Sol Cresta is a new game by PlatinumGames, developers of big hits like Vanquish, Bayonetta, Anarchy Reigns, and The Wonderful 101. I have not really cared for Platinum's output for over a decade, but I found their first forray at shoot 'em ups to be very, very good.
This game quite a lot of depth. They have a bullet time, formations that change your shot type, and scoring mechanics that are heavily tied to survival (extends, meter for formations and bullet time, and shield slots for tanking hits if necessary). The game is also heavy on routing, and there are many varied strategies for bosses. The only criticism I have of this game is the length, about 50 - 55 minutes, which could have been cut as some of the game's levels have moments where nothing is really happening.
However, that certainly doesn't take away from how good the levels are, and how excellent the scoring system is. One of the most fun scoring systems I've experienced in a shmup.
I hope this new director, Takanori Sato, continues to impress with Plat's Neo Classic Series. I can't wait to see what he does next.
This game quite a lot of depth. They have a bullet time, formations that change your shot type, and scoring mechanics that are heavily tied to survival (extends, meter for formations and bullet time, and shield slots for tanking hits if necessary). The game is also heavy on routing, and there are many varied strategies for bosses. The only criticism I have of this game is the length, about 50 - 55 minutes, which could have been cut as some of the game's levels have moments where nothing is really happening.
However, that certainly doesn't take away from how good the levels are, and how excellent the scoring system is. One of the most fun scoring systems I've experienced in a shmup.
I hope this new director, Takanori Sato, continues to impress with Plat's Neo Classic Series. I can't wait to see what he does next.
Platinum Games finally makes a retro shooter after putting levels inspired by the genre in all of their action games. They nailed it obviously. They also put their own spin on it taking inspiration from The Wonderful 101. The game starts me off with one ship. I can dock with up to two other ships. Each ship has it's own standard weapon and special weapon. I can change the docking order the ship to swap these weapons. There is also a formation mechanic where I can separate the ships to put them in a specific formation. The different formations provide a different powerful attack. It's a neat mechanic that took some getting used to. I got pretty good at it as my life started depending on it. This game gets really hard from level 5 to the end. It's the hardest game I've played this year, but I never wanted to stop playing it. I was impressed that I was able to beat it. It was demanding a lot dodging all those projectiles.
Esta guapo primo pero me he cansau
Watching Sol Cresta's pre-release has felt like watching a car crash in slow motion. From it's bizzare pseudo announcement on April Fools day 2020 to actually confirming it's a thing to now, the road has been rocky and it's seemed so, so much, like this was going to crash and burn. From "oh god why does it look like that", to "why is nothing happening, and where are the bullets" to "Why the fuck is it $50 no one will buy that" - the decisions have been continuously baffling.
And, as predicted, the end result is messy, buggy, looks so weirdly terrible it almost warps back round to being cool, its too expensive whilst feeling like it was made for a lower budget than most of the good indie shmups. But, well, i'm here. I put my £38 into steam with the intention of refunding it but I ended up well overshooting the refund time - because I was having a really good time.
It's really fortunate that the game's core gimmick, the docking - where you arrange your 3 craft in different formations and order - is great. It's basically straight up taken from wonderful 101's line drawing, and weaving between bullets whilst making patterns, trying to pull out the optimal formation in tight spaces and moments - it works really well. It injects the peak flow state that clover studio and platinum's very best games have into a shooting game. And whilst there's a bit of hellsinker here and a bit of radiant silvergun there, but it does really end up feeling unique, and filling a niche i didn't know I wanted. Its helped by good boss design and - after the first stage - stage designs that keep you on your toes constantly.
It also helps that the game is very likeable in other ways. The Cresta series is something that even hardcore shmuppers mostly had to google, starting with the ancient moon cresta in frickin 1980. But there's a very cute degree of reverance the game has for the series that even as an outsider is nice. Between it's cameos, the dramatic mode, some legitimately amusing fakeouts with bosses, it's generally very pleasant. The neo-nostalgia here is dealt with very well, and im sure the 4 ride or die Cresta fans are ecstatic right now.
That extends to the Dramatic mode, which, ignoring the insane decision to be $10 dlc, is quite good. Its a very kitsch 80s tropey anime sort of thing in terms of story, but works as a bizzarely good way of giving context to the events of the arcade mode without any baggage. You play the dramatic mode once and then you know, pretty much. It's asinine that it's not in the base product though.
In terms of real issues, it's mostly technical. The game looks bad - it's made in unity with 3d models and some bizzare shader applied to try and make it look like 2d renders or sprite work interchangably. Ew. It's also absurdly buggy. In my time playing alone i've encounters bugs where you cant move, visual effects breaking - and other players have already found consistent invincibility glitches, softlocks, crashes, you name it. On a gameplay level, the deepest flaw is probably that it's a game with probably quite low a skill ceiling. The docking system is good, but clearly doesnt have the depth of plat's best action games and it probably leans a bit too hard on the stage memorisation side of things, which will probably mean this will never be anyone's "main" shmup. It just doesn't seem like the sort of game those superplayers will put literal days into runs for.
Before i forget, Special mention has to go to Yuzo Koshiro's soundtrack. It's both great in it's original pieces (Saturn, Mercury and Sol's themes are fantastic) but also in taking motifs from the original games, most notably the original Terra Cresta theme. I'm not good at music criticism so i'll just say, yeah - it's good.
Ultimately, I like the game. A fair bit actually - but I have to admit that trying to earnestly reccomend it at time of writing comes with too many asterixes for me to bother, which i hope i've gotten through in these thoughts. It's also a shmup, and shmups often need a while to be out there for an actually good take to emerge, so take this whole day 2 ramble with a good pinch of salt.
But despite everything, I like it. It's platinum's best game since Automata, and it's a good, unique shooter. I'm happy with that.
And, as predicted, the end result is messy, buggy, looks so weirdly terrible it almost warps back round to being cool, its too expensive whilst feeling like it was made for a lower budget than most of the good indie shmups. But, well, i'm here. I put my £38 into steam with the intention of refunding it but I ended up well overshooting the refund time - because I was having a really good time.
It's really fortunate that the game's core gimmick, the docking - where you arrange your 3 craft in different formations and order - is great. It's basically straight up taken from wonderful 101's line drawing, and weaving between bullets whilst making patterns, trying to pull out the optimal formation in tight spaces and moments - it works really well. It injects the peak flow state that clover studio and platinum's very best games have into a shooting game. And whilst there's a bit of hellsinker here and a bit of radiant silvergun there, but it does really end up feeling unique, and filling a niche i didn't know I wanted. Its helped by good boss design and - after the first stage - stage designs that keep you on your toes constantly.
It also helps that the game is very likeable in other ways. The Cresta series is something that even hardcore shmuppers mostly had to google, starting with the ancient moon cresta in frickin 1980. But there's a very cute degree of reverance the game has for the series that even as an outsider is nice. Between it's cameos, the dramatic mode, some legitimately amusing fakeouts with bosses, it's generally very pleasant. The neo-nostalgia here is dealt with very well, and im sure the 4 ride or die Cresta fans are ecstatic right now.
That extends to the Dramatic mode, which, ignoring the insane decision to be $10 dlc, is quite good. Its a very kitsch 80s tropey anime sort of thing in terms of story, but works as a bizzarely good way of giving context to the events of the arcade mode without any baggage. You play the dramatic mode once and then you know, pretty much. It's asinine that it's not in the base product though.
In terms of real issues, it's mostly technical. The game looks bad - it's made in unity with 3d models and some bizzare shader applied to try and make it look like 2d renders or sprite work interchangably. Ew. It's also absurdly buggy. In my time playing alone i've encounters bugs where you cant move, visual effects breaking - and other players have already found consistent invincibility glitches, softlocks, crashes, you name it. On a gameplay level, the deepest flaw is probably that it's a game with probably quite low a skill ceiling. The docking system is good, but clearly doesnt have the depth of plat's best action games and it probably leans a bit too hard on the stage memorisation side of things, which will probably mean this will never be anyone's "main" shmup. It just doesn't seem like the sort of game those superplayers will put literal days into runs for.
Before i forget, Special mention has to go to Yuzo Koshiro's soundtrack. It's both great in it's original pieces (Saturn, Mercury and Sol's themes are fantastic) but also in taking motifs from the original games, most notably the original Terra Cresta theme. I'm not good at music criticism so i'll just say, yeah - it's good.
Ultimately, I like the game. A fair bit actually - but I have to admit that trying to earnestly reccomend it at time of writing comes with too many asterixes for me to bother, which i hope i've gotten through in these thoughts. It's also a shmup, and shmups often need a while to be out there for an actually good take to emerge, so take this whole day 2 ramble with a good pinch of salt.
But despite everything, I like it. It's platinum's best game since Automata, and it's a good, unique shooter. I'm happy with that.
It's the best game PlatinumGames has released since The Wonderful 101 in my opinion. It's a damn shame it wasn't in working condition until December the year it released when patch 2.0.0 went live, but it's a mechanical-marvel in the STG-genre. Docking-formations and the game's bullet-time give you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you attack and approach other situations. I set it aside to await all the kinks being worked out, and they have been now, so I fully intend on giving it my full attention in the future.
A genuinely great and underrated game. I think this game doesn't get near the amount of credit it deserves. The presentation is pretty sub-par, there's a few too many repeat bosses, and the scoring system isn't great. Still, I think those core mechanics are so good that the game really shines in spite of them. The game has a very classic Platinum/Kamiya approach to difficulty, where it incentivizes you to learn the game until you're playing on the highest difficulty, where some core mechanic is changed or removed. Here, the formation system is nerfed significantly on Platinum Hard, but I think it makes the game far more strategic and interesting on that difficulty. I really see something special here, and I hope to see Platinum tackle other smaller projects and bring their knack for really inventive gameplay hooks to other classic genres.
The “free-form docking” ended up being the Wonderful 101 drawing mechanic adapted to the shoot'em up / bullethell genre, and it works.
Beautiful visuals (this looks as well as it plays) the difficulty options give this a nice classic arcade replayability.
pew pew pew
Beautiful visuals (this looks as well as it plays) the difficulty options give this a nice classic arcade replayability.
pew pew pew
Este juego te taladra las retinas. Los colores del fondo están tan saturados como los del primer plano y el cerebro tiene que hacer un esfuerzo constante para procesar todo el ruido visual. Hablaría del diseño de sus mecánicas, los niveles, el legado de la saga… pero es que da igual cuando solo mirar a la pantalla es tan desagradable. Prefiero practicar el método ludovico con Grand Cross Renovation que volver a jugar al último nivel de Sol Cresta.