Game #63 of my challenge
This should be my last game that I'm catching on before resuming where I was on the timeline. This game was release on April 14th 1986. So I will judge based on games that I played that released before this one (this should be after The legend of Zelda on my timeline).
Before seeing this on the Nintendo Switch NES catalog, I have never heard of this game before. When I booted it, the main character was vaguely familiar. It's another character that I saw as a trophy in Super Smash Bros. After playing this game, let me tell you that it was a good experience, but I will never do again.
First of all, the plot of the game is wild. You (a samurai named Takamaru) are in the 1600s Japan era and on a stormy day, a golden thing fell from the sky and took possession of an old statue. That statue gives orbs to the daimyos of this land and because of that, they got corrupted to be evil. Your goal is to eliminate the corrupted daimyos and get rid of that golden thing (which appears to be an alien). To be honest, only by playing the game, I would have never know what was happening in the game. I didn't read the plot of this game after beating it. I was really surprise to see a huge alien as a final boss.
The visuals are good. I have the same vibe as the legend of Zelda. Everything is distinct. You know from the background where the game is happening. Most of the common enemies are similar, but with different color pallets. There are other types of ''special enemies'' which looks good or ok (there were some things that I could never tell what they were).
The music was good. It gives an old japanese theme vibe. They were able to kind of replicate that kind of music, which is kind of impressive to be honest. If it had a more modern touch to it, I would probably listen to it on my own.
The controls are kind of ok at best. The A button will swing the character sword and B will use his special technique. What is weird about the A button is that if nothing is close to you, it will throw a projectile (it can be a knife, a boomerang kind of thing or some fireballs). But you have a limited amount of projectiles that you can throw. So if you you only want to swing your sword, you will also throw your projectile. At least, the enemies will drop a lot of ammo for those projectiles. The special technique can be a lightning bolt that kills all enemies or an invisible jutsu that makes you invincible for a brief moment. You have a really limited amount of those special techniques.
The gameplay was really different from I was though at first. I though it would have been a legend of zelda type of game with some adventure elements mixed with some sword play. However, after going further into the game, it's more of a bullet hell type of game. There's so many projectiles going around the screen that it's really hard to not get hit by anything. Even if you have 3 hits before losing a life, this makes the game so hard. At least you can block shuriken with your sword.
There's 5 levels in the game, and each of those stages consists of 2 levels. The first level is in the outside world where your goal is to reach the castle and the other level is inside the castle. Both of those levels are real mazes. You can get lost easily in those levels.
This game is extremely hard and I won't recommend this if you don't like challenging games. However, if you like bullet hell games, then this is a game for you.
This should be my last game that I'm catching on before resuming where I was on the timeline. This game was release on April 14th 1986. So I will judge based on games that I played that released before this one (this should be after The legend of Zelda on my timeline).
Before seeing this on the Nintendo Switch NES catalog, I have never heard of this game before. When I booted it, the main character was vaguely familiar. It's another character that I saw as a trophy in Super Smash Bros. After playing this game, let me tell you that it was a good experience, but I will never do again.
First of all, the plot of the game is wild. You (a samurai named Takamaru) are in the 1600s Japan era and on a stormy day, a golden thing fell from the sky and took possession of an old statue. That statue gives orbs to the daimyos of this land and because of that, they got corrupted to be evil. Your goal is to eliminate the corrupted daimyos and get rid of that golden thing (which appears to be an alien). To be honest, only by playing the game, I would have never know what was happening in the game. I didn't read the plot of this game after beating it. I was really surprise to see a huge alien as a final boss.
The visuals are good. I have the same vibe as the legend of Zelda. Everything is distinct. You know from the background where the game is happening. Most of the common enemies are similar, but with different color pallets. There are other types of ''special enemies'' which looks good or ok (there were some things that I could never tell what they were).
The music was good. It gives an old japanese theme vibe. They were able to kind of replicate that kind of music, which is kind of impressive to be honest. If it had a more modern touch to it, I would probably listen to it on my own.
The controls are kind of ok at best. The A button will swing the character sword and B will use his special technique. What is weird about the A button is that if nothing is close to you, it will throw a projectile (it can be a knife, a boomerang kind of thing or some fireballs). But you have a limited amount of projectiles that you can throw. So if you you only want to swing your sword, you will also throw your projectile. At least, the enemies will drop a lot of ammo for those projectiles. The special technique can be a lightning bolt that kills all enemies or an invisible jutsu that makes you invincible for a brief moment. You have a really limited amount of those special techniques.
The gameplay was really different from I was though at first. I though it would have been a legend of zelda type of game with some adventure elements mixed with some sword play. However, after going further into the game, it's more of a bullet hell type of game. There's so many projectiles going around the screen that it's really hard to not get hit by anything. Even if you have 3 hits before losing a life, this makes the game so hard. At least you can block shuriken with your sword.
There's 5 levels in the game, and each of those stages consists of 2 levels. The first level is in the outside world where your goal is to reach the castle and the other level is inside the castle. Both of those levels are real mazes. You can get lost easily in those levels.
This game is extremely hard and I won't recommend this if you don't like challenging games. However, if you like bullet hell games, then this is a game for you.