(writing a real review bc i cant stop thinking about this game, sorry)
My first real experience with Treasure aside from when I tried Radiant Silvergun once and couldn't quite make it past the first stage. It’s a doozy - something you get from a team that’s /really/ confident in the game’s core mechanics but also really willing to see how far they can push their own creation’s boundaries.
There’s new ideas or setpieces introduced at such an insanely fast clip that you can barely mind when one of those ideas falls a bit flat. Certain points (ok I really mean the Dice Palace) could have been a lot less frustrating with some tweaks, but when a dev team is really going for it like Treasure is here, and when controlling the player character feels as good as it does, it’s easy to forgive some slight missteps. And it’s tough to even really call them missteps; all the unforgiving checkpoints and endgame boss rushes seem very much in line with Treasure’s ethos of wanting to have the player meet the game where it’s at and rise to the occasion. They knew what they were doing with that goddamn board game level.
There’s just an insane freedom of movement and options for a run-n-gun platformer game here to the point where I’m sure mastering it feels a little bit like mastering a modern character-action game (THEY ADDED AIR GRABS?). My initial Backloggd review was me just half-jokingly saying ‘they should call rival characters “greens'' instead of vergils”’ in reference to the game’s rival character and recurring boss, and while your Vergils and Jeannes of today certainly have more rizz and general staying power, I think there’s something to be said about how the game was able to fit the whole action-game-rival-battle-sequence trope in a 2D platformer so well. That’s mostly credit to the game allowing you all these options and freedom of mobility. It feels like another example of Treasure being so insanely sure of how the game plays that they were able to fit that sort of thing in and it didn’t feel underwhelming by any stretch (I still ended up kind of cheesing it though with the chaser beam heehee).
And the game’s just charming as hell. Squeezes every drop from the Mega Drive it can to render some really impressive looking boss fights, and has art style that looks admittedly kinda jank at first but really grows on you with its expressiveness the further you play. Some really fun villains and pretty stage backgrounds, particularly in the final stages.
Some highlights:
- The entire Seven Force boss fight
- The airplane that partially leaves the the screen during a boss fight so you’re forced to fight with some verticality/limited mobility
- They just switched genres in the middle of the game and it becomes a shmup for one level?
- One of the jobber villains being We Have M Bison At Home was really funny to me
- The endgame boss rush playing out on a big ol’ security camera monitor the rogue’s gallery of villains are watching, all leaving the control room to challenge you one by one
What a game. Probably going to try out Alien Soldier next. Or Sin and Punishment. Or Contra Hard Corps. Idk
(sidenote: how the hell do you make it through radiant silvergun. Is it me? Do I just need to get good at the game or is there something I'm missing. Please help)
My first real experience with Treasure aside from when I tried Radiant Silvergun once and couldn't quite make it past the first stage. It’s a doozy - something you get from a team that’s /really/ confident in the game’s core mechanics but also really willing to see how far they can push their own creation’s boundaries.
There’s new ideas or setpieces introduced at such an insanely fast clip that you can barely mind when one of those ideas falls a bit flat. Certain points (ok I really mean the Dice Palace) could have been a lot less frustrating with some tweaks, but when a dev team is really going for it like Treasure is here, and when controlling the player character feels as good as it does, it’s easy to forgive some slight missteps. And it’s tough to even really call them missteps; all the unforgiving checkpoints and endgame boss rushes seem very much in line with Treasure’s ethos of wanting to have the player meet the game where it’s at and rise to the occasion. They knew what they were doing with that goddamn board game level.
There’s just an insane freedom of movement and options for a run-n-gun platformer game here to the point where I’m sure mastering it feels a little bit like mastering a modern character-action game (THEY ADDED AIR GRABS?). My initial Backloggd review was me just half-jokingly saying ‘they should call rival characters “greens'' instead of vergils”’ in reference to the game’s rival character and recurring boss, and while your Vergils and Jeannes of today certainly have more rizz and general staying power, I think there’s something to be said about how the game was able to fit the whole action-game-rival-battle-sequence trope in a 2D platformer so well. That’s mostly credit to the game allowing you all these options and freedom of mobility. It feels like another example of Treasure being so insanely sure of how the game plays that they were able to fit that sort of thing in and it didn’t feel underwhelming by any stretch (I still ended up kind of cheesing it though with the chaser beam heehee).
And the game’s just charming as hell. Squeezes every drop from the Mega Drive it can to render some really impressive looking boss fights, and has art style that looks admittedly kinda jank at first but really grows on you with its expressiveness the further you play. Some really fun villains and pretty stage backgrounds, particularly in the final stages.
Some highlights:
- The entire Seven Force boss fight
- The airplane that partially leaves the the screen during a boss fight so you’re forced to fight with some verticality/limited mobility
- They just switched genres in the middle of the game and it becomes a shmup for one level?
- One of the jobber villains being We Have M Bison At Home was really funny to me
- The endgame boss rush playing out on a big ol’ security camera monitor the rogue’s gallery of villains are watching, all leaving the control room to challenge you one by one
What a game. Probably going to try out Alien Soldier next. Or Sin and Punishment. Or Contra Hard Corps. Idk
(sidenote: how the hell do you make it through radiant silvergun. Is it me? Do I just need to get good at the game or is there something I'm missing. Please help)