Travel thousands of years into the future to the galaxy Theophilus. As Sho, your job is to solve the mystery of countless murders that have been committed by an invading alien force. Along the way, you'll decimate hordes of alien creatures and liquid-morphing enemies with customized blaster rifles and plasma swords. Summon the power of Neo-Psionics to blast through hordes of alien menaces in a single move. Now, with Crimson Sea's Phantom Sensor System, use sound and touch to discover the hidden enemy.
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As a whole it was... okay? Gunplay/controls were hard to get used to, the psychic? (Game's world is too obsessed with its own vocabulary there's literally a keword glossary lol) powers were fun and the mission design is varied, a little too varied i might say tho: escort mission, solo, squad, etc., the one i enjoyed the most was trying to spot the hidden aliens disguised as civilians at the very least. Story was good actually, a fun cast of characters (i hope they show up in CS2). Bosses can be either pretty bad or decent (the alien tree boss was atrocious) and at least its got NG+ (i think) so maybe itll be a bit more funner there? But yea aight game that needs lots of polish.
Not a bad game just very flawed. Not surprising considering this is such an early release. I manage to beat it but the last 2 bosses are tough and this is mainly in part to the controls. There is a fun factor to be had no doubt, it just needs work.
Also, Live-D.
Also, Live-D.
I've had this on my to-do list for some time now, i remember this coming out and being sort of fascinated by it. I was heavily into Koei's warrior series stuff, and to see them branch out as many companies did in the 6th gen, and do something different was exciting, and a Sci-Fi warriors type game seemed like such a interesting route to take.
Here I am, years later finally having played probably over half of it, and i have to say, it's a disappointment.
I'll start with the positives however, it looks very good for a game from this era, and aesthetically it's pretty interesting to look at most of the time. The music is decent, it's a mix of grand orchestral stuff, with some nice Sci Fi techno ambience, the main hub ship you select missions etc from has some nice vibes.
Now for the less good.
Gameplay wise, the premise is distinct enough from a warriors title, while it does have masses of enemies, and has a graphical look and feel most koei players will know immediately, it attempts to separate itself out, with varied objectives and missions. However, while trying to do a bit of koei warrior stuff, and a bit of sci-fi mission stuff, it ends up messing up both.
The koei warrior stuff, doesn't have enough depth, your melee attacks only hit up to 4 times, and there's no heavy/weak combos or anything, you have one string of hits to use, over and over. And with this being a sci fi, you have guns to use also. However in practice it turns into you standing still, holding the shoot button down, spraying bullets for about 10 minutes at 300 tiny bugs without any real variation. It's extremely monotonous.
The mission based elements take a weird control scheme (more on that later) that's designed for killing 100s of bugs, and try to have you complete very specific tasks that it's simply not designed for. Namely; physically running into the backside of a NPC to push them around through obstacles and platforming bits, and picking out hidden enemies disguised as NPCs among crowds of other NPCs. The second example being funniest, as can you imagine playing dynasty warriors and trying to kill one specific troop out of a crowd of like 40, without hurting anyone else?
Control wise, this game decides to screw with a control layout that koei very much had pinned down at this point, i can't believe i'm actually saying this, as i personally hate this line of criticism, but this has terrible tank controls.
Even once you've got used to them, which really doesn't take too long, you immediately start seeing issues, the game throws piles upon piles of enemies on you, that all move way too fast, and vary in importance when deciding who or what to kill. Unfortunately you can't really target specific enemies, or lock on, the game just sort of does it for you, and at times you want to shoot some giant boss thing, and instead end up shooting pointless filler enemies you don't care about. You can manually aim, but the little enemies interrupt it simply by touching you. There's no block button, and everything feels stiff, you have to finish specific animations before you can begin a new one, there's a dash button, and a jump button, and in most games, you would use the two together for fast jumps, etc. Here that's not allowed, you do one, or the other.
The story shows some promise, there's an attempt at building a world, there's databases, and fluff to read. But it's held back by a terrible script or at least a terrible translation (which was common back then.). Characters say some extremely laughable weird stuff, voices and animations often just don't really match the general design of the characters themselves. It's very funny having the main character with his pretty-j-rock hair-do loudly asking if he's a monster in his goofy baggy pants, all with a voice that just really doesn't sound right for him. Ultimately, what promise the story has just crumbles over how it's delivered, turns out you can't have the cast of DW3 deliver space opera dialogue effectively.
Overall, do i recommend this? I don't know. I found myself oddly drawn to stick with it for some time, even after most of these issues rose. There's a charm here, and it does move pretty fast and respects your time. However, the little things that annoy you early on, become much bigger things later.
Have a look if you want to see koei do Sci Fi, or don't, if you don't want to shoot 375 million tiny bugs for 7 hours.
Here I am, years later finally having played probably over half of it, and i have to say, it's a disappointment.
I'll start with the positives however, it looks very good for a game from this era, and aesthetically it's pretty interesting to look at most of the time. The music is decent, it's a mix of grand orchestral stuff, with some nice Sci Fi techno ambience, the main hub ship you select missions etc from has some nice vibes.
Now for the less good.
Gameplay wise, the premise is distinct enough from a warriors title, while it does have masses of enemies, and has a graphical look and feel most koei players will know immediately, it attempts to separate itself out, with varied objectives and missions. However, while trying to do a bit of koei warrior stuff, and a bit of sci-fi mission stuff, it ends up messing up both.
The koei warrior stuff, doesn't have enough depth, your melee attacks only hit up to 4 times, and there's no heavy/weak combos or anything, you have one string of hits to use, over and over. And with this being a sci fi, you have guns to use also. However in practice it turns into you standing still, holding the shoot button down, spraying bullets for about 10 minutes at 300 tiny bugs without any real variation. It's extremely monotonous.
The mission based elements take a weird control scheme (more on that later) that's designed for killing 100s of bugs, and try to have you complete very specific tasks that it's simply not designed for. Namely; physically running into the backside of a NPC to push them around through obstacles and platforming bits, and picking out hidden enemies disguised as NPCs among crowds of other NPCs. The second example being funniest, as can you imagine playing dynasty warriors and trying to kill one specific troop out of a crowd of like 40, without hurting anyone else?
Control wise, this game decides to screw with a control layout that koei very much had pinned down at this point, i can't believe i'm actually saying this, as i personally hate this line of criticism, but this has terrible tank controls.
Even once you've got used to them, which really doesn't take too long, you immediately start seeing issues, the game throws piles upon piles of enemies on you, that all move way too fast, and vary in importance when deciding who or what to kill. Unfortunately you can't really target specific enemies, or lock on, the game just sort of does it for you, and at times you want to shoot some giant boss thing, and instead end up shooting pointless filler enemies you don't care about. You can manually aim, but the little enemies interrupt it simply by touching you. There's no block button, and everything feels stiff, you have to finish specific animations before you can begin a new one, there's a dash button, and a jump button, and in most games, you would use the two together for fast jumps, etc. Here that's not allowed, you do one, or the other.
The story shows some promise, there's an attempt at building a world, there's databases, and fluff to read. But it's held back by a terrible script or at least a terrible translation (which was common back then.). Characters say some extremely laughable weird stuff, voices and animations often just don't really match the general design of the characters themselves. It's very funny having the main character with his pretty-j-rock hair-do loudly asking if he's a monster in his goofy baggy pants, all with a voice that just really doesn't sound right for him. Ultimately, what promise the story has just crumbles over how it's delivered, turns out you can't have the cast of DW3 deliver space opera dialogue effectively.
Overall, do i recommend this? I don't know. I found myself oddly drawn to stick with it for some time, even after most of these issues rose. There's a charm here, and it does move pretty fast and respects your time. However, the little things that annoy you early on, become much bigger things later.
Have a look if you want to see koei do Sci Fi, or don't, if you don't want to shoot 375 million tiny bugs for 7 hours.