terms of actual gameplay - the lack of a proper bomb or any way of shooting behind you without using your charged beam really hurts in a game that throws this much shit at you. It's extremely satisfying to push back a boss' beam with your own, though!
Presentation is where the game really shines, and where the similarities with DG are most apparent. A haunting, almost lonely atmosphere pervades as you float past some nifty parallax scrolling trickery to run up against all manner of weird animal simulacra bosses (special shoutout to the dung beetle, we will never see its like again). Not sure I've played many other shooters where passing a damage threshold on the final boss throws up an image from human history in the background. It's cool!
Also happy to report that this became another example of me hearing a track in-game and going "Oh, this was in Taiko" (last happened with Rastan III). Maybe not a shooter I'd be in a hurry to revisit, but one I appreciate!

The Sengoku 2 of horizontal shooters. Mechanically nothing to write home about, but packed to the gills with wild, creative, absurd shit screaming towards you, things you just wouldn't be seeing in contemporaries. I admit I'm no expert, but I assume no other shooter from the time was throwing you into the Buddhist Cyberzone or having you shoot down pseudo-3D swastika ships in the techno-organic Hitler Hive. Have I mentioned the cutscene transition into the cyberspace levels, by the way? Look at this shit! 2077 could never. Also there's what is blatantly an AT-AT in the snow level. I'm glad we all think AT-ATs are cool!