Another day, another Compile game that skirts greatness but that ultimately craters due to poor balancing.
In Zanac, a fiendish A.I. makes the game harder depending on how well you're playing (one of the earliest implementations of "rank", which would later become common in shoot-em-ups). This would be fine, except that the A.I. seems to be drunk and/or high, varying the difficulty by absurd degrees depending on whether you grab a certain power up (it HATES the shield), or whether you die in a particular way, or a million other arbitrary factors. It doesn't feel like the game is adapting to you intelligently; it feels like it's throwing darts at a control board.
However, as with Aleste, the fundamental mechanics make the game decently fun to play for a bit in spite of all this. There's some interesting enemy behaviors and powerups, and the music is alright.
In Zanac, a fiendish A.I. makes the game harder depending on how well you're playing (one of the earliest implementations of "rank", which would later become common in shoot-em-ups). This would be fine, except that the A.I. seems to be drunk and/or high, varying the difficulty by absurd degrees depending on whether you grab a certain power up (it HATES the shield), or whether you die in a particular way, or a million other arbitrary factors. It doesn't feel like the game is adapting to you intelligently; it feels like it's throwing darts at a control board.
However, as with Aleste, the fundamental mechanics make the game decently fun to play for a bit in spite of all this. There's some interesting enemy behaviors and powerups, and the music is alright.