DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou (Xbox 360) Review

DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou (Xbox 360) Review

Release Date: 30 May 2013

Date Played: 20 December 2021

Introduction:

DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou (SDOJ) was the swan song for it's hallowed developer, Cave, and also the final of the six games in the DoDonPachi franchise. It's a vertical bullet hell game with an anime feel and is has previously made it onto many Greatest Shmups of All Time lists. It was released to Japanese arcades in 2012 with this region free Xbox 360 port to follow a year later.  SaiDaiOuJou translates roughly to "Blissful Death" which is a fitting title for a game with such a notoriously heinous difficulty.  While still a well liked game in a beloved franchise, SDOJ was a bit of a departure and isn't as highly regarded as many of the other games in the series. Though it was highly regarded when it came out, it seems to have fallen a bit out of favor over the last few years. I originally played it back when it was released in 2013 and remember having a rather good impression of it.  Having been on a huge shmup kick over the last few years I decided to give it another shot to see if I still liked it as much as before now that I'm more knowledgeable about the genre. Having played the predecessor to this game, DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu  (DFK, aka. known as Resurrection in Europe) earlier this year, this felt like a good time to compare the two. How would they stack up against each other?

 

Story/Presentation: 

There is definitely a story and a lot of lore associated with the DoDonPachi franchise, and honestly, I don't really know any of it.  All of these games, except for one, are in Japanese.  And, unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese.  You can feel free to read all about these games on the internet if you wish.  Suffice it to say, I'll only give a very brief description of SDOJ's story here.  Essentially, it takes place in an alternate universe from the other games in the series and has totally new characters.  These characters are artificial lifeforms called, "dolls" and their purpose was to help out humanity.  One of the dolls went evil and decided to destroy humankind (I think...) and it's your job to play as one of the four good dolls to stop her.  

It's a basic enough story, and I honestly find it kind of intriguing and would like to know more and wish I spoke Japanese and was more versed in the whole DoDonPachi franchise. As for the character design, I really like it a lot more than I thought I would.  The sexy doll design is a nice departure from the generic fighter pilot stereotype we see time and time again in these games and I think it helps stand apart from the franchise which is primarily a military based shmup series. These military shooters can all start to look too similar to each other after years of playing them.  Compared to its predecessor, DFK, this game has a much more interesting and appealing art style.  

Unlike the other games in the series, you're greeted with a fast and flashy anime introduction to introduce you to the characters.  It's well done, but I could see how it would feel a little out of place if you're a seasoned DoDonPachi fan.  Personally, I liked it and appreciate the direction they decided to go with this entry. Once you begin playing, you'll notice the game is is bright and colorful and really has that signature CAVE look with chunky sprites and blindingly colorful bullets. As you play through the 5 stages that range from nigh time cityscapes, rivers, and all the way into a computer itself you'll get to take in the gorgeous visuals of the game... if you're able to take your eyes off the bullets for a second, of course. Each level feels very distinct from the others as you're going through the game, but seem pretty generic when compared to CAVE's other creations. This was also a big problem with DFK, sadly.  As I'm writing this, I'm struggling to even remember where each stage was set... and that's after putting in a couple of dozen hours with the game. Honestly, other than the characters and gameplay, I wouldn't be able to easily identify this game apart from DFK if you were to show me a screen capture from the game. This makes the game feel a little uninspired compared to some of the masterpieces that CAVE has released before. There are also a lot of recycled enemies and mid-bosses in this game that carry over from stage to stage.  This leads to the whole experience feeling a little too monotonous for its duration.  I end up recognizing most of the stages by the bullet patterns rather than their location.

As for the music, it's a lot better than DFK.  While I'm not personally a huge fan of the music from CAVE games, I find it to be well suited and pretty generally pretty decent.  Rarely, though, do I find it to be catchy or to have interesting chord progressions that keep you hooked and humming along.  This isn't the case with SDOJ, and it has one of the better soundtracks that I've heard from CAVE.  The bridge of the song in Stage 2 has a really nice hook that I always looked forward to while I was playing the game, and the boss music is epic, energetic, and catchy as can be; and it might be some of my favorite boss fight music of all time.  Overall, the composer did a really good job this time around and there are a few standout tracks good enough to listen to in the car.

Excluding the sort of bland environments, SDOJ has a really nice and fun aesthetic presentation that I feel is one of the better ones of any CAVE game I've played.  That's saying a lot, because CAVE is known for making great and memorable games.

Gameplay:

Like any game in the genre, a good shmup lives or dies by its gameplay and SDOJ is no exception.  The creator of this game wanted to get away from all of the complicated mechanics that had been so prevalent in CAVE games for the last several years and move towards a more streamlined system of only shooting and dodging. You begin the game by selecting one of three ships with different strengths and weaknesses.  There's the red ship (Shuri) that's fast and has a strong but narrow shot, green (Hikari) that's more balanced, and blue (Maria) who is slow but has the widest shot. All of these characters seem viable, but a faster speed ship seems to be the preferred direction for most fans of this game. After this, you pick the "outfit" for your selected character.  All three have a fighter outfit that makes your spread shot more powerful, a civilian outfit that makes the focus laser more powerful, and a swimsuit outfit that makes both much more powerful but GREATLY increases the game's difficulty. This is a really cool idea for customizing your playstyle that I enjoyed experimenting around with as I found my favorite combo, but can get a little creepy when you realize you're playing dress up with some dolls. Don't let that deter you though.  It's still very much PG-13.

Still present is the CAVE system of having a spread shot that is weaker but lets you maintain your speed, and a focused laser that is stronger, but slows you way down.  It's a risk/reward system that works extremely well and is genius in its simplicity.  Many, including me, consider this to be the best designed system for a shmup and never get tired of it.  You still have screen clearing (and life saving) bombs that we're all used to as well as a hyper system that is not only used to give you huge scoring opportunities, but also can clear the screen of bullets in a pinch.  Sadly, both of these are mapped to the same button.  So, if you're about to take a hit and want to bomb to save yourself, this only works if your hyper gauge is empty.  If it's full, you'll just activate your hyper instead, which is a bit of a let down and can royally ruin your scoring strategy.  The game could have benefitted from having these assigned to two different buttons and this is one way which DFK wins over SDOJ.  As you play and collect tokens, you're hyper gauge can be charged up to 10 levels to give you progressively larger scoring opportunities. You'll be spending a lot of your time focusing on building it up, so it's very frustrating to play through half of the game, while increasing and conserving your hyper gauge, only to to have to use it instead of a bomb when a stray bullet comes your way. It can often be demoralizing; especially when you have all your bombs in stock. One way to get around this issue, and a smart decision on CAVE's behalf, is the autobomb feature.  If you're about to get hit, the game will use up your current bomb supply to save you from losing a life.  It's a nice returning mechanic from DFK, but I feel like it's a little overly harsh with taking all of your bombs instead of just one.  Of course, you can turn this ability off. But, that's only for the most hardcore of players (myself not included).

As for scoring, it's pretty complicated, and I could spend 2000 words describing it.  So, I'll just go over the basics here.  As you shoot, you build up a combo, using your hyper increases this combo greatly and the higher number of charges you've stocked up on the hyper gauge increase it more and let it last longer. If you auto bomb, it breaks the combo.  If you bomb on purpose, it reduces the combo by 30%.  There are also hidden bees around the levels that you can collect to gain more points based on how many you find.  As you kill enemies, they drop tokens/stars that you can collect for points.  The larger the token, the more points you get.  Killing a large enemy will often cancel all of the bullets on the screen and convert them into tokens.  Holding down your focus attack pulls in all the tokens to your ship.  Obviously, dying messes up your combo and hurts your scoring chances.   There are more nuances to this, but if you're interested in all of that, you can learn more over about it on the internet. 

See, even that was a mouthful.  It basically boils down to collecting all of the hidden bees, not getting hit or bombing until your hyper gauge is maxed out at 10, then using it and collecting all the tokens that you can.  I'll just say that I find the scoring system in this game to be pretty intuitive and fun and wish it was in more games.  It's exciting to see your multiplier and score grow insanely huge when you use your hyper.  This scoring system to be one of the easier and more accessible ones that CAVE has done in the past and I wish they had often kept things this simple in many of their other games. They are known for letting things get a little too complex and I'm glad they didn't drop the ball here.

There are several different modes included in this port.  There's Arcade mode, which is just like it sounds... a port of the arcade game.  There's Ver 1.5, which is the arcade mode with some patched out scoring bugs and tweaked scoring system.  It's really more for experts of the game who are very familiar with its systems.  There's a Novice mode that is a easier and more balanced version of Arcade. And, lastly, there's XBOX 360 more which serves as an arrange mode of the arcade and completely changes up the gameplay and even gives you a storyline and new fourth character to play.  This final mode is one of the better parts of the package and makes the game more about resource management because you have no lives nor bombs and only a meter of energy that is depleted when you bomb or get hit.  Going into hyper mode causes the enemies to drop crystals that replenish this energy gauge.  Personally, I found the Xbox 360 mode to be the most fun way to play the game, but the storyline part has too much dialog that is annoying and constantly goes on while you play.  There are cutscenes that extend the game time as well and aren't very welcome.  Lastly, the music has been remixed and doesn't sound nearly as good and has a strange sound to it like it's almost played in sped up form.  This mode is much easier than the other modes and if you're a fan of the genre, you should try it out. It all of the unskippable story parts are very frustrating, but the novel and addictive gameplay changes, new and powerful character, and new enemy patterns more than make up for it.

Ok, now for the elephant in the room.  SDOJ is hard.  It's unforgiving, brutal, unfair, and as one internet reviewer put it, "mean."  While this game is simpler in terms of its mechanics and scoring over it's CAVE brethren, it is much more difficult and is considered one of, if not THE, hardest CAVE games ever.  If you've ever played a CAVE game before, you know that's saying a lot because they are renowned for making some of the hardest games ever made. So, to be at the top of that mountain is quite the feat.

There is only one loop in SDOJ, so it's doesn't have time to ramp up the difficulty over a bunch of stages.  It starts off extremely difficult and only goes up from there.  The bullet patterns are too dense, the bullets are too fast, the bosses are bullet sponges, and the enemy placement is ruthless.  Add to that, you're hit box is a lot larger than it was in previous games of the series and seems like it can't even fit between some of the bullets slung at you.  Piling on top of all those issues, the Xbox 360 port of this game is rather sloppy and has 5 frames of input delay.  This is right on the border of making the game unplayable. This means when you see a bullet about to hit you, it already has.  You're just seeing a delayed image of what's already happened on the screen. If you're curious how bad 5 frames is on this game, it's about twice as bad as the gold standard. With bullets as fast as they are in SDOJ, and the tight dodges you'll need to make, this small oversite on the porting job pretty much adds an insurmountable struggle to an already impossibly difficult game. It's hard to say if it's the input delay, the fast bullets, or huge hitbox; but often you'll die... and not even really know what happened. Usually in these games, the bullet comes at you and you succeed in dodging or... you don't.  You have to try again to get better.  In SDOJ, you'll be dodging and weaving through enemy bullet patterns that you have memorized and done time and time again... and you'll just die. Some random bullet that you swore you dodged will collide with you and tank your run. Or, the game will send a wave of enemies that push you to one side of the screen, and then immediately bombard you with a tight cluster of bullets that completely annihilates you. That's where the unfairness comes in. No matter how well you're playing, there's always that chance that things will just go awry.

The first 3 stages are fun and manageable, but stage 4 and 5 are so much harder, longer, and generally unfair that they feel like they were designed by a different person. It's almost like they are from two different games.  Even the bullet patterns feel like they were designed differently. It's jarring and makes the second half of the game much less fun that the beginning. In addition to all of this, the game has a rank system that makes the game harder and harder based on how well you're doing.  I personally hate rank systems in shmups, but this one isn't too bad and goes down when you bomb or die.  So, you can manage it more than in other CAVE games (I'm looking at you, Pink Sweets). Unless you're a pro at the game and are playing for score rather than a clear, the rank system shouldn't deter you too much.

I mentioned the Novice mode earlier that was designed for "beginners" to the game, but even it is unbalanced and difficult.  I was able to 1 credit clear Novice on easy difficulty on my first try.  It felt perfect, and just the right difficulty. But even after 10 days of practice, I wasn't able to clear it on Novice Normal difficulty.  Honestly, this is the hardest novice mode I've ever seen in a game and Novice Normal feels like a Normal mode in most other arcade shmups. Calling it "Novice" is basically an insult. Getting a 1CC on the Novice mode of this game is an accomplishment for most gamers. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well for training you up to tackle the Arcade mode of the game. The jumps between the difficulty levels are just too great to make constant progress. Conversely, on the Arcade mode, the difficulties aren't varying enough.  Easy is almost as difficult as normal mode.  To combat this, you're given a training mode to help with Arcade, Novice, Xbox 360 mode, and Ver. 1.5.  It will let you set your lives, bombs, rank, and any other variables you wish to help you out. However, there is one exception to this. The freaking difficulty can't be changed.  It just defaults to Normal difficulty no matter what.  So, if you're working on Arcade Easy mode, there's no way to practice in training mode at all. Want to work on Novice Hard? Tough luck. Yes, it allows you to skip to various sections of each of the 5 stages to practice, but what good will training mode do you if you're forced to play on a difficulty that's way higher (or lower) than what you're currently working on? This pretty much makes learning the game a chore and more difficult than it needed to be. To help you out, you can unlock "cheats" for the game that basically make it push over, but these don't help you learn the game.  Which, after all, is the whole purpose of playing a shmup. Without a functional training mode, any home port of a shmup becomes much less appealing. Sadly, most of the competitive focus of this game is on the Arcade mode... and this port isn't really good enough to train up your skills for it.

The Xbox 360 mode is more balanced, fun, and doable... but is still tough as nails. It still suffers from the 5 frames of input delay, but won't make you rip out your hair quite as quickly as the other modes due to the slower bullets and more forgiving patterns. 

Conclusion:

SDOJ is one of the hardest games I've ever played... and not in a fun way.  Unlike most other CAVE games, when I died in this one it didn't feel like it was my fault or that I made a mistake.  Every death felt like a sucker punch to my face when I wasn't looking.  The input delay and uneven balance of the stages (esp. stages 4 and 5) make it neigh impossible to get into a good rhythm with the game and even after practicing a section dozens of times, I was struggling to make much improvement. Also, the lack of a usable training mode made the whole experience more frustrating than it needed to be.

I really do like the simplified mechanics (even if I wish there was a dedicated bomb button) and scoring.  The tried and true CAVE spread shot/focus laser system works as great as always and never gets old.  The character design was refreshing and a real stand out as was the music of the game.  Yes, the stages were a little unmemorable in terms of backgrounds and settings and the final one runs on for too long.  But, CAVE succeeded with a lot of its design choices with SDOJ.

There is a really good game hidden in here, but it's just covered up by the draconian difficulty and seemingly unfair attitude of its creator. The whole experience feels like CAVE was out to get your and ruin your day. The sloppy port only adds to this as it asks too much of the player and doesn't give you the training tools you need to succeed.  There is some real fun to be had in the Xbox 360 mode and in Novice mode for sure and I would recommend you spend your time with these.  If you're interested in grinding out the 1CC in Arcade mode. Or, if you're crazy enough to want to jump into the scoring scene of this game, you'd be better off playing the game elsewhere. 

I am a member of several shmup communities with a lot of seasoned players.  I asked them their opinions of this game and found there to be a general disdain for it.  The ones who had 1 credit cleared the Arcade mode didn't seem to recognize it as a joyous accomplishment and spoke of it more like overcoming an arduous struggle and were relieved when it was over.  Many others came out of the woodwork (unprompted, mind you) to express their hatred of the game.  While, I personally don't hate the game; I did become very frustrated with it and found myself to not be having much a lot of the time while playing it.  At the beginning of this review I wanted to compare it to the DoDonPachi game that came before it, DFK.  In the end, I would say that SDOJ has more fun mechanics and scoring, better characters and music, and more interesting stages.  However, it's just too hard and playing DFK is a more enjoyable experience.  So, I guess they even out in the end. I know there are people who love this game.  But, to me, it's not a shmup I want to devote the countless hours it would require to truly learn it.

Final Status: Beaten (1CC Xbox 360 mode, 1CC Novice Easy)

Final Score: 7/10 (Good game, bad port... and too difficult)