23 Reviews:
sacredgeo
Great game, probably the hardest thing I've cleared as of writing this review. This really hit the sweet spot for me in terms of general "flow", challenge, and fun and I hope to continue to find more like this as I continue my foray into fangames.
It's made up of three stages and a boss for each. I'll start by talking about the stages themselves.
The first two are medley stages, and not that I'm a medley connoisseur but they all felt rather different from each other and all were fairly well done. The actual platforming difficulty stays relatively low around for these stages - there are a few tricky sections here and there and some micro avoidances thrown in to keep things interesting, but it never gets too wild, I felt like every save was honestly more satisfying than the last and I more or less didn't put the game down until I hit the second boss and had to go to work.
The third stage is original needle and things ramp up quite a bit here. I found this section to be quite a challenge. For reference, I doubled my death count from everything else up to this point combined in the few screens this stage lasts. It is difficult, but it is not unreasonable. The saves are still very fair and I didn't really find myself frustrated at any point outside of one particular drop in one of the earlier screens. It's also worth mentioning that the save placement in this section is FULL meme and hitting the save is often a part of clearing that particular section. I actually liked that and found it entertaining but it is sort of frustrating when you die at the VERY end of a save.
I'll put my thoughts on the bosses in spoiler tags for those who want to be completely blind, but I'm not actually going to spoil anything here. Feel free to look if you don't mind knowing peripheral details.
The bosses are surprisingly fun to play with some scary looking avoidance sections, but they're really not so difficult from an execution standpoint once you go through them a few times.
The first is challenging enough to be fun, but short enough not to overstay its welcome. The first half is more or less trying to push as much damage in as possible while avoiding the easier pattern (mostly) attacks she throws at you. The second half consists of two avoidance parts, with both being extremely fun to dodge. Final in particular is SUCH a rush. It took me probably 2 hours in total to clear, and I enjoyed the entire experience.
The second is... kind of a meme boss? Another review here mentions that it's like an inside joke that the player isn't a part of and I definitely agree with that, I'm not sure who the person the boss was modeled after is supposed to be but his spoken lines are quite funny and I would assume it's a meme from the Japanese side of the internet that I'm not familiar with. I found myself having difficulty taking his last phase seriously because of how ridiculous it looks, but the boss is still very enjoyable to play and beat from a gameplay perspective. I found this one significantly harder than the first, but it still only took me 3 or 4 hours to clear.
The final boss is by FAR the hardest, but also the most rewarding. Full avoidance, mix of RNG and pattern along with some familiar attacks for Touhou players. There is one section of the fight quite late in that took me a disproportionate amount of time to learn which was frustrating, but getting over the barrier felt so good. I also had one of the most painful deaths in video games period here, where I died to the RNG maybe 1.5 seconds away from clearing in final, but we got over it. It took me between 10 and 12 hours to clear.
I do have a few issues with this one. They largely stem from the first half of the fight becoming an autopilot slog once you route a path through the first big avoidance part, and the hitboxes for some of the bullets used being... a bit wonky to say the least (another reviewer also mentions this). Overall, it's an excellent boss that pushed me pretty hard and one that I'm glad to have beaten.
My biggest complaint with the bosses here comes down to each one having at least one RNG based attack that can completely wall you and there's not a thing that you can do about it at all. They all sort of get progressively shaved down into "well, I hope [x] attack doesn't fuck me because I know the rest of the fight like the back of my hand" the longer you spend on them. I understand this kind of comes with the territory but it's just something I dislike in general. Overall I enjoyed them all though, I want that to be clear.
tl;dr it's good give it a shot
[0] Likes
It's made up of three stages and a boss for each. I'll start by talking about the stages themselves.
The first two are medley stages, and not that I'm a medley connoisseur but they all felt rather different from each other and all were fairly well done. The actual platforming difficulty stays relatively low around for these stages - there are a few tricky sections here and there and some micro avoidances thrown in to keep things interesting, but it never gets too wild, I felt like every save was honestly more satisfying than the last and I more or less didn't put the game down until I hit the second boss and had to go to work.
The third stage is original needle and things ramp up quite a bit here. I found this section to be quite a challenge. For reference, I doubled my death count from everything else up to this point combined in the few screens this stage lasts. It is difficult, but it is not unreasonable. The saves are still very fair and I didn't really find myself frustrated at any point outside of one particular drop in one of the earlier screens. It's also worth mentioning that the save placement in this section is FULL meme and hitting the save is often a part of clearing that particular section. I actually liked that and found it entertaining but it is sort of frustrating when you die at the VERY end of a save.
I'll put my thoughts on the bosses in spoiler tags for those who want to be completely blind, but I'm not actually going to spoil anything here. Feel free to look if you don't mind knowing peripheral details.
The bosses are surprisingly fun to play with some scary looking avoidance sections, but they're really not so difficult from an execution standpoint once you go through them a few times.
The first is challenging enough to be fun, but short enough not to overstay its welcome. The first half is more or less trying to push as much damage in as possible while avoiding the easier pattern (mostly) attacks she throws at you. The second half consists of two avoidance parts, with both being extremely fun to dodge. Final in particular is SUCH a rush. It took me probably 2 hours in total to clear, and I enjoyed the entire experience.
The second is... kind of a meme boss? Another review here mentions that it's like an inside joke that the player isn't a part of and I definitely agree with that, I'm not sure who the person the boss was modeled after is supposed to be but his spoken lines are quite funny and I would assume it's a meme from the Japanese side of the internet that I'm not familiar with. I found myself having difficulty taking his last phase seriously because of how ridiculous it looks, but the boss is still very enjoyable to play and beat from a gameplay perspective. I found this one significantly harder than the first, but it still only took me 3 or 4 hours to clear.
The final boss is by FAR the hardest, but also the most rewarding. Full avoidance, mix of RNG and pattern along with some familiar attacks for Touhou players. There is one section of the fight quite late in that took me a disproportionate amount of time to learn which was frustrating, but getting over the barrier felt so good. I also had one of the most painful deaths in video games period here, where I died to the RNG maybe 1.5 seconds away from clearing in final, but we got over it. It took me between 10 and 12 hours to clear.
I do have a few issues with this one. They largely stem from the first half of the fight becoming an autopilot slog once you route a path through the first big avoidance part, and the hitboxes for some of the bullets used being... a bit wonky to say the least (another reviewer also mentions this). Overall, it's an excellent boss that pushed me pretty hard and one that I'm glad to have beaten.
My biggest complaint with the bosses here comes down to each one having at least one RNG based attack that can completely wall you and there's not a thing that you can do about it at all. They all sort of get progressively shaved down into "well, I hope [x] attack doesn't fuck me because I know the rest of the fight like the back of my hand" the longer you spend on them. I understand this kind of comes with the territory but it's just something I dislike in general. Overall I enjoyed them all though, I want that to be clear.
tl;dr it's good give it a shot
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 65 65
Feb 17, 2018
Yok
Awesome Medley game with bullet hell bosses and screens that aren't used in "every medley game ever." Convallaria Majalis comes to mind. And while the boss battles are inspired by "Kill the Kamilia" they are so much better in "I wanna thank to Daburyu."
[0] Likes
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 79 79
Apr 13, 2015