Zek-zeks.
I really just can't love a hori shmup with a big ol' hitbox, no matter what other cool shit is thrown in there. The tentacled "flint" that you can drop or shoot out in front of you to deal with incoming fire, and to latch on to enemies and destroy them, is pretty cool! The music is cool! The weapons are cool! There's some neat stage design!
But... it's a hori with a big ol hitbox. Where you get near the ceiling and it fucking kills you. Not to mention, the game feeds you speed-ups like crazy, which have you zipping around running into shit even more often (avoiding them is easier said than done when you're in a hallway about a quarter of the screen wide).
Old school horis... I just can't get down with 'em.
I really just can't love a hori shmup with a big ol' hitbox, no matter what other cool shit is thrown in there. The tentacled "flint" that you can drop or shoot out in front of you to deal with incoming fire, and to latch on to enemies and destroy them, is pretty cool! The music is cool! The weapons are cool! There's some neat stage design!
But... it's a hori with a big ol hitbox. Where you get near the ceiling and it fucking kills you. Not to mention, the game feeds you speed-ups like crazy, which have you zipping around running into shit even more often (avoiding them is easier said than done when you're in a hallway about a quarter of the screen wide).
Old school horis... I just can't get down with 'em.
would you pronounce it zegzeks or zezeks? just making sure
Damn this game is so cool like I'm so amazed at how much fun I had playing it. This is a really cool shmup by Konami and I've had it sitting in my rom folder for Arcade games for a while so I thought I got a few hours before sleep, might as well play it.
Right off the bat I gotta say I love the powerups in this game, I never hated getting any of them though my favorite has to be that shadow laser where it looks like a normal laser at first but going up or down hits anything in that area you were in when it started and when it ended.
There's also this cool R-Type like thing where you send it out to attack enemies and it can block lots of projectiles. It's kind of tentacle looking, reminds me of another shmup I can't think of the name at the moment. Might be X-Multiply? IDK the name. It also has a charged shot if you don't have it out at the moment leading to moments where you'll have to decide what's the best idea for attack.
The stages are pretty cool and are for the most part fair at least compared to some other shmups I've played. I really like the stage that's full of colorful spheres. The only real issue I had was like right before the final boss is this really tight area and it felt really poorly designed to me, it's clearly meant to be a final roadblock to get you to not reach the final boss.
Otherwise outside of that one problem, this is a really great game in my opinion. Kind of sad it rarely gets ported it seems. One of the more underappreciated Konami games that's worth giving a look. One warning I should give is apparently the US version is worse so try to play the Japanese version if possible.
Right off the bat I gotta say I love the powerups in this game, I never hated getting any of them though my favorite has to be that shadow laser where it looks like a normal laser at first but going up or down hits anything in that area you were in when it started and when it ended.
There's also this cool R-Type like thing where you send it out to attack enemies and it can block lots of projectiles. It's kind of tentacle looking, reminds me of another shmup I can't think of the name at the moment. Might be X-Multiply? IDK the name. It also has a charged shot if you don't have it out at the moment leading to moments where you'll have to decide what's the best idea for attack.
The stages are pretty cool and are for the most part fair at least compared to some other shmups I've played. I really like the stage that's full of colorful spheres. The only real issue I had was like right before the final boss is this really tight area and it felt really poorly designed to me, it's clearly meant to be a final roadblock to get you to not reach the final boss.
Otherwise outside of that one problem, this is a really great game in my opinion. Kind of sad it rarely gets ported it seems. One of the more underappreciated Konami games that's worth giving a look. One warning I should give is apparently the US version is worse so try to play the Japanese version if possible.
A unique looking and fairly unique playing horizontal shoot em up. Control a ship called the Flintlock, where the Flint is a detachable orb attached to the front of the ship. While attached you can charge up powerful shots that fires out lightning tendrils in front of the ship and can block some bullets that hit you in the front, when detached or launched at enemies it grows up to three tendrils depending on how powered up it is that will destroy enemies and block shots while your own ship will get to fire its main weapon faster. Weapons you can pick up including forward shots, a spiral shot with a wide area of effect, a shot that fires a separate beam aimed at the ground that moves along the ground once it hits, a homing shot, and the most interesting one being a shadow beam that shoots a thin beam in front of the ship the remains that for a short time that can be stretched out up or down depending on your movements.
Levels are varied and often involve the ability to scroll the stage up or down through your movement. The two more memorable ones being a planet with waterfalls running down in different areas that enemies are swimming through and a ship chase that seems to see jumping into lightspeed multiple times.
Getting killed will put you back at a checkpoint location, the loss of your weapon change and upgrades aren't the biggest deal since most of the challenge comes from effective use of the Flint and memorization of enemy locations or attack patterns and staying withing the tendrils of the flint to defend you or to watch your back but losing the additional tendrils of the Flint is a big loss and there are parts of the game where what is being thrown at you can be a bit ridiculous or where you are expected to maneuver in very tight areas that become almost impossible to get through if you have picked up speed upgrades.
The US version of the game is going to be worse as it removed all of the other weapon pickups instead only allowing you to upgrade your main attack and likely made the game too easy by making your ship smaller, allowing you to take multiple hits, giving health pickups, and allowing you to spawn where you died when continued (I wouldn't have minded that one or the ship being smaller being in the Japanese version).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1561570543924523008
Levels are varied and often involve the ability to scroll the stage up or down through your movement. The two more memorable ones being a planet with waterfalls running down in different areas that enemies are swimming through and a ship chase that seems to see jumping into lightspeed multiple times.
Getting killed will put you back at a checkpoint location, the loss of your weapon change and upgrades aren't the biggest deal since most of the challenge comes from effective use of the Flint and memorization of enemy locations or attack patterns and staying withing the tendrils of the flint to defend you or to watch your back but losing the additional tendrils of the Flint is a big loss and there are parts of the game where what is being thrown at you can be a bit ridiculous or where you are expected to maneuver in very tight areas that become almost impossible to get through if you have picked up speed upgrades.
The US version of the game is going to be worse as it removed all of the other weapon pickups instead only allowing you to upgrade your main attack and likely made the game too easy by making your ship smaller, allowing you to take multiple hits, giving health pickups, and allowing you to spawn where you died when continued (I wouldn't have minded that one or the ship being smaller being in the Japanese version).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1561570543924523008
Very charming visuals and an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack. A top-tier STG👌
Game is rough. Special attacks are weird and not very powerful and your a bit to large and slow so dodging isn't as good as it could be. Biggest problem though was the boss fights go on for way too long.
++ visuais INCRÍVEIS
+ música boa
+ historia esquisita o suficiente pra combinar
- gameplay sem graça, é um shmup sem gimmick e isso é MUITO estranho
- bosses sem sal e sem muita lógica além de atirar
- não curti tanto a replayabilidade, diferente de outros shmups
+ música boa
+ historia esquisita o suficiente pra combinar
- gameplay sem graça, é um shmup sem gimmick e isso é MUITO estranho
- bosses sem sal e sem muita lógica além de atirar
- não curti tanto a replayabilidade, diferente de outros shmups
Great presentation on this game, music and sounds effects are slamming. The graphics and the aesthetic are top-tier, at least for my taste. Absolutely no qualms with the presentation.
Make no mistake, this is essentially a Gradius game with some tweaked mechanics. The level design is very Gradius, and it reminds of Gradius in that, when your ship is fully powered your OP and the game a little too easy but if/when you die, you're far too weak. Your main shot does essentially nothing, even when it's fully powered, so you're going to find yourself spamming charged shots. I found it too hard to clear enemies sitting at the top and bottom of the screen for this reason -- the charged shot is just three big tentacles that reach out in front of you.
The pod in this game is kind of interesting, R-type inspired but different. It blocks enemy bullets when it's connected to your front, but can't be connected to the back. When you shoot it out, you can't do charged shots anymore, but the pod will extend even more tentacles and stick to the weak spot of an enemy and just do constant and decent damage. Since your uncharged shot is awful, a lot of my boss strategies consist of me shooting the orb at the weak spot, letting it do a bunch of damage, and just dodging bullets.
Game is good but not well-balanced. The boss fight on level two takes way too long. You're too strong when fully powered, but too weak after death. I never have liked when ship speed is tied to a power-up, since that just traps you in a death cycle of feeding quarters into your (likely virtual) machine until you can snag another one. Worth a play for the visuals alone but frustrating.
Make no mistake, this is essentially a Gradius game with some tweaked mechanics. The level design is very Gradius, and it reminds of Gradius in that, when your ship is fully powered your OP and the game a little too easy but if/when you die, you're far too weak. Your main shot does essentially nothing, even when it's fully powered, so you're going to find yourself spamming charged shots. I found it too hard to clear enemies sitting at the top and bottom of the screen for this reason -- the charged shot is just three big tentacles that reach out in front of you.
The pod in this game is kind of interesting, R-type inspired but different. It blocks enemy bullets when it's connected to your front, but can't be connected to the back. When you shoot it out, you can't do charged shots anymore, but the pod will extend even more tentacles and stick to the weak spot of an enemy and just do constant and decent damage. Since your uncharged shot is awful, a lot of my boss strategies consist of me shooting the orb at the weak spot, letting it do a bunch of damage, and just dodging bullets.
Game is good but not well-balanced. The boss fight on level two takes way too long. You're too strong when fully powered, but too weak after death. I never have liked when ship speed is tied to a power-up, since that just traps you in a death cycle of feeding quarters into your (likely virtual) machine until you can snag another one. Worth a play for the visuals alone but frustrating.
This game had me hooked stage 1 with its insane charge shot shenanigans and cool art direction that was giving me similar vibes to darius gaiden and x-multiply. Then stage 2 starts and it turns into a shitty-ass tropey konami shmup. it's just throwing a bunch of random shit into a pot and hoping it boils.
The JP version at least feels way better structured around its R-Type adjacent mechanics. Though because of the checkpoint system, it also runs into Gradius system bigtime at the later bosses.
if any of its individual stage ideas were expanded into its own thing, it'd be great, but as-is just left me depleted and uninterested.
The JP version at least feels way better structured around its R-Type adjacent mechanics. Though because of the checkpoint system, it also runs into Gradius system bigtime at the later bosses.
if any of its individual stage ideas were expanded into its own thing, it'd be great, but as-is just left me depleted and uninterested.