I'll be honest and say that I simply don't "get" this game after trying it out for about 45 minutes, and this is coming from somebody who adores Dynamite Headdy to no end and had a lot of fun with Gunstar Heroes despite feeling it was a tad overrated.
Yeah, the graphics are absolutely amazing and show what a farce the (at the time) six year old Genesis hardware could be as it neared retirement. I'd never argue against that for a second.
There are also some mechanical improvements over Treasure's last run and gun that I want to point out. Dashing, parrying and hovering around felt pretty intuitive and I liked the idea of parrying bullets to regain health in the heat of battle. Being able to swap between fixed and free shot is also an improvement.
The decision to have you swap weapons in real time when the game is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, however, just seemed super idiotic. This was not a problem in Gunstar Heroes, which came out two years prior. You were able to pause and switch weapons no problem. If we want to go back even further, Thunder Force III also let you do this five years prior. (Granted, that's a shmup and not a run and gun) This was the number one thing that made me shelve the game after getting through a handful of the game's bosses tbh.
Also not a fan of how the only difficulties available are "supereasy" and "superhard". It just seemed a little pretentious not to have a middle ground.
For now, I think I'll just stick with Headdy/Gunstar/Treasure Land Adventure as those are games from this company that I have always enjoyed immensely.
Yeah, the graphics are absolutely amazing and show what a farce the (at the time) six year old Genesis hardware could be as it neared retirement. I'd never argue against that for a second.
There are also some mechanical improvements over Treasure's last run and gun that I want to point out. Dashing, parrying and hovering around felt pretty intuitive and I liked the idea of parrying bullets to regain health in the heat of battle. Being able to swap between fixed and free shot is also an improvement.
The decision to have you swap weapons in real time when the game is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, however, just seemed super idiotic. This was not a problem in Gunstar Heroes, which came out two years prior. You were able to pause and switch weapons no problem. If we want to go back even further, Thunder Force III also let you do this five years prior. (Granted, that's a shmup and not a run and gun) This was the number one thing that made me shelve the game after getting through a handful of the game's bosses tbh.
Also not a fan of how the only difficulties available are "supereasy" and "superhard". It just seemed a little pretentious not to have a middle ground.
For now, I think I'll just stick with Headdy/Gunstar/Treasure Land Adventure as those are games from this company that I have always enjoyed immensely.