Deathsmiles is a horizontal scrolling shmup by CAVE that allows you to shoot left and right, Fantasy Zone style. It bodes 8 stages, one which you can skip.
The game itself lets you choose which stages you want to go to and the difficulty of each. There are 3 stages on the bottom to start and 3 on the top. You alternate between choosing the top and bottom stages. You can choose from difficulty ranks 1 - 3 for each stage. In Arcade mode, it limits you in how many of each Rank 1 and 2 stage you can choose, but not Rank 3.
There's a hidden mode in the game called Death Mode. When you choose Rank 3 difficulty 5 times, you enter Death Mode Level 1. This introduces suicide bullets, where the enemies will throw bullets at you upon death. You can enter Death Mode Level 2 by going to the Gorge or straight to Hades' Castle (the final stage). The Gorge is an extra super difficult level. If you do beat the Gorge, you can enter Death Mode Level 3 for the final stage.
It's the first time CAVE experimented with 3D models and it looks good, though I really don't care for the loli style anime art. The music is very good. Burning Halloween Town and Hades Castle were my two favorites. I used Rosa, as I liked her playstyle, and she's also just really strong.
For my first 1CC of this one, I just did the Arcade mode with stages going Rank 1-1-2-2-3-3. It took me about 3 hours to clear. However, for all Rank 3, it added an additional 12 hours of game time (minus the Gorge, that would have been a lot more difficult). The game has a super high skill ceiling, and tailorable difficulty, with the arrange mode, Mega Black Label, sporting a Rank 999 difficulty, for those willing to take it on.
For general gameplay, you collect items worth different values until you get to 1000. After that, you can activate hyper mode, and item drops will increase, and give you huge score boosts.
Each stage is meticulously built to have a great sense of flow and there's never any down time at all. The new port is also really good, with low input lag and accurate slowdown. This is a good start for beginners looking to get into shoot 'em ups.
Obligatory five-star rating for a CAVE game. There's very few games by this dev that I don't consider a masterpiece.
The game itself lets you choose which stages you want to go to and the difficulty of each. There are 3 stages on the bottom to start and 3 on the top. You alternate between choosing the top and bottom stages. You can choose from difficulty ranks 1 - 3 for each stage. In Arcade mode, it limits you in how many of each Rank 1 and 2 stage you can choose, but not Rank 3.
There's a hidden mode in the game called Death Mode. When you choose Rank 3 difficulty 5 times, you enter Death Mode Level 1. This introduces suicide bullets, where the enemies will throw bullets at you upon death. You can enter Death Mode Level 2 by going to the Gorge or straight to Hades' Castle (the final stage). The Gorge is an extra super difficult level. If you do beat the Gorge, you can enter Death Mode Level 3 for the final stage.
It's the first time CAVE experimented with 3D models and it looks good, though I really don't care for the loli style anime art. The music is very good. Burning Halloween Town and Hades Castle were my two favorites. I used Rosa, as I liked her playstyle, and she's also just really strong.
For my first 1CC of this one, I just did the Arcade mode with stages going Rank 1-1-2-2-3-3. It took me about 3 hours to clear. However, for all Rank 3, it added an additional 12 hours of game time (minus the Gorge, that would have been a lot more difficult). The game has a super high skill ceiling, and tailorable difficulty, with the arrange mode, Mega Black Label, sporting a Rank 999 difficulty, for those willing to take it on.
For general gameplay, you collect items worth different values until you get to 1000. After that, you can activate hyper mode, and item drops will increase, and give you huge score boosts.
Each stage is meticulously built to have a great sense of flow and there's never any down time at all. The new port is also really good, with low input lag and accurate slowdown. This is a good start for beginners looking to get into shoot 'em ups.
Obligatory five-star rating for a CAVE game. There's very few games by this dev that I don't consider a masterpiece.