Release Date: 7 April 2011
Date Played: 23 January 2022
Introduction:
Bullet Soul is one of those region free shmups for the the Xbox 360 that all fans of the genre are clamoring to get and commands a pretty high price these days. It was developed by 5pb, the creators of Phantom Breaker and purveyors of copious amounts of visual novels, and released only in Japan. Sadly, while the Xbox 360 is a shmup powerhouse, it wasn't popular in the East and this game never really garnered the attention that the developers hoped for. It was met with a lukewarm reception by both critics and the public alike and it wasn't long before 5pb updated the game and released another version called Infinite Burst that is more well regarded and commands an even higher price. When held up against some of the other truly fantastic shmups on the system like Deathsmiles, Ketsui, and the DoDonPachi games, Bullet Soul didn't really stand a chance. However, that doesn't stop it from being a really fun, and albeit very barebones and simple, shmup that is better than everyone makes it out to be.
Gameplay:
As stated above, Bullet Soul is a pretty basic shmup that steals most of its gameplay mechanics from the venerable developer, Cave's various games but dumbs them down to a point that's honestly more refreshing than insulting. Firstly, there are no difficulty options and you're stuck with the one and only skill level available. After that, you chose from 1 of 3 ship types. There's the Blue ship piloted by Yun, a sexy police officer, that has a balanced attack and speed that focuses on a lock on laser, a Red ship piloted by Zenichi, the attitude filled "bad boy" who is the fastest and weakest of the ships, and finally the Yellow ship piloted by Sadahl, an extremely powerful king with lock-on missiles and the highest attack power and slowest speed by far. Some of the criticisms of the game like to point out that these 3 ships are unbalanced and that Zenichi is so weak that he's practically impossible and that Sadahl is so powerful that he makes the game a skilless and boring endeavor. Other people have exactly the opposite opinion and and see Zenichi as the strongest while Sadahl is nothing more than a walking (...flying) bullseye. Whatever the case, I found all of the ships to be viable and very different from each other. My first 1 Credit Clear of the game was with Zenichi as I found his speed to be very beneficial to my playstyle. However, I was almost able to clear the game on my first try with Yun. Zenichi's power makes him formidable, but really changes how you play. Whichever you decide to choose, don't listen to the peanut gallery of the internet and let them deter you, they are all a fun and worth your time.
After you select your ship, you're dumped right into battle. Gameplay is a fairly standard vertical shmup. You're given two shot types, a spread shot that is better for weaker enemies and allows you to maintain your speed, and a focus shot that concentrates your firepower on a smaller area but slows you down greatly. This, of course, was lifted directly from the Cave games that Bullet Soul tries to hard to emulate. It's a tried and true method that works well here even if it isn't very original. You also have access to bombs to save you in the nick of time that also have a wonderfully forgiving option for them to auto-bomb if you accidentally get hit. In addition to taking ideas from Cave games, this game's gimmick is the bullet cancelling mechanic. In most Cave games if you kill certain enemies after they've fired at you, the bullets that they've spewed all over the screen disappear and turn into tokens to increase your score. Learning which enemies do this, and figuring out the timing of when to eliminate them is one of the charms of playing a shmup from Cave's catalog. Seeing all of those deadly projectiles suddenly turn harmless is a dopamine rush and it's exhilarating to see how far you can push it. Bullet Soul, on the other hand, takes this idea to the max and allows you to bullet cancel every single enemy in the game. This turns the bullets into "ghost bullets" that you can collect to increase your score multiplier. This means, if you learn to rout the level correctly, you basically won't have to dodge hardly any bullets at all for most of the stages.
Of course, this flies directly in the face of what most people love about playing shmups. Where is the skill in hanging back and relaxing, right? It's a stubborn take, and it's not entirely wrong. However, Bullet Soul doesn't really play like that. In order to collect all of those "ghost bullets" that you need for a high score, you need to get right up in the face of most of the enemies as you take them out so the "ghost bullets" don't have a chance to spread out too much for you to collect them. If you're playing for score, this will ramp up the difficulty for sure and will give you plenty of a challenge if that's what you're looking for. If you just want to get the 1 credit clear, sit way back and try to pop off the enemies from a distance. It certainly makes your life easier.
As for the difficulty, the internet is once again all over the place. One commenter said something to the effect of, "when you can just sit in one spot, never move, hold the fire button, and clear the first two stages of the game, you know you have a balance problem." Others called the game, "very challenging" and were upset there was no easy mode to help them succeed. Once again, I would advise you to form your own opinion or, better yet, blindly listen to me because I feel like the difficulty was fair and I would put it in the lower-medium range for a shmup. You can't just sit back and never move like that commenter said as you still have to somewhat memorize the patterns of the enemies and take them out quickly before they have a chance to overwhelm you with insane amounts of bullets they throw at your ship. On the other hand, you can take far riskier moves since you know that you'll neutralize the bullets before they can hit you. Knowing how to time all of this is really nice and the stages have a fantastic flow to them. I would say that the game would be fantastic choice for someone looking to get into the genre.
The bosses are a bit of a juxtaposition however. Unlike most of the other enemies in the game that usually die rather quickly so you can rack up an insane score multiplier, the bosses are overly tanky and take far too long to kill. They typically have many destructible parts that will allow you to cancel some bullets here and there to give you a little breathing room, but most of the time it feels like a true danmaku bullet hell game. Some of them have 6-7 phases each and can take several minutes as you slowly chip away at their health bar. On a positive note, the bullet patterns on the boss fights are pretty unique and have some of the coolest ideas I've seen in a long time. The developer had some real potential for coming up with inspired dodging ideas and it shows. It's really fun to learn to weave through all of the bullets blanketing the screen and you really get into a nice flow-state when you're in the thick of things. It's just a shame that they go on for too long and either repeat the same pattern over and over or fly through a series of them before you have a chance to even see what they do.
There's also a score attack mode as well as a training mode, but they really only let you to select a stage and tackle it from the beginning. If you're stuck on a certain stage, this will be handy for some practice, but I honestly never needed it and was able to 1 credit clear the 30 minute long game after about 3 hours of playing it from the beginning each time I had to continue. If you're interested in just playing through the game and have no desire to 1 credit clear it and don't want to play for score, you get extends every 60 million points and there are unlimited continues that put you right back where you died. So, you'll have no opposition if you want to credit feed.
There's also a simultaneous 2-player mode if you want to experience the game with a friend.
Presentation:
When the game starts up you're greeted by a very cheaply done anime theme song that has hardly any animation and is composed primarily of the same few pieces of artwork from the game's promotional material. It does the job, but feels very phoned in and you can tell that the developers just didn't have the time and/or funds to put into this intro. As for the characters, they have really nice art styles that I enjoy. Sadly, you only really get to see these in the menus, title screen, and as borders to the playfield and consist of the same artwork used in the into. The gameplay itself has a decent but somewhat uninspired 3D rendered look to it. It's pretty chunky and has a lot of muted colors that don't stand up to the gorgeous sprite work that is employed so often by Cave or games from the 16-bit era. But, it's not ugly and can even have some nice effects during the game's 5 levels. You'll travel over a city scape, through space, a bug infested forest, and dash through hyperspace before coming to the enemy base. All the levels feel pretty different and each have their own distinctive look and feel to them.
As for the story, there's none to speak of. You're not given any exposition or revealing cutscenes or anything. Even an internet search didn't turn up any information about it. Maybe there's something in the manual, but unfortunately, I don't read Japanese so I'm at a loss. The character designs are so unique and interesting that I would actually like to learn more about them. Why is the police officer hanging out with a king? Is the red guy a pirate? What is going on? I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish this shmup had more story to it...
One really highlight of the game is the soundtrack. It's a rocking fare with wailing guitars, pounding drums, and a ton of low end to really push your sound system. It starts off with a bang and never lets up for the entire game and there are plenty of cool guitar harmonies and epic chord progressions to scratch that Japanese power metal itch. You can tell the developers knew they had a banger score on their hands because the game came with a soundtrack pressed to CD right there in the case. That's a pretty awesome bonus and I'm really thankful that they decided to include it. Most of these songs I wouldn't mind listening to in my car and there is no doubt that my opinion of the game is elevated somewhat by the excellent music as it really does amp up the overall experience.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts:
Everyone is simultaneously both right and wrong about this game. All of their criticisms are justified as the game does ripoff most of its ideas from other games. Despite the fantastic music, the presentation is pretty humdrum. The character artwork is nice and inspired, but I feel like they never do anything with it. During gameplay, the game looks like a thrift store version of a Cave game... which I guess is actually what this game is. There is no difficulty select... and the game can either be too easy or too hard based on which character you select and how you decide to play with them. If you pick the yellow guy and hang back, you're going to get overwhelmed with bullets. If you pick the red guy and get too close, you're going to be smacked by a ship flying right into you. I can see how someone would get frustrated or bored going into the game and it not really play the way they expected. You really do need to understand how the characters work to get the most fun out of the experience. Sadly, because of the bullet cancelling mechanic, even if you're not playing correctly, you can continue to succeed in a sort of dull and meandering way until the later stages where things really jump up in difficulty before getting demolished.
Still, I had a really good time with Bullet Soul and enjoyed every minute of playtime with it. I had a lot of fun playing through the levels and really liked the boss battles despite their bloated length. If these had been tweaked somewhat, that would have gone a long way to bringing this game up to the level the developers obviously wished for. I'm sure this was addressed in the updated version that came out not long after the original. I may actually have to go out of my way to get my hands on a copy.
Not every shmup needs to be extremely complicated and packed with tons of mechanics and scoring systems. Nor does it need to have such an extreme difficulty curve where it takes dedicated players years to master the game. Sometimes, you just want to sit back, shoot, and dodge a few bullets here and there. Sometimes, you want to inch right up to the danger zone and see how long you can maintain before meeting your fate. Bullet Soul does both of these really well and bridges the gap between very casual games and brain meltingly difficult bullet hell shmups. It won't take anyone very long to get the hang of it and get to experience it to its fullest. However, because of this, it doesn't have the staying power that die-hard fans in the community crave so desperately.
Final Status: Beaten (1 credit cleared)
Final Score: 7/10 (A fun shmup lacking in features)
No comments:
Post a Comment