It's alright. Didn't hit for me nearly as much as Gaiden, and seemed to take steps back and forward at the same time not unlike from 1 to 2. Still fun for the most part, though.
While the levels have become significantly easier than Gaiden's and they've finally figured out a good balance of punishment and forgiveness for dying or using a continue, the bosses have somehow become even more of a mixed bag. They tended to be a lot tougher for me than I would have liked, even going on what I assumed was the easy route (top line). Granted, I didn't use the Alpha Beam nearly as much as I probably should have, but even so the bosses came across as ridiculously spongy, especially toward the end. The half-a-level-long boss in Eta was particularly unfun, with far more trial-and-error feeling attacks that lacked much of a sense of intuition or strategy as opposed to just blind-dodging various beams and patterns that seemed to go on forever.
The sound design in this one also seemed to be a strict downgrade from Gaiden; I found that the music wasn't quite up to Gaiden's par, and while it was still great I do find that that's something of a blemish here. Also of note is that the boss warning noise is annoying as fuck in this game despite being just fine in 1/2/Gaiden, so I have no idea what happened there. The sound effects in G-Darius also seemed to overpower the music a weirdly high amount, bringing me to manually adjust the audio mixing which I didn't have to do for any of the previous games.
In any case, the main levels were fun. I tried a few of the ones I hadn't played in my main run and generally they retained the engaging design the series has had up till now as well as the snappy and fitting movement Gaiden generally had, though somehow I felt even more mobile in this one -- definitely a plus. The missiles felt more intuitive in this game than in Gaiden in particular, and while I missed the over-the-top main fire that upper level Gaiden had, I think this game achieves a pretty good look for the projectile you'll see on screen most often. It being more compact also helps make it easier to see enemy bullets which is valuable as both 2 and Gaiden tended to have backgrounds or firing that made some enemy bullets blend in too much for comfort. I suppose it also helps that with G-Darius' new 3D style bullets were easier to see than ever. The 3D may have made it a bit more annoying to fight some bosses when their hitboxes came in and out of focus during their animations, but that wasn't too big a deal in the long run.
G-Darius felt like a generally positive yet mixed bag, but it's one I'm willing to give another chance sometime. Like I said, I probably could have used the enemy capture and Alpha Beam more than I did (I was left with 3 or 4 unused Capture Balls by the end of the game), but I do wonder just how much that would impact the experience overall. I'll be sure to come back to this one, though!
While the levels have become significantly easier than Gaiden's and they've finally figured out a good balance of punishment and forgiveness for dying or using a continue, the bosses have somehow become even more of a mixed bag. They tended to be a lot tougher for me than I would have liked, even going on what I assumed was the easy route (top line). Granted, I didn't use the Alpha Beam nearly as much as I probably should have, but even so the bosses came across as ridiculously spongy, especially toward the end. The half-a-level-long boss in Eta was particularly unfun, with far more trial-and-error feeling attacks that lacked much of a sense of intuition or strategy as opposed to just blind-dodging various beams and patterns that seemed to go on forever.
The sound design in this one also seemed to be a strict downgrade from Gaiden; I found that the music wasn't quite up to Gaiden's par, and while it was still great I do find that that's something of a blemish here. Also of note is that the boss warning noise is annoying as fuck in this game despite being just fine in 1/2/Gaiden, so I have no idea what happened there. The sound effects in G-Darius also seemed to overpower the music a weirdly high amount, bringing me to manually adjust the audio mixing which I didn't have to do for any of the previous games.
In any case, the main levels were fun. I tried a few of the ones I hadn't played in my main run and generally they retained the engaging design the series has had up till now as well as the snappy and fitting movement Gaiden generally had, though somehow I felt even more mobile in this one -- definitely a plus. The missiles felt more intuitive in this game than in Gaiden in particular, and while I missed the over-the-top main fire that upper level Gaiden had, I think this game achieves a pretty good look for the projectile you'll see on screen most often. It being more compact also helps make it easier to see enemy bullets which is valuable as both 2 and Gaiden tended to have backgrounds or firing that made some enemy bullets blend in too much for comfort. I suppose it also helps that with G-Darius' new 3D style bullets were easier to see than ever. The 3D may have made it a bit more annoying to fight some bosses when their hitboxes came in and out of focus during their animations, but that wasn't too big a deal in the long run.
G-Darius felt like a generally positive yet mixed bag, but it's one I'm willing to give another chance sometime. Like I said, I probably could have used the enemy capture and Alpha Beam more than I did (I was left with 3 or 4 unused Capture Balls by the end of the game), but I do wonder just how much that would impact the experience overall. I'll be sure to come back to this one, though!