eXceed 3rd - Jade Penetrate Black Package
The third in the eXceed series - Jade Penetrate (Black Package) - is a worthwhile and fun bullet-hell shmup. That said, it’s pretty easy on the lower difficulties. I comfortably cleared it on easy on my first playthrough, so I would recommend ramping ‘er up to at least normal on your first run unless you’re completely new to the genre. Unlike the previous game, Vampire, Jade Penetrate uses a more traditional mechanic of either spread fire (with fast movement) or focused fire (with slow movement to avoid projectiles and a homing weapon). You have bombs to avoid dying and you also power up your special weapon by “grazing” enemy bullets. While usually a more advanced technique, in Jade Penetrate this mechanic is used in quite possibly the best way I’ve ever seen it done - many of the shot patterns include very cool circular walls of bullets that you graze as they spin, quickly powering up your special attack to decimate the opponents you face. The visuals are also outstanding, colorful explosions and huge walls of enemy fire - it’s just what you’d want from a game like this. Different colored (yet easily distinguishable) shots, score tokens that are collected automatically, and bullets that you absorb upon an enemy’s death to rack up that high score. That said, the frame rate can suffer a little bit with so many sprites on the screen; however, in games like this the lagging frames may turn out to be an answered prayer, as dodging enemy fire is much easier.
– Real player with 73.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Shoot 'Em Up Games.
I played this game after watching clips of the 5th boss. Literally only played it due to the hype music. Having good gameplay in addition to that was just a bonus for me.
A lot of the boss attacks have variance due to variance in boss movements. There’s a lot of reaction dodging due to this. At first glance the game appears to be more about skill & reflex than memorization & strategy.
There is still a good amount of strategy and routing available though. Even patterns that seem like pure reflex can be simplified by knowing which bullets to read & keep track of. Dodging 100% of the bullets is harder than completely avoiding the trajectory of 50% of them and dodging the other 50%, after all. Proper planning can make even the most skill intensive patterns more approachable for lower skill players.
– Real player with 57.3 hrs in game
eXceed 2nd - Vampire REX
Exceed 2nd is a bullet hell shooter that lifts its main gameplay mechanic from Ikaruga. All bullets/enemies come in two colors, and you can switch your own color to absorb same colored bullets (which recharges your invulnerable laser) while being vulnerable to opposite colored bullets. You also do more damage to opposite colored enemies, though it’s often riskier to do so.
Exceed 2nd is more of a traditional twitch/reflex game than the puzzle shooter Ikaruga though. You can still apply strategy to the stages and bullet patterns to get better at them, but it has a lot more flexibility and room for improvisation.
– Real player with 81.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Shoot 'Em Up Games.
eXceed 2nd - Vampire REX, the sequel to Gun Bullet Children, has everything that the 1st one lacked: Astonishing graphics, a soundtrack you’ll want to own, and tight gameplay.
The game is story-wise a sequel to Gun Bullet Children, but this time you’ll side with the vampires against the Church and their Gun Bullet Children. You play as Ria File, a half-human, half-vampire (aka a deviant bloodline). She has the ability to shift polarity: switch elements to absorb bullets of the same element while the other type becomes fatal. This is a mechanic that shouldn’t be unknown to Ikaruga players. The game also has a dynamic difficulty implemented, whereas long survival and scoring gets you in a higher difficulty while playing, and dying reduces the difficulty. The overal difficulty of the game is okay. It might be tricky at first for newer people, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.
– Real player with 12.1 hrs in game
永远消失的幻想乡 ～ The Disappearing of Gensokyo
If you are a touhou fan FULL STOP; BUY THIS GAME AND IGNORE THIS REVIEW.
If you are looking for a good game, read more below and after that ask yourself if you still want to buy it.
TL;DR: Unpolished, badly translated game with very shallow depth on the story and baffling gameplay design decisions that make the game unfun.
The game features itself as a “ARPG” with bullet hell aspect which is prevalent on touhou themed games. There are a lot of flaws in this game, but the biggest problem in this game is it becomes unfair at the later stage. Touhou bullet hell games always has been hard but fair to me, if you die then it’s your fault. Unfortunately Halfway through the game, the game starts to throw more bullshit, at least give dodging I-frames(invulnerability) to at least to counter it (oh yeah, DLC characters might have I-frames with them LUL). It also changes the camera angle on boss fight to make the fight “harder” since it warps your perspective that you think you’re going to dodge a projectile.
– Real player with 49.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Female Protagonist Games.
Fun touhou fan game although the whole “fan based” style story is cringy at times. Dungeons and bosses can be cheesed with certain character even on Lunatic -coughnotReisenandMarisacough-
Pros:
-Decent cast of playable heroes that can be unlocked via Story/unlock requirments
-It is translated into english just change language in the options off main menu
-mix of bullet hell and meleeish
-boss fights are very fun and requires pattern memorization and HP management (certain bosses can mix their next stage attack with a current attack causing mayhem to the players tempo)
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
SUGURI
What can be said about this game… I love it… that’s all, this game is amazing even though I have no idea how to pronounce it’s name. That said, it was origionally made by the Japanese company Orange_Juice (And in fact was their first game) so that might explain the name being in Japanese.
So over the name now let’s talk gameplay. On my current machine it runs at a solid 61 FPS (Acourding to the in game counter which can be disabled) the game isn’t too dammanding on much at all.
Mechanics are solid at best if a little confusing at first due to the lack of a proper tutorial (Sora fixed this by forcing you to go through one) I figure I’ll explain the two most important ones Dashing and Hyper Attacks.
– Real player with 141.2 hrs in game
95 hours later, I remembered I do not have a review for this.
Unlike most shoot em ups, SUGURI is surprisingly easy to get into. Even for the people that do not typically enjoy shoot em ups for more than 2 hours such as myself. So unless you really hate the shmup genre, I believe you should buy it.
SUGURI is a type of game that theoretically should have no replayability, there’s no randomisation in game outside of boss moves. All enemies come in the same order every time. And is the type of a game I normally abandon without ever finishing. However, the music and the game mechanics make it stand out rather well from traditional shmups and keep it enjoyable to play even after you’ve completed the game.
– Real player with 101.4 hrs in game
Hell Blasters
I’m fairly new to playing shoot em ups (shmups) to actually be good at them rather than just credit feed my way through an arcade game. I wanted to get into ‘bullet hell’ shmups but the games are really intimidating. This game was recommended because the designer is an accomplished bullet hell player who made the gameplay the top priority - and made it so you can use the story mode to actually learn to play a bullet hell.
It’s been an absolute blast and the story mode really delivers bite sized chunks of training and the arcade so you can practice them and learn how to deal with the enemies.
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
This is the Bluesmobile of shmups. It may not look like much on the outside, but it’s got the cop motor, cop tires, and probably even the cig lighter. Great level design & bullet patterns, a ton of modes, leader board & replays, great shmup tunes, it’s all there. Great work, devs!
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Hypnorain
Great colorful scroll shooter, with anime bewbs on board :) :
+Visuals: overall design is great, the menu looks nice, the hud looks nice, projectiles and anime gurls looks nice, mobs looks cartoonish but it’s okay.
+Sound: nice music work with 1 problem - if you minimize the game you still hear the music
?_? I guess this is the game engine flaw, so NSFW :)
+Gameplay: Classy Touhou like scroll-shooter, the easiest difficulty already hard for me, I guess you need some practice, you have huge a55 hitbox located in your аrsе (basically all of it), so be careful and don’t get your butt shot off :), you have an option to make the hitbox permanently visible, not only in focus mode, this is pretty helpful, but the game is still very challenging.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
This would be a very weak “Well, it’s completely competent” yes, if it weren’t for the fact that the game is not just bland, but has a real weak bug (ie, every time you hit the default select key on a controller to go to the next stage, it chews a bomb).
It’s utterly charmless, every non-boss enemy sprite is in stage 1, patterns never really do much, and the music is Baby’s First Casio. This is the most paint by numbers bullet hell you could possibly try. Just skip it.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Xmas Shooting - Scramble!!
This basically is QP Shooting Dangerous with New Year theme and Aru the rabbit as a main character.
This game is danmaku, e.g, bullet hell: there will be a lot of enemies flying toward you and shooting cover fire. You need to avoid incoming bullets and shoot down enemies. There will be some bosses, who usually have much bigger HP pool and shoot tougher patterns.
Gameplay-wise, Orange Juice’s danmakus are much simplier than regular danmaku. Bullets are somewhat bigger and usually easier to avoid. The distintictive feauture of Xmas Shooting (and QP shooting) are formations, which determine direction of your fire. You can choose 3 out of 27 formations and switch between them during the game.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Full review at: https://thegamehoard.com/2020/01/05/12-games-of-christmas-xmas-shooting-scramble-pc/
By having multiple difficulty settings, a mode with saving between levels, and destructible shots that clear away other bullets to help prevent the screen from getting too cluttered, Xmas Shooting – Scramble!! is able to make a more accessible bullet hell game without sacrificing the important elements of the genre. Success still requires precise dodging and the enemies have plenty of shot types that make them diverse and consistently challenging, but there’s definitely a content problem in this small spinoff title. Few stages and most of your shot types requiring repeated plays to buy mean you’ll likely have you fill of Xmas Shooting – Scramble!! before you can purchase most of them, but it’s a fun and cute shoot ’em up for the short time it lasts. While definitely a stranger pick for a game to play on Christmas day, it’s still a lighthearted and colorful way to enjoy the holiday even though it requires weaving through a screen full of deadly lasers.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
QP Shooting - Dangerous!!
In most of the Shoot’Em Up & Bullet Hell games, they are fun to play, delivers good intense bosses moments and frustrations that sometimes enrages you like never before (that depends though). Such elements are well expected in this genre and that’s what make the games nice, if it is. And for that, QP Shooting - Dangerous!! is one of those games in that genre that delivered quite nicely, in a way. Let’s check it out.
The Gameplay
In this kind of game, there’s nothing much to expect, except shooting enemies at sight. It is very straightforward and pretty simple to play. You shoot, evade the incoming bullets and defeat all the bosses until to the end. Of course, the simplicity depends on how hard the game is, in which in this case, is the opposite. One might think playing the Easy difficulty would be fine, but it’s just as unexpectedly hard. And don’t think about the Super Difficulty (the Ultra Hard mode) as it’s insane. Then again, since this is a Bullet Hell game too, so it’s understandable. Moving on, the interesting features in this game are there are the different formations and modes. This is nice because it has so formations and modes to choose from, thus, making you wonder which is the one that fits you best. So, even for just a stage, you can replay it with many different formations and modes. However, unlike most generic games, it has no continue and once all the lives are depleted, that’s it, game over. You can’t continue and that makes it very super frustrating, especially if you’re going for certain achievements and ended up dead in final boss stage. Bummer! Speaking of achievements, there are a few easy to get while some are insanely hard to achieve. It kind of makes you wonder, what were the developer thinking to make such an achievements that could enrages you to the level you’ve never imagine could. Hard game. Plus, it only has 5 stages so it’s kind of short for a shoot’em up game. In fact, it’s kind of rare too.
– Real player with 28.8 hrs in game
Despite how simple this game looks, it’s a shockingly deep and polished bullet hell smup. While, if your a fan of the genre, you’re probably not going to encounter many completely original mechanics, what you will find is a large range of ways to approach a familiar formula. Unlike many bullet hell games, where defensive play is essential, in this the majority of bullets are produced by low health minions, and since bullets are transformed into points on death, aggressive strategies are shockingly valid. The game also allows you to customize your bullet patterns (although most need to be unlocked) and switch between three of them on the fly (either with a direct bind and/or with cycling if your prefer). While most are fairly simple, some are complex and can be affected by the direction of your movement, your location when you switched to them or the use of slow move (the essential bullet hell feature reduces your speed and displays your hit dot for precise dodging).
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Rabi-Ribi
Revised on Feb 10, 2019.
Pros
Do you like rabbits? Fairies? Characters with animal ears? Cutesy art style? Lighthearted and a little bit silly story on the outside with darker themes on the inside? A variety of different personalities?
If that didn’t spark your interest then perhaps you are more interested in things like a great soundtrack, platforming and map exploration or bullet hell style boss battles? Those things I just listed are only a few reasons why I like this game.
Cons
– Real player with 498.3 hrs in game
An essential addition for anyone who enjoys 2D action games and gets a thrill from persevering against insanely difficult bosses for hours on end, Rabi-Ribi is at its best when it’s testing you to dodge a swarm of bullets (with gravity, no less) in its over 30 boss fights, but is also an enjoyable platforming and exploration game that offers tons of replayablity due to its extremely non-linear design.
First thing’s first: This game is fanservice-y, but that’s not the focus of the game. It’s aware enough of this to lampshade Ribbon’s skimpy outfit at times. Don’t be turned off by the Steam store page description about a bunny-girl costume, because I would not have sunk 200 hours into this game if I just wanted to look at ecchi. You’ll see some humorous dialogue teasing at yuri themes as well, but overall, the story of the game is an actual story about Erina, Rabi-Rabi Island, and some of its inhabitants, though it doesn’t truly begin to unfold until halfway through the game. The initial premise is that Erina, formerly a pet rabbit of Rumi but turned human by unknown means, is tasked with trying to track down Rumi’s sister Miru, who has been magicked away by a stone tablet, and Erina needs the help of other magic-users on the island to power this tablet and follow Miru. But there’s a much more interesting story that you’ll uncover about the island’s origins and a figure from its past as you progress–though it remains bunny-themed to the end.
– Real player with 430.0 hrs in game
Wings Of Bluestar
I have been following this game since it’s inception. What really stuck out was the graphics. It’s all hand painted with allot of detail in the environment. The game is a combination of Pulstar and Blazing star with a touch of R-type. it works really well. i found myself addicted to play the game again when i died. oh yes you will die, but you will make it a bit further each time you try again. That is what a shmup is all about. It also helps that the sound effect are really crunchy with great visual effects.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
Very good Side Scrolling & Hybrid Bullet Hell Shoot Em Up.
Impressive Beautiful Art work through out and wonderful story line.
Great Controls, Well designed 8 + Big Stages.
Lots of variety of enemies and super cool Bosses.
Cool soundtrack, 3 Difficulty levels to choose from..Easy, Normal, Hard.
2 Awesome ships to control..Bluewing Ship, The Defensive with a shield (Force).
Altair Ship, The offensive no shield but well armed.
Nice influences from the classic R-Type, Pulstar & Blazing Star Arcade games.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game