I’ve been slacking on these Eggconsole reviews haven’t I? First it was Hydlide III where I got busy with other things and the same happened with Dragon Slayer IV. I was going to do Ys II but I want to wait till I’ve actually finished Ys Book 1 & 2 on PCECD before I do that. I couldn’t even finish this game or review on Tuesday due to being in the hospital for a good chunk of the day. But without further ado, let me talk about the game.

With the final Ys game on old Japanese computers, it lands as the black sheep in the series. I’m not sure if that’s still the case nowadays as I’m not too familiar with the franchise but it’s what I’ve known about this game for a decade at this point. The game is not given the 3 in the title outside of a moment or two in the actual game probably due to the gameplay change. Instead of a top down action RPG, it’s now a side scroller. I usually say this but it always reminded me of Popful Mail also by Falcom. I first finished this on the final day of last year playing the SNES version and found it decent but could be better. Now playing this on PC 88 gives me an interesting POV of this entry.

I found replaying this game to be interesting as I felt like I was having more fun with it then last time. Even with the language barrier, I still mostly knew where to go in this game. It’s a shame I couldn’t read the dialogue here as it’s probably better than what I played before but it is what it is. An interesting note about the story is that Adol actually speaks in this entry, I’m not sure if that sticks in later entries but it caught me off guard as I never imagined him to have full on dialogue. Though the game isn’t long so you won’t be investing too much in the story. I gotta say though that I appreciate Dogi being here a lot more, even doing that thing where he smashes and helps me progress. What a guy.

The gameplay in this is about what I remember from that SNES version. You can rapid fire your sword which is quite odd and a lot of the terrain is very odd and makes it easy to have dropped inputs. Though I wouldn’t call it bad. It helps this game feel easier for me and it even felt less grindy then last time. Though you will still have to grind. It’s good to do it in a place where enemies reset or a good place where a bunch of good EXP enemies can spawn back in after you traverse back and forth into the room. I wish I used that ring system more but I always feel nervous to waste the energy on it. The bosses are alright but I find them all kind of samey in how I beat them. Despite the changes, it’s impressive how it still feels like an Ys game and that’s a pretty hard thing to accomplish when switching perspectives.

I really like the presentation in this game, it’s crazy what they could do on this computer. Those backgrounds are just really nice looking and then we have the music. Ok, when I played this on SNES, I didn’t like the OST so I was really happy to say I enjoyed it a lot more here. I’d say it shines just as well as the previous entries and it has me excited for whenever I play the PCECD version of the remake to see how these tracks get even better. That said, the framerate isn’t amazing but it never felt too annoying. It does have a high speed mode but I never really bothered to turn it on, I struggle going through doors at normal speed, I ain’t doing it at high speed.

The only thing left I have to say about the actual game is the final boss. He’s really easy in this version, it kind of caught me off guard to be honest. I learned later it wasn’t until the Sharp X68000 is where that final boss actually became a challenge which I guess I can understand now why they did that. I wonder if it ever felt underwhelming for others back in the day?

The Eggconsole release is about what you expect from these releases. It gets the job done even if it can have funny errors at times (the controls misspell stairs as staires) and doesn’t actually put the game in English but it’s got some nice features. The pause menu I noticed has stuff like the controls now in the actual game pause menu and even stuff like the manual and how to play section. The disk swapping is also here though one complaint I have is at one point the game tells you to switch to disk 3. There was no disk 3 in the options. Though I just hoped one of them would work, I used the opening disk and that worked. Turns out it’s because the actual physical disk is written in text as an opening disk and disk 3. Wish the menu let me know that but it gave me a bit of a panic. The scene selection also lets you easily playthrough the other difficulties which is nice cause I don’t know what button they mapped even does it normally. Though don’t expect to use it to see the final boss or ending as it only goes as far as the area where you save the civilians from prison. Also it’s nice as usual to see a good scan of the manual seeing as how the opening used in later versions is only found in the manual with amazing artwork.

Wanderers from Ys is not an amazing game but I found myself enjoying it more here. Maybe it’s because I’ve played the game on a different system in the past but I guess I can just enjoy sidescrollers a lot. There’s a lot of versions of this game and even two remakes, I really do want to play one of those someday. If you’ve played this game in the past, it might be nice to give this one a try, otherwise it’s best if you play a different version in English first just so you have a good idea of what’s going on. This also marks the final Ys game for Eggconsole so I’m very curious to see what will be next for Falcom. Maybe we’ll see Romancia? Popful Mail? Brandish? Well whatever it is, I’ll be there if possible. It’s nice to have finished another Eggconsole release after a long while.

I was going to write a long review for this but honestly it just felt tiring to do and it felt like it was going nowhere. Shockman 3 will really only impress in the fact it has a translation of the game’s cutscenes as they were never translated just like the previous games. Sadly even for $6, it’s hard to really say it’s worth going through this one unless you were already a huge Shockman fan. While I do appreciate games on this system being more available, this game feels so unfinished that the game suffers a lot for it.

This is not only the easiest game in the series but it reeks of crunch time with a couple of bosses dying before their dialogue can even finish, to gimmicks that have zero substance to them. The level design is also thoughtless and feels mostly like straight lines. Even that plot that was exciting to see actually ended up being pretty run of the mill and also felt rushed. While it’s cool it’s dependent on who you play as, it doesn't make up for them being rather unimpressive. You can’t even fully enjoy them 24/7 as sometimes the cutscenes fail to load their audio. I’m not sure if that’s an issue with the OG release or just this new rerelease but it’s rather annoying to sometimes have to rewind to fix it.

This release does at least have some cheats though I doubt you’ll really be messing with any of them this time but I do appreciate them being there especially since one would be impossible to achieve due to the PCECD start screen being skipped in this release. This also has a gallery and scan of the manual and thankfully unlike the past two games rereleased, there are no crashes on the Switch version. You can also mess with video options like giving the color palette an awful look if you’re insane.

It’s hard to recommend this even for the small price. Like I said before, I appreciate when a group lets these forgotten games be seen in a new light but Shockman 3 just feels more like a what could have been entry in the series. It has some good ideas and at least there’s still co-op but I can’t see anyone really enjoying themselves with this game. The game is poorly balanced with your OP projectile and you’ll probably only die once or twice in your playthrough. Even on the hard difficulty you’ll barely struggle. While this probably could still be your favorite entry depending how you viewed the past two, this was a pretty depressing end for the series on PC Engine. I expect the publishers to eventually rerelease the final game that was on the Super Famicom so look out for that in the future.

This game is a technical marvel and it plays really well too. Taking a horizontal shmup series and putting it into the gameplay of something like Space Harrier is no easy task. The game features lots of spectacle, challenge, and lots of opportunities to get a huge high score. The presentation and audio is still as good as usual for the Cotton series with the only unfortunate absence being the cutscenes for every level now being only for the opening and ending of the game. It’ll probably take you a few attempts to beat the game as it can be pretty hard and you only have one life and a few continues. Try to play well to achieve more life.

While the impressive presentation is an amazing achievement for the system, it comes with the unfortunate problem of the framerate being a bit low. It’s not the worst but it sucks that there will probably never be a good FPS version of the game. With that said however you should definitely try the game out as it’s one of the finest shmups on the system with a lot of replayability. It also has seen a modern rerelease though be warned that make sure you update it as it launched with inaccurate emulation. It also features a new translation but a fan one also exists. Sadly getting an original copy is expensive, especially brand new. Hope you enjoy this incredible game or at least get to enjoy the visuals and fast pace.