bikko
1995
This game really got me into arcade STGs, and still is one of my favorites. It's pretty hard, the bullets are fast, and to this day I haven't even managed a 1-ALL getting mercilessly destroyed by Stage 6 and 7, but i still love playing it.
2018
I like the schizo hospital atmosphere, beating up staff and patients to cheerful music makes for an enjoyable beat em up experience. I wanna see more games with wacky settings like this instead of the usual street gang brawling stuff. It's super short and doesn't have a lot of replayability or depth, but by virtue of goldfish memory it'll probably be fresh again if i do give it another spin. I drew some Hatsuta fanart one time and the dev retweeted it, big fan.
2000
I find this game really interesting due to how weird some of its systems are, like the enigma cannon and the space shuttle, the power up system and hunter rank. That being said, I think it has some of the weakest levels in the entire franchise. Shadow Devil is REALLY cool, though. At least they tried some new crap, even if the end result is people scratching their head at it and having melties about having to do the autoscroller submarine fish thing twice.
There's a lot to say about this game, but really it all boils down to the addictive weapons -> score -> extends -> weapons loop and incredible presentation. Even the simplest sections of the game feel like they require my full concentration to make sure I don't drop a medal and every item is a bargain made with the game. The port is fantastic, too, pretty much delivering on all fronts with multiple soundtracks, great emulation, replays, a very useful rank graph, a new arrange and even a custom mode to fool around with. Still aiming for the 1cc!
Cool worlds and funny npcs. This game introduced more "minigames" and objectives of the sort that simultaneously expand but also kind of dilute what I liked about the the first game. Some of the levels are extremely good, though, and it has bagpipes.
I played the crap out of Chef and Fire, simple games but very addictive. Modern Chef in particular is just such a great adaptation, worth playing for that alone! Proof you don't need to make ridiculously complicated crap to pacify your audience for hours. There's also some game with a cake factory that I remember turning into a makeshift 2 player game sharing a GBA.
1995
The levels are quite big but relatively barren, which gives it a bit of an odd feeling compared to other entries in the series. Difficulty-wise I think it's pretty fun, I like that enemies try and mess with you by dodging or blocking quite frequently, but the boss design definitely suffered, a lot of them are kind of painfully simple (see Tunnel Rhino and Blizzard Buffalo for some notable examples). They just don't really do a lot of very different things. Ride Armor is also kind of a "collectable for the sake of collecting more stuff" thing without any meaningful applications, which is a bit unfortunate.
The time investment to follow along the story of this game is quite steep, but it is pretty worthwhile, particularly Endwalker. That being said, gameplay-wise I find myself outgrowing this game, because the overarching trend of the gameplay seems to be towards getting simpler and more streamlined, with classes having less unique traits between them. There aren't a lot of jobs left in the game I really like playing all that much, but I still had a great time with it overall. It's still pretty good and I can't wait for the next story patch.
I absolutely adore this game, but feel obliged to subtract some rating for the mere reason that the playerbase and server situation was not ideal when I stopped playing it, with very few players doing anything in the lower level ranges due to the introduction of a level boost and the prevalence of dungeon boosting. For a more self sufficient and solo oriented player like me it wasn't really that bad, and I did actually manage to round together some people for the few dungeons I did end up doing (including Scholomance!), but some of my friends were not so fortunate. I would be curious to revisit the game nowadays and see what the server situation is like, as it truly is an exceptional game otherwise. Just wish the playerbase liked actually playing the game.
I love the map design of this game with its interconnectivity and am sad it hasn't really been done to this degree again since, in this franchise. It's a fantastic game, but it does lose a bit of steam about halfway through. The DLC more than makes up for it though, and I would recommend playing it as it has some very fun boss fights!
The switch port is very good, despite the 30 fps lock, it's pretty stable. More than I can say for the original PS3 version. The only thing that kinda smells is the sound quality, to this day don't understand why they compressed it so much.
The switch port is very good, despite the 30 fps lock, it's pretty stable. More than I can say for the original PS3 version. The only thing that kinda smells is the sound quality, to this day don't understand why they compressed it so much.
2022
Easy entry shmup for less experienced players on Normal, but I think ridiculous mode still has a lot to offer for people who are more familiar with the genre. You can get pretty ridiculously strong via the shop system in this game which definitely makes this game too easy on the lower difficulties. The absorption mechanic is cool. Kinda lengthy game, tho, clocking in at close to 2 hours for the two loops.
Fun little beat em up! Played through it co-op with a friend for the story mode and gave it a couple of runs in arcade mode. If there is one thing I think that is a bit unfortunate, it's that the game seems a tiny bit too long, at least for arcade mode. It would have been nice if they maybe cut a few levels out of arcade mode, so as to not make it drag on too much. Hardly an issue when playing the mode with the world map though, and I suppose it's not really that much of a problem. Splinter and April are very cool!
2007
A competent doujin megaman clone that was released back in 2007 (pretty much 2008) originally. The actual formula of the game is pretty apparent, lifting some of the better ideas from the classic Megaman games. There's some decent incentive to give this a second run through that I do not wish to spoil. The sprites are quite pretty. It's nice that it made it to steam! If you are a fan of classic Megaman games, it's worth checking out.
1996
Easily one of my favorite platformers, I love how it looks, sounds and plays. My favorite episode is likely the Great Cave Offensive, although the Revenge of Meta Knight and Milky Way Wishes come very close. I highly recommend playing this co-op with a friend for a fantastic evening. That being said, the block is kind of overpowered and I generally eschew using it at all when I play, and that is also how I would recommend playing it. But each to their own!
1998
CLEON TAKE ALL OF MY RAINBOW BUBBLES