Ketsui Deathtiny (PS4) Review

 

Ketsui Deathtiny (PS4) Review

Date Released: 20 November 2020

Date Played: 25 June 2021

Introduction: 

Ketsui is a legendary vertical shmup developed by Cave for the arcades back in 2003.  Its full name is Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi and has been ported several times to various consoles ranging from the Nintendo DS, PS3, Xbox 360, and finally this definitive edition on the PS4.  It was ported by the venerable M2 and is part of their ShotTriggers series of games in which they recreate the arcade experience for home consoles as accurately as possible while adding insane amounts of extra features, modes, and training systems. Since its release, Ketsui has reigned at the top of many lists of the best shmups of all time and makes it onto almost every fan of the genre's top 10 list.  It is, without a doubt, one of the most beloved, copied, and hard shmups ever made and is an essential entry for any arcade game lover to play.  It is universally heralded by almost everyone and as of the writing of this review is ranked #1 on Shmups Forum's list of the greatest shmups of all time. 

Story:

While most people, including myself, don't really consider the story in a shmup to be that essential, it can serve to add a little mystique to an already great game.  This is definitely the case with Ketsui.  And, since the game is in Japanese and it's difficult to decipher what's going on unless you speak the language, I'll give a brief overview of the setting for you. In 2054 the world is in disarray because global warming has led to the icecaps melting and covering much of the inhabited parts of the world under water.  Because of this, there is a huge shortage of resources that humanity requires. This has lead most remaining nations of the world to be in a state of perpetual war with each other in their need to gather as many of the remaining resources as possible.  Despite their best efforts, the United Nations has been unsuccessful stopping any of these conflicts because an arms dealer called EVAC has become a tremendously wealthy war profiteer by selling hyper-advanced weaponry to all sides of the conflict. This has led to a huge decline in the world's remaining population and EVAC seems to have no regret in contributing to an even more post-apocalyptic world. Negotiations with EVAC have been unfruitful as they refuse to cooperate or cease operations in their pursuit of money and power.  Their profits have been so massive that they have created their own cities, military installations, and combat force.  Since the UN can't attack them officially but needs to stop them, they create two superpowered helicopters that are each equipped with a pair of pilots.  These helicopters are designed to look like EVAC vehicles so the pilots can sneak into the enemy cities and take them out.  Since this stealthy attack musn't be allowed to be traced back to the UN, the pilots are on a suicide mission and even if they succeed will have to sacrifice themselves and their helicopters and never return home.  In return for this, each pilot is awarded one wish by the UN for their sacrifice.  

It's a very dark premise, but I think it's quite brilliant that your goal in the game is essentially to wreak as much havoc as possible since you know that you'll never get to return. It really embodies the modern doctrine of, "you only live once" and I really like seeing the hordes of enemy vehicles explode by your hand.

I wonder what their wishes were...

Gameplay:

I'm not going to beat around the bush, Ketsui is one of the most difficult games ever made.  Many fans of the genre even say it is THE hardest shmup ever.  This is saying a lot since many gamers consider bullet-hell shmups to already be on the more extreme end of the difficulty scale and relegated to the domain of the niche gamer and otaku. But, there's no need to worry.  M2 has sorted out this issue with this version of the game.  I'll touch on their brilliant solution shortly.

The game is a military based vertical shmup that plays like most of Cave's other games. You have the standard spread shot that lets you maintain your ship's normal speed and is good for taking out large waves of smaller enemies, and you have a focus shot that deals more damage but slows you way down.  The spin, this time around, is that the focus shot has a lock-on mechanic that allows you to keep blasting the enemy even when you move out of a direct line of sight. It's a really, really nice and refreshing mechanic that allows you to focus on dodging the waves of bullets instead of having to aim your shot.  These abilities are modified even more by selecting one of the two available ships in the game.  The first ship has a wider spread shot, fast lock-on speed, and slower movement while the other has a narrow spread, slow lock-on, and faster movement.  Both ships feel really balanced and it's possible to clear the game with either of them.  So, pick the one that suits your playstyle and start learning how to use it as best you can.  Both ships also have the standard bomb that does massive damage and can save you in a pinch.

Ketsui truly stands out in the gameplay department and is a masterclass in refined and interesting enemy placement, bullet patterns, and set-pieces. The whole experience is exhilarating, fluid, fun, and so well constructed that it puts most other shmups to shame.  Learning the levels and finding a way to route through them is basically every shmup fan's dream. In terms of arcade style gameplay, Ketsui is practically perfect and I've never heard anyone voice any negativity about it. The reason for this adoration stems from its simple, yet challenging and brilliant scoring system.  Now, normally, I tend to play for survival when it comes to shmups, but in the case of Ketsui, it's so good that even I got into it.  I'll do my best to explain it here, but keep in mind that reading about it is far more difficult than experiencing it for yourself. 

The game essentially rewards you for risky behavior (it is a suicide mission after all). When you kill enemies with your spreadshot, they drop these green chips. The closer you are to an enemy when it dies, the more valuable the chip is worth and these chips are totaled together to give you a multiplier and increase your score. The value of the last chip you picked up (5 is the highest value) is locked in and you can switch to your focus shot to make all enemies you kill drop chips with this same value regardless of how far away you are. The goal is then to chain this focus shot for a huge multiplier which essentially boils down to getting right up in the enemy's face and trying to dodge the onslaught of bullets until a wave of popcorn enemies fly down and you switch to your focus shot and grab tons of multiplier chips. If you use your focus shot when you're not chaining, it subtracts from your multiplier. Whatever your multiplier is when you finally defeat the end boss becomes a bonus. I know that's a lot of information thrown at you all at once and hopefully it made some sense. You'll just have to trust me that it doesn't take to long to get the hang of things once you figure out what's going on.

The game takes place over 5 stages that each include a huge mechanized mid-boss as well as a final boss.  The first four of these stages have a perfect length and are memorable and action packed.  The final stage, as is the case in most Cave games, is overly long and tends to overstay its welcome. But, overall it's almost perfectly paced with no lulls or downtime.  The waves of enemies fly out at you in way that is reminiscent of a rhythm game and once you memorize everything and get into your flow, it's almost trance-like. 

While I do find this score system to be fascinating, it doesn't really fall into my playstyle. I'm not a, "get up in your face" kind of gamer. However, it was so intriguing and fun that I did learn some routs and timing for the first half of the game that allowed me to get a fairly decent score and pick up a couple of extends. In addition to this, there are a couple of secret 1Ups hidden in stages 3 and 5 respectively and if you're able to snag them will be a huge boon to your success. Believe me when I say that you're going to need these extends because the game, as I mentioned before, is absolutely brutal. If I had to put it into words, I would say that Normal Arcade mode is like... extreme mode on most other shmups. This is even referenced in the game's title. Even the easy difficulty in standard Arcade mode will give most shmup veterans a run for their money. Ketsui roughly translates to, "Determination." And, that's something you'll need in spades to truly tackle this monster of a game.

To help with this, the masters over at M2 have added in a ridiculous amount of features and modes into this PS4 port to help you learn the game and tweak its characteristics to your liking. Firstly, there's a much desired Super Easy mode so anyone can have a chance at this game. It's an absolute blast to play and is one of the biggest features of this version of the game. It really slows down the bullet speed and thins out the massive amount of them that you normally have to deal with. Yet, it doesn't make the game feel like a passive endeavor as there is still plenty of engaging gameplay there for even experts. Additionally, there's the titular Deathtiny mode that acts as an arrange mode that has completely redesigned scoring mechanics and different survival tactics and is the big draw for the PS4 release for huge fans of the game as it rewrites the way the game is played. Not only that, there's a super hard version of the game that was used for a shmup competition years ago that has been previously unplayable until now and is so comically difficult that I'm surprised there's more than a handful of people in the world that would even have the slightest chance to clear it. There's even a custom arcade mode where you can set and change almost any parameter of of the game and has 10 different difficulty settings to tune the the gameplay to your specifications. It really helps you slowly ramp up the difficulty of the game to gradually get better and better and makes getting a clear on the game much easier since you can start from any section of any stage and build up your skills over time. This will eventually let you work up to the 100% perfect port of the arcade version of the game included in this package. If this weren't enough, there's also the Arcade Challenge mode that's become a mainstay of the M2 ShotTriggers releases. It gives you the opportunity to play through every single section of the entire game, on every difficulty, on every loop. You tackle each section of a stage (5-6 each) and if you die, the game rewinds and gives you another attempt to try again. You'll have a set number of attempts before the game makes you restart from the beginning of the section. If you're able to clear that section, you're graded on how well you do and how many attempts it took you before it will allow you to move onto the next one and give it a shot. It basically turns each section of the game into a mini-game that allows you to clear the entire game in segments and is a massive training tool and is the most valuable part of the entire package. Not only that, the game also gives you save states, records spots in the game where you die repeatedly and allows you to replay them whenever you want, and has plenty widgets to let you know how you're doing and where you need to improve. These tools give you everything you need to succeed if you're willing to put in the work.

Presentation:

The graphics of this game are pretty good and have that standard chunky sprite-work that Cave is so well known for. The backgrounds and settings of each stage are standard fare with military bases, ship ports, and cityscapes. With the military theme of the game, you'll encounter an assortment of tanks, planes, helicopters, ships, and other vehicles that are appropriate but aren't really anything special to look at. Unfortunately, this is the same for the bosses and mid-bosses who, while they are huge war machines, aren't particularly inspired in their design and are rather forgettable. All of this is set in a rather drab and dull color pallet that certainly looks like it's straight out of wartime and is most likely exactly the look that the designers were going for. Sadly, none of it is very interesting to look at and is rather boring and generic. I've seen so many shmups like the 19XX series, Strikers, etc. that have this same military based aesthetic but seem to stand out just a little more. Maybe it's because there's no real way to present a war-time game without making it look muted and covered in greys and greens, but it feels like I've seen it all countless times. I wish Cave would have gone with a more outrageous art style and put as much thought into the look of the game as they did with the gameplay.

Sadly, in addition to this, the soundtrack of the game is rather boring and repetitive. It has a sort of rock mixed with electronic EDM feel that is present in a lot of Cave's most known games. Sadly, the chord progressions tend to just shuffle back and forth without ever really going anywhere and there's very little melody and the only slight hook that I can recall from the soundtrack is at the end of stage 4 and is too brief. The sound effects sound good an punchy but are nothing to write home about either and blend in too much with the music the give an overall muddled sound. A truly memorable soundtrack could have propelled this game into the stratosphere and cemented it in it's throne on the top of the shmup pile.

On a positive note, this version of the game contains rearranged music that you can choose to use instead of the standard soundtrack if you want to mix things up. Unfortunately, this music is all based off the original score and just doesn't have a good enough base in terms of its composition to be turned into anything exceptional.

Final Thoughts:

This leaves us with shmup that has an interesting premise, near perfect gameplay, but has a really boring and generic looking art style with mediocre music. The game is extremely difficult on the standard arcade mode, but this release gives enough alternate modes and training tools to provide worthwhile gameplay for anyone who wants to give Ketsui a shot. Despite it's mediocre presentation, the gameplay alone is good enough to not only carry the game, but even launch it into rarified air. While I do side with the general consensus of this being one of the hardest games of all time, I disagree with it being the #1 shmup of all time because of its aesthetic shortcomings. It is such a fantastic game, though, that it probably would have been my favorite shmup of all time if it had better art style, character design, and music. As it sits, it's still near the top of the list, but doesn't quite grab the top spot. Yes, it's so difficult that people spend years and years learning the game and honing their skills just to be able to do the 2nd loop, but that isn't really a requirement to have a worthwhile experience with the game. While I do love the game, and put in enough time to get the platinum trophy for it, I don't want to dedicate my life to its mastery... as that is what the highest levels of the game requires from its most devoted players.

This is honestly the best package I've ever seen on a shmup. The features, modes, and just general gameplay are all top notch and it's truly remarkable what M2 provided with the release of this game and I'll purchase any other game from the ShotTriggers series that they decide to make. There's really nothing more you could ever want from a shmup release.

I would recommend this game to anyone and everyone. If you have the ability to play it, you should do so as soon as you can. It's a must have for anyone who has even the slightest interest in playing shmups and an awesome experience even for the casual gamer.

Final Status: Completed (platinum trophy acquired, 1CC on several modes)

Final Score: 9/10 (almost perfect gameplay set in a boring world)

Bullet Soul (Xbox 360) Review

 

Bullet Soul (Xbox 360) Review

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)

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)