Report 31: Japanese retro + etherane
This is a very short (but still legendary) run’n’gun game, the original arcade version. It’s tolerably hard and no death felt like the game was being cheap to me. It’s very fast paced and enjoyable. Although I find it weird you can only shoot diagonally up while moving, and you can’t shoot straight down at all.
While Anniversary Collection provides savestates feature, I didn’t abuse it as hard as I thought I would.
Overall, it was very fun.
The game that started it all, I believe it needs no introduction whatsoever.
It’s a really hard action-platformer with lots of pits doom, lots of flying enemies, and lots of you getting knockbacked into oblivion. My favorite kind.
It’s pretty fair difficulty-wise and I don’t remember any losses that felt too cheap.
I was really confused about the sub-weapon system and hearts at first, and it took me two levels to figure it out by complete accident.
Just like Contra Collection, this one features savestates too, and boy did I needed it, especially in the boss battles. Welp, at least I’ve completed the first levels earnestly (because I forgot about it).
Hated that you can just fall through the stairs if you’re not on walking down on it.
Overall, it turned out to be surprisingly fun.
I skipped the second one since I realized I’m not gonna like it 10 minutes in and went straight for the third one.
This game strongly reminds the first one, but somewhat improved. Enemies’ AI isn’t that annoying (btw the game reuses most of the first one’s arsenal), there’s quite a few new mechanics and a branching path for you to take. You can meet three additional characters during your playthrough and you can switch between them anytime you want. I’ve encountered Grant (didn’t use him at all) and Alucard (used him in a couple moments during the boss fight for his projectile attack).
Just like the first one, I would probably never finished it without savestates.
Overall, a really solid retro game.
It’s another game by etherane, the Hello Charlotte series’ creator. It is certainly in the same vein, but much less humorous. It is very short and the only gameplay consists of wandering around doing easy puzzles. Just as usual, it features quite a unique story and lore. As always, really liked the artstyle and sound design, even if it was, uh… thematically limited on purpose. There are two endings.
Overall, just what I expected from etherane, for better or worse. If you’re liked Hello Charlotte, I’d say give it a try.
Backlog progress status:
It’s tolerably hard
While Anniversary Collection provides savestates feature, I didn’t abuse it as hard as I thought I would.
If you felt the need to use savestates at all, you can’t really call the difficulty “tolerable” since, you know, the original game didn’t have savestates, and you using them meant you couldn’t tolerate the original game’s difficulty.
“Tolerably hard” as in “I think I would actually beat it if I tried hard enough”, obviously. It’s just that I’m not ready to sink that many hours in most of games like these, I just want to have some fun after work. If the game somehow provides me the means to cheese through, I’m the guy to use it. This “tolerably hard” means that I saved at the start of each level (since there’s nothing I hate more than starting from the beginning due to personal time constraints) and not just using saves every time I can, like in mainline Castlevanias.
I’m more into slower and save-your-progress-occasionally types of hard-ish games, I recently finished classic Flashback on Expert and really liked it.
Since the review for Castlevania III won’t open and I’m too lazy:
I skipped the second one since I realized I’m not gonna like it 10 minutes in and went straight for the third one.
This game strongly reminds the first one, but somewhat improved. Enemies’ AI isn’t that annoying (btw the game reuses most of the first one’s arsenal), there’s quite a few new mechanics and a branching path for you to take. You can meet three additional characters during your playthrough and you can switch between them anytime you want. I’ve encountered Grant (didn’t use him at all) and Alucard (used him in a couple moments during the boss fight for his projectile attack).
Just like the first one, I would probably never finished it without savestates.
Overall, a really solid retro game.