Attempted to get a 1cc and then randomly lost all my lives to random crap in stage 9 and realized it was too long to justify doing again and settled for clearing it for maybe the 4th or 5th time now?
I'd love to say Gleylancer is a model 'beginners shmup' with its insistence on checkpoints that force you to learn stages while keeping the routing and patterns extremely simple, but it stumbles enough to delegitimize that praise. Levels all end to be a bit overly-long and safe, except for the couple random parts that get too bad. The giant selection of option control types feels ill-conceived and poorly balanced, like you can coast through 90% of hazards with homing but then you get those random sections where you're surrounded on all sides or have to destroy debris tiles in your way and it fails to resemble anything functional.
Major eurojank vibes in the way it insists so heavily on this huge cinematic story set across a galactic war, with this sweeping spacy rock soundtrack and tons of animated stills for the cutscenes. And then you get to the back half of the game and enemies are microscopic 8x8 pixel dots that tank 20 hits and dish hardly anything back. Some war.
I'd recommend the Ratalaika port to modern consoles for its inclusion of option aiming via the right analog stick, it adds a very unique scheme that most other shmups don't attempt while also easing the problems with certain setpieces.
Wish this was better - wish all of Masaya's shmups were better, frankly. This was one of the earlier shmups I played once I got my everdrive and its always a little disheartening seeing how it stacks up against the better MD shooter.
I'd love to say Gleylancer is a model 'beginners shmup' with its insistence on checkpoints that force you to learn stages while keeping the routing and patterns extremely simple, but it stumbles enough to delegitimize that praise. Levels all end to be a bit overly-long and safe, except for the couple random parts that get too bad. The giant selection of option control types feels ill-conceived and poorly balanced, like you can coast through 90% of hazards with homing but then you get those random sections where you're surrounded on all sides or have to destroy debris tiles in your way and it fails to resemble anything functional.
Major eurojank vibes in the way it insists so heavily on this huge cinematic story set across a galactic war, with this sweeping spacy rock soundtrack and tons of animated stills for the cutscenes. And then you get to the back half of the game and enemies are microscopic 8x8 pixel dots that tank 20 hits and dish hardly anything back. Some war.
I'd recommend the Ratalaika port to modern consoles for its inclusion of option aiming via the right analog stick, it adds a very unique scheme that most other shmups don't attempt while also easing the problems with certain setpieces.
Wish this was better - wish all of Masaya's shmups were better, frankly. This was one of the earlier shmups I played once I got my everdrive and its always a little disheartening seeing how it stacks up against the better MD shooter.