It's awful, but I had some fun. Nothing in this game is individually 'favorable', but the parts come together mostly fine.

I think the point of contention is how striking and powerful the bio-distorted woman on the box art is. It sets this expectation for a certain kind of visual language and pathos, and then you turn it on and get a 30fps kusoge sludgefest, with designs right out of a C-tier PC shooter. The version of this that actually tries to commit to its cover would be worthy of a lot more respect.

I actually had no intention of playing this game tbh. I knew it existed and how poorly it was received in Japan. I'm pretty sure it's like the 2nd worst rated shmup on the console over there. But I've seen a few people I follow play this game so alright I'll bite, I'll see how bad this truly is.

Curse reminds me a lot of that Heavy Unit game I played where it doesn't seem like it would be the worst thing ever made but it's more bad on just how incompetent it is. This was an early game for the console so maybe I should cut them some slack but Thunder Force II had already existed and was much better even if I have issues with it.

First off this game is easy. The only time I died was like those parts where you have to go inbetween meteors and I swear it's harder for me then it should. Even the bosses barely have any challenge to them. The 4th stage also just have the team say screw it just throw everything. It still somehow isn't a challenge and all it did was just make me question the design choices the game makes.

The framerate is also bad, like it just feels like it's going at a slow rate. I noticed as early as when I started playing, it's just not that good and none of the stage design or environments impresses me. They barely try to make any of it interesting. Stage 4 is the equivalent of looking at something like Gradius on the Famicom.

Now I will give it this, at least it ends quickly and doesn't make me suffer when playing. But it just goes to show how bad and low budget the game feels. I felt nothing once I beat the game, the most interesting thing was learning the cover art thing was actually the final boss.

I really wouldn't recommend it at all, the only reason you really should try it if you're persistant is the fact it won't take long at all. I honestly wonder how many people in Japan felt ripped off playing this. Its also never gotten a rerelease to my knowledge and it's probably for the best.

Before I go, some fun facts. Did you know this could have had a US release? It was featured in EGM and even got reviewed. Wait someone gave it an 8? Wasn't this the same magazine that hated Herzog Zwei? This is why old magazine reviews can never be trusted!

I also went to look at GameFAQs reviews for the lols and someone not only gave this a 9/10 but goes on to say it's better than Thunder Force and R-Type. Oh GameFAQs reviewers, never change. (wait I review stuff on gamefaqs I just insulted myself.)

Me and Micronet have a bit of an odd history, because it felt like I kept stumbling upon their ineptitude out of sheer coincidence or perhaps those above just have contempt for me for reasons only known to them. I played their shitnum opus known as "Heavy Nova" many many moons ago when I first discovered emulation and used Gens as opposed to better things out now like Fusion. It would be a defining moment for what it means to truly be an inconceivable mess deserving of the most amount of scorn possible. If your game is as unplayable as Heavy Nova, or as gross and offensive as Square's Tom Sawyer then it deserves capital punishment to the nth degree, no exceptions.

I've written essays that dragged for way too long on Black Hole Assault (also known as "Butt Hole Assault" in certain circles) and Revengers of Vengeance, meanwhile I simply compared Heavy Nova to a battery acid bath. Needless to say my opinion didn't change when I first joined the site, I doubt it changed now. It was massively funny for me to find out they made a shmup before any of these mistakes of mankind thanks to fellow BL user Jenny, which of course piqued my interest since I'm a weird person who enjoys digging through garbage, because I've explored retro libraries to the point I couldn't care less about so-called "hidden gems" because I've discovered them ten years before Little Joey Baloney on Youtube claimed to find them and made them mainstream and normie.

Upon booting Curse on my handy dandy Everdrive Pro I went into gameplay and thought I was playing an MSX game with how choppy it was running. With some practice I probably could've counted the frames it took for the enemies to cross the screen and do their little choreographed patterns. Needless to say, thanks to this the game was like taking multiple candies from multiple babies. I'm actually ashamed to admit I kinda liked the option system, I'm sure it was hocked from another shmup, and I'm just blanking on where it was from prior since I'm not exactly in my "Cold Comfort Zone" so to speak. I apologize to whom I've alluded to on the off chance they read this.

It's worth note that the game runs so terribly and is so badly optimized that I couldn't pull up the in-game menu of my Everdrive. Which is too bad, because apparently the boys at Micronet realized their game was too easy, and instead of doing a proper difficulty curve they instead made the final stage do an R-Type impression of blasting the player with lasers and changing the rules by making them redo the stage instead of respawning like normally. Save states would've been appreciated, but I guess even my hardware was trying to tell me that this game really wasn't worth the time. A shame too, because I was actually ready to go a bit easier on it, but I guess I really shouldn't be surprised by the lads who thought becoming slower and more useless as you took damage would translate well to enjoyable gameplay in a beat'em up/fighting game. I'm afraid to say Earth Defense/The Earth Defend still sweeps as Curse didn't softlock on me after killing the first boss, nor do the sprites look like a toddler's first outting in MS Paint.

May Micronet's whimper of a legacy carry onward to remind us what garbage truly smells like. For this, I salute you.