@TracyDMcGrath Yeah I should probably just wait then, and save my import budget for games like Hishozame! Same Same! that are unlikely to get localized!
I’d love to hear your impressions of Reshrined though (to make me regret my discipline in not ordering it)!
@Karasu it feels like how someone who played the SNES game as a kid would remember it in their mind. It‘s very similar but the graphics are all more detailed and prettier. The level design evokes the SNES game with similar settings, bosses, and plot points, but everything’s just a bit more. The bosses have twists on their OG counterparts or extra phases. The levels are a bit more varied and have a bit more branching. And maybe this is just me being rusty on games like this but it feels a bit harder than the original, but fair. You still have a short range melee attack that reflects projectiles and a dash and a bomb like in the old ones so you never really feel like you didn’t have the tools to deal with something. And you can always replay levels once you get to them so losing never feels that bad.
It is more or less to the SNES game what the SNES game was to Kiki KaiKai.
Like look how pretty this freaking game is
https://twitter.com/IkaRaidenEX/status/1516834092662239233?t=rtEwc5d7lU-dNUdXLL91Cw
Oof yeah, it's just stunning!
I'm basing this mostly on Ninja Warriors Once Again, but I think Tengo Project has a really good approach to making all of these games that, like you said, are a bit like a person remembering the originals would remember them as-- just target making them look super lush but clearly still hand drawn. It's a good look!
Gameplay wise, I think this shooter thread doesn't give these kinds of non-autoscroll directional shooters enough justice. I mean, I'm not even aware of a good term to refer to them, so... yeah. Maybe Senjou no Ōkami-likes? I think maybe it's because there are a bunch of really bad NES ports of arcade games out there that could never duplicate their unique control setups, and by the time they got good, twinstick shooters had stolen their thunder.
Which reminds me-- a question, if you don't mind: does Reshrined duplicate the original's control scheme for aiming?
@Karasu it‘s Senjou no Okami/OutZone style fire in the direction you’re moving rather than twinstick or Zero Gunner or Guardian Force style.
There were some conversations along these lines on Twitter yesterday. I honestly don’t see much reason to draw a genre line separating most of these outside like Metal Slug or Contra which feel more like platformers. Even some twinsticks feel shmuppy, like Nuclear Throne feels a heck of a lot more like a shmup than a roguelike to me with its secret levels and TLBs and infinite looping. Gungeon less so, which is probably why I like it less haha
It‘s difficult to say anything substantial about Reshrined beyond "it’s exactly what you hoped it might be". That said, as with the other Tengo Project game, it does have a few little wrinkles that make it slightly annoying to play in co-op or with more casual players: three of the five characters are unlockable and you have to run through the single-player story mode twice to unlock them all, and the mode that lets you play co-op also has to be unlocked.
I just call these games "overhead run-and-guns", seems as good a descriptor as any other. Shock Troopers is the GOAT to me (at the moment, anyway), and Guerrilla War/Guevara on NES/FC is a way, way better conversion than the likes of Ikari would have you believe.
My copy of Reshrined just came in the mail… And yup, it‘s my game of the year, very simply. What’s funny is that even though it‘s a Japanese copy, it’s all fully in English! Was this the case for any of you who got it digitally? Makes me wonder why the English version is officially releasing a month from now when the software has technically already been shipped.
But my god, this is the single best-looking pixel art game I've seen in my life. Especially just in that first level, with all the dynamic shadows and leaves and such. These guys seriously know how to leave an impression. It's been incredible seeing how they've fleshed out all the original _Pocky & Rocky_ stages too, and noticing which parts of the level design they prioritize. For example, in stage 2 of _Pocky & Rocky_, what I tend to think of most is all the little monkeys in the forests, and then later the long river sequence with the kappas and the crabs. In _Reshrined_, they seem to care a lot more about the human-built structures and the yokai. I'm not complaining - that kappa section in the original, frankly, was pretty bad!! They made the right move for sure not just in scaling the difficulty way down and also cutting it to be considerably shorter. Maybe the best way to phrase this is seeing how they "proportion" the levels; which elements from the original they bring more forward and which ones they let take a backseat. I've stopped my first play session in the third level, which is 100% completely brand-new to this game, and was a great surprise in several ways. It's just a buffet of great ideas presented in the best audio/visual experience on a modern console. The one thing I'm not huge on is just *how* different the power upgrades are per-character, but they're certainly unique and I can imagine warming up to them once I spend more time with the game and learn the intricacies of how certain abilities are better suited for different parts of the stages. Maybe this doesn't mean much coming from someone who has literally had Rocky as their profile picture for nearly their entire duration on these forums, but this is the single best newly-released video game I have played in years.
@gsk Ah, yeah, ‘overhead run and guns’ perfectly encapsulates them, I agree! And I agree with you about Shock Troopers too! It‘s one of those rare games where the sequel doesn’t have quite the heft of the original.
Hmm, I’ll have to give the NES Guerrilla War a try. I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever played it!
Wow folks, you’re chipping away at me as far as Reshrined goes! I continue to be plied by the incredible job they’ve done with the art and how well they’ve adapted the source material.
I can‘t waaaaaaaaaaaaaaait for Reshrined. But. I am gonna wait, till it’s in English.
I just saw that Caladrius Blaze is on sale on Switch for around $9, & I had it wishlisted because of the Raiden DNA. But...characters' clothes come flying off? With a "shame break" system? I know I recently posted about FinGun, but this seems less goofy & more creepy.
Yeah I really can‘t get past Caladrius’s…aesthetics? I wish those were virtually anything else because I‘m sure it’s a fine game with its Raiden adjacency
Also for what it's worth Pocky and Rocky is entirely translated in the digital and physical versions
@TracyDMcGrath Yeah, I‘d love nothing more than a 2000s Raiden-like tonight, but it’s too much to hope for self-awareness. At best, I was thinking it might be a so absurdly dumb it’s innocuous thing (i.e. Deathsmiles), but I looked at a video just now & it seems like a cool shmup that fades hentai JPEGS on & off screen for some reason
BUT that news about Pocky & Rocky that I somehow completely missed might just turn the night around, so thanks for that. Those are some aesthetics I have zero reservations about. Been looking forward to it but thought I’d have to wait, & now I can be a part of the Insert Credit Shmups/STGs thread mini-zeitgeist
@TracyDMcGrath Also for what it’s worth Pocky and Rocky is entirely translated in the digital and physical versions
Just for complete accuracy – although I don’t think that matters too much to most people – I believe the title screen (the graphic asset for the game’s logo) is not translated in the Japanese version. And same for the game’s icon in the Switch’s home menu. So that will probably be different.
@chazumaru ah good point! Menus, story, tips, all translated though.
@Funbil your review here is getting me unreasonably hyped. i want to play this game real bad, but it‘s more than 4,000 yen, and i just started Nobody Saves the World (which is excellent, and scratches a somewhat similar itch). glad to hear it passes the Pocky & Rocky fan test. i’ve never actually played the original, but i know its reputation, and this remake has the most gorgeous graphics, like you say!
One other minor difference between Reshrined and Kuro Mantle no Nazo: a certain character features slightly less cleavage in Reshrined (and yes, certain people are obsessing over the change).
Reminder for those who need it:
Touhou 9’s out on Steam: Touhou Kaeizuka ～ Phantasmagoria of Flower View. on Steam
Hishousame!same!same! will be out in Japan for PS4 & Switch this Thursday:
also out this Thursday: Layer Section & Galactic Attack S-Tribute for PS4/XB/Switch/PC:
One thing I am noticing about Reshrined is that, when tapping a different direction on the d-pad, your character starts moving immediately but takes a few frames to actually face that direction. It‘s a very strange timing quirk, and I wonder why it’s there… Maybe they were being conscious of butter-fingered players who found the original games to be tough when trying to aim in a particular direction (not a complaint I have, but one I can imagine existing), in which case a buffer-zone seems like a fairly elegant solution. The new problem this spawns in its stead is that you, in fact, wind up needing to be more deliberate with your aiming, not less. This game simply does not accommodate the same twitch-precision multi-directional shooting/reflecting/diving navigational options that, in my opinion, made the original Pocky & Rocky feel so fluid and exciting. I think Reshrined does a good enough job designing its levels and bullet patterns around this, but there have been several times where my character feels separate from the controller, and a death has to be justified with “Why didn't that shot/reflect come out right? Oh, I guess I should have held the direction down longer.” It does, however, make me wonder about a proper “strafe” feature, and how much easier Pocky & Rocky games would be with one. They'd feel totally different and surely would need levels built from a completely different perspective, but the fact that you can do mini-taps in Reshrined to make your character move a direction without actually facing that way is an interesting philosophical game design decision to me. That article LeFish linked the other day mentions this game feeling slower than the original game - which I agree with - and aside from the levels just being physically larger, I think this might be at least partially a reason why.
@gsk One other minor difference between Reshrined and Kuro Mantle no Nazo: a certain character features slightly less cleavage in Reshrined (and yes, certain people are obsessing over the change).
Lord, when I was researching Caladrius, I was reminded of how much of an unmitigated cesspool the Nintendo Life comments section is around similar issues. It’s weird because the staff does not seem like that at all, but they just let the community run wild like incel spring break over there
ANYWAY, I got over that untranslated Pocky & Rocky title screen real quick, and it is of course just as much of a gem as I’d hoped and as everyone here has expressed. I feel that there’s not much I can add to what’s already been said other than that is has the best autumnal leaves to ever appear in a video game and that it is indeed so good that it has awakened something within my repetition-adverse wizened shell (I’ve normally been credit-feeding shmups these days). I am happy to try and try again because the pacing, satisfying balance of simple mechanics, and honestly so very much because of the art direction and music (my ~~~~god the tiny lit pixels when enemies dissipate). The new orb skills (or at least skills that I don’t recall from the older games, so maybe new-to-me orb skills) remind me of mechanics in Cotton Reboot, and that’s a good thing, too
I was going to write about more STGs I’ve been into lately, but that’s another thing about Pocky & Rocky: it’s one of those games that halfway through writing a forum post about it, you really want to get back to it. So, bye
Got my copy of Reshrined today and I‘m having a great time. I played the first game once so definitely not a veteran and the moving and shooting took a while to get used to as it looks like it should be a twin stick game. I was playing it at a faster pace than I should have been and getting frustrated but then I started taking it slower and now I’m having a blast. It had better win best looking game in all the awards and lists at the end of the year.
