Dangun Feveron represents a road not travelled for Cave. In the sea of their shooting games, almost all of them can be traced back to the formula that Dodonpachi set out in 1997. Yes there are deviations there, notably in the Shinoubu Yagawa - lead games, but they still feel like cave games, radianting their polish, tight control, stylism and feel.
Dangun Feveron isnt a deviation on the Cave formula, it's a different formula entirely. For better and worse.
To put it bluntly, Dangun Feveron is just fast as fuck. The game's commonly compared to Toaplan titles, and whilst there are some aesthetic similarities and some bullet patterns that share a bit, the better comparison is in Caravan games, and games like Thunder Dragon 2 and Macross 2 from NMK.
Essentially, in Dangun, waves of enemies spawn almost instantly following the destruction of the previous wave. By speedkilling, you can spawn more waves and by extension, get more points from each stage.
Combine this with the point system involving picking up countless falling androids, some ludicrously fast enemy bullets, and player ship speed which can be chosen between "faster than most cave games" and "faster than any other shmup i've played" and you end up with a game which encourages zipping around the screen like nothing else.
And this shit is good. Feveron is a game that pushes the player to play faster, kill faster, move faster at every turn. Every single frame of this game is best spent doing something, demanding fast reactions and quick decisions from the player constantly. It's gloriously intense.
Probably too intense even. Feveron is a very, very hard game, that demands bonkers fast reactions constantly, whilst also having way more complicated patterns than the likes of NMK's games of this style, and they travel at ridiculously high speeds with very little room for micrododging when your ship can cross the entire play field in about half a second, with no means of slowing down.
And the presentation just does not complement it. Dangun Feveron's bouncy, disco theme and soundtrack is amusing and charming, but the more I play it, the more it annoys me. The frantic, intense nature of the gameplay just does not complement the off-brand staying alive soundtrack and how jovial it all is. Outside of the boss themes, the music is way too low tempo and relaxing for how bonkers the gameplay is. The vibe it gives off is very "take it easy", which almost feels like mockery when you get caught by a brutal pattern. It's also worth noting this is Cave's only shooter to outright take place in space, and it's just generally uninteresting to look at for large periods, and all of the stages end up feeling very samey.
Aside from the presentation, it has to be said the gameplay, whilst intense and fun, is probably also the jankiest full release Cave ever did. There not being any means of slowing down is a very weird creative decision the bosses don't seem built around, making them kinda suck. Ship and weapon balance is pretty dogshit, stages are often full of dramatic difficulty spikes and dips, zig-zagging between waves of unthreatening Zako and then 5 tough enemies at once, and there's a real lack of polish to how the game just feels overall. Cave's best shooters have exceptional direction in terms of level timing and control. Feveron's systems mean that the level timing and direction is weak and it's controls are so fast and slippery it's frustrating.
I also can't go without mentioning that Feveron might also have the dumbest bug i've ever seen in a shooter. If you reach the True Final Boss - which can only be accessed if you dont die the entire game, you are invincible for the entire fight. Apparently no one managed to reach the boss at the location test and it never got fixed. Sure, this doesn't effect me, but it's emblematic of a lack of polish that kind of pervades through Feveron.
The overall experience is just a bit sloppy, even if it is also exhiliarting and gloriously fast. The disco-theming would have been better used on a slower paced game and the gameplay itself really needs polish. Compared to the king of this sort of game, which i'd argue is NMK's Thunder Dragon 2, it lacks a lot in terms of stage direction and wave design.
This style of game has now basically long been lost. Dangun Feveron is one of the last of it's kind and Cave never touched the wave based concept again. And whilst I do think it's one of their worst shooting games at the end of the day, it's still good, and I do wish there was more like it. But i'm glad they went down the road they did.
Dangun Feveron isnt a deviation on the Cave formula, it's a different formula entirely. For better and worse.
To put it bluntly, Dangun Feveron is just fast as fuck. The game's commonly compared to Toaplan titles, and whilst there are some aesthetic similarities and some bullet patterns that share a bit, the better comparison is in Caravan games, and games like Thunder Dragon 2 and Macross 2 from NMK.
Essentially, in Dangun, waves of enemies spawn almost instantly following the destruction of the previous wave. By speedkilling, you can spawn more waves and by extension, get more points from each stage.
Combine this with the point system involving picking up countless falling androids, some ludicrously fast enemy bullets, and player ship speed which can be chosen between "faster than most cave games" and "faster than any other shmup i've played" and you end up with a game which encourages zipping around the screen like nothing else.
And this shit is good. Feveron is a game that pushes the player to play faster, kill faster, move faster at every turn. Every single frame of this game is best spent doing something, demanding fast reactions and quick decisions from the player constantly. It's gloriously intense.
Probably too intense even. Feveron is a very, very hard game, that demands bonkers fast reactions constantly, whilst also having way more complicated patterns than the likes of NMK's games of this style, and they travel at ridiculously high speeds with very little room for micrododging when your ship can cross the entire play field in about half a second, with no means of slowing down.
And the presentation just does not complement it. Dangun Feveron's bouncy, disco theme and soundtrack is amusing and charming, but the more I play it, the more it annoys me. The frantic, intense nature of the gameplay just does not complement the off-brand staying alive soundtrack and how jovial it all is. Outside of the boss themes, the music is way too low tempo and relaxing for how bonkers the gameplay is. The vibe it gives off is very "take it easy", which almost feels like mockery when you get caught by a brutal pattern. It's also worth noting this is Cave's only shooter to outright take place in space, and it's just generally uninteresting to look at for large periods, and all of the stages end up feeling very samey.
Aside from the presentation, it has to be said the gameplay, whilst intense and fun, is probably also the jankiest full release Cave ever did. There not being any means of slowing down is a very weird creative decision the bosses don't seem built around, making them kinda suck. Ship and weapon balance is pretty dogshit, stages are often full of dramatic difficulty spikes and dips, zig-zagging between waves of unthreatening Zako and then 5 tough enemies at once, and there's a real lack of polish to how the game just feels overall. Cave's best shooters have exceptional direction in terms of level timing and control. Feveron's systems mean that the level timing and direction is weak and it's controls are so fast and slippery it's frustrating.
I also can't go without mentioning that Feveron might also have the dumbest bug i've ever seen in a shooter. If you reach the True Final Boss - which can only be accessed if you dont die the entire game, you are invincible for the entire fight. Apparently no one managed to reach the boss at the location test and it never got fixed. Sure, this doesn't effect me, but it's emblematic of a lack of polish that kind of pervades through Feveron.
The overall experience is just a bit sloppy, even if it is also exhiliarting and gloriously fast. The disco-theming would have been better used on a slower paced game and the gameplay itself really needs polish. Compared to the king of this sort of game, which i'd argue is NMK's Thunder Dragon 2, it lacks a lot in terms of stage direction and wave design.
This style of game has now basically long been lost. Dangun Feveron is one of the last of it's kind and Cave never touched the wave based concept again. And whilst I do think it's one of their worst shooting games at the end of the day, it's still good, and I do wish there was more like it. But i'm glad they went down the road they did.