---Earlier this year, the sequel to Bangai-O, Bangai-O Spirits, surprised me with it's amount of variety and tension. It's still one of my favorite games I've played this year. Thus I was highly anticipating playing the sequel to that game: Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury. I was hoping for even more improvements and variety in this installment, as well as an expectation of a visual improvement here. Well, I did get those things sort of. If you would like some Bangai-O, then this is definitely that, but I'm afraid it doesn't amount to much more. It's competent, and fun, but it's more of the same of what we got in Spirits.
---That being said, there are some welcome additions and improvements here that make this something like the "Half-Life 2: Episode 1" of Bangai-O. You now gain back health for every enemy you kill. The freeze weapon is now bound into the dash skill. Speaking of: the big dash feature is amazing and very satisfying to pull off. There's also new weapons like the Fast bullets and the Wide bullets, though it seems Bangai-O favors it's Bounce and Homing weapons more.
---Which does start to bring me to my complaints. You can't choose weapons right at the start anymore. Instead you have to break boxes in order to retrieve them, and even then they go away after awhile so you better hope you see them in Bangai-O HD's hectic fire fights. I also didn't like how much Treasure has brought over and implemented from Spirits into Missile Fury. The tilemaps and background and shared heavily between the game to the point where Missile Fury lacks identity. You can also tell Missile Fury had a bit of a lower budget as Dr. Ban is now a flat static sprite that looks like he's still in the concept art stage. Overall I think Bangai-O HD proves how unique and interesting the series as a whole is, and how underrated it has gone, but I don't think this will blow the minds of long-time fans either. It's a Bangai-O game, and that's it. - [07/10]
---That being said, there are some welcome additions and improvements here that make this something like the "Half-Life 2: Episode 1" of Bangai-O. You now gain back health for every enemy you kill. The freeze weapon is now bound into the dash skill. Speaking of: the big dash feature is amazing and very satisfying to pull off. There's also new weapons like the Fast bullets and the Wide bullets, though it seems Bangai-O favors it's Bounce and Homing weapons more.
---Which does start to bring me to my complaints. You can't choose weapons right at the start anymore. Instead you have to break boxes in order to retrieve them, and even then they go away after awhile so you better hope you see them in Bangai-O HD's hectic fire fights. I also didn't like how much Treasure has brought over and implemented from Spirits into Missile Fury. The tilemaps and background and shared heavily between the game to the point where Missile Fury lacks identity. You can also tell Missile Fury had a bit of a lower budget as Dr. Ban is now a flat static sprite that looks like he's still in the concept art stage. Overall I think Bangai-O HD proves how unique and interesting the series as a whole is, and how underrated it has gone, but I don't think this will blow the minds of long-time fans either. It's a Bangai-O game, and that's it. - [07/10]