DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou Review (eShop Conversion)

Holds the Guinness World Record “The most successful danmaku shooter developer” — a flimsy compliment that seems entirely crafted for their receipt — Cave’s Year DonPachi the entries form bullet points in the company’s evolution, from its Toaplan-like beginnings to its full-blown, bullet-hell renaissance.

SaiDaiOuJouThe final entry of the series and Cave’s final arcade shooter, carrying the clear style of its predecessor, DaiFukkatsueven cleaner; The shiny blue aesthetic is created from 3D rendering and a billion pixels. It also offers adjustable difficulty options and an automatic bomb on/off feature. However, its core is similar DoDonPachi DaiOuJouCave’s greatest and most beautiful work.

SaiDaiOuJou, despite his sweet anime appearance, is pure, unadulterated rage. And while that’s a motif of most bullet hell games, here you can feel it right from the boss in stage one. Where DonPachi is measured, DoDonPachi is fuel-injected, DaiOujou is a murderous symphony, and DaiFukkatsu is precariously experimental, SaiDaiOuJou is clearly evil. It’s also famous for having the hardest hidden boss to ever hit the board in the form of Inbachi, which is unlocked if you achieve a near-perfect, bomb-free streak. For the record, she has only been defeated once in a single credit attempt by Japanese player Sairyou12 years after release.

Outside of the arcades, DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou was previously only available on Xbox 360, making its Switch appearance a welcome one. Unfortunately, the 360 ​​port suffered from incredible inexplicable input lag that was only fixed with a fan patch. We have used the same testing methods as applied to the 360 ​​instance and believe the issue has been resolved. With the TV’s Game Mode enabled and in the handset, the TV felt solid and responsive across the board. And, while it’s impossible to completely eliminate lag — and especially not on a flat screen — with the right setup it’s still the superior version.

It also brings all the bells and whistles of the Xbox 360 in the form of store unlockables, including wallpapers, production images, and in-game modifiers that soften and create New way to experience the game. There are also fun mini-challenges for you to take part in, such as defeating certain mid-bosses with a certain number of kills or bombs.

The original arcade release of SaiDaiOuJou was actually slightly broken due to an exploitable scoring bug. These have been addressed for the home release in the new 1.5 version which rebalances the game into a fairer, more polished product, with increased Hyper duration. Included in this package are four distinct modes, all upscaled in high definition: HD arcade, Ver. 1.5, Novice mode and “Saya Ver.” the arrangement allows you to play as an original character previously limited to the storyline.

In all modes except arrangement (in which only Saya can be selected), you choose from three Elemental Dolls: female pilots, each with a unique shooting style. You can choose automatic bombs if you’re new, although this will kill the scoring attempt; and each doll has three configurable states of undress to change the emphasis between your shot and laser. Caution is required here, as stripping your Doll as much as she needs will maximize both your shooting and laser power, but makes the game significantly more difficult.

SaiDaiOuJou’s scoring heart is similar to DaiOuJou. You need to sink into oblivion, capture hidden bee symbols throughout the level and use the Hyper function at key moments to increase your score and connect it all together. Hypers allow you to temporarily unleash powerful firepower, at the expense of increasing the speed of incoming bullets. In SaiDaiOuJou, Hypers are earned by filling a gauge in the HUD and can be stacked to extend their duration and increase scoring potential. In turn, this increases the game’s rank, which means an increase in difficulty, and the only way to lower this is to bomb or die.

While its complete nature requires a different discipline than either DaiOuJou or DaiFukkatsu, scoring is still a beautiful, mesmerizing thing that draws you into a ferocious campaign of fire, shrapnel, and chase. by digits. Whether playing for points or just focusing on survival, it’s a breathtaking spectacle, constantly blazing in a shower of rocks and scoring bars and eye-popping pyrotechnic explosions.

For our money, the 1.5 is the best choice in terms of overall polish and balance, but the Novice and Saya arrangement modes are also extremely fun to use. In particular, Saya’s Arrangement (and if you turn off the nonstop chat) has a very fun one-shot run where you can engage Hypers almost continuously, netting green point icons tree to keep your multiplier from decreasing from the maximum of 10,000. It offers an initial risk and reward system that beginners will really enjoy engaging with and veterans will love mining to score points.

While it’s important to realize that SaiDaiOuJou is normally not an easy game and has a steeper learning curve than DaiOuJou, it is a masterpiece in its own right. It tweaks and regroups what was seen in previous entries for an even more bombastic and intense feel, but makes the use of Hyper less dangerous and more frequently used. Sometimes, when you’re peering into the eye of a storm, waves of pink and blue bullets flash across the screen, where you gain an almost clairvoyant sense of clarity: that moment you see the path.

It took a long time and a deep understanding of bullet hell games to achieve this out-of-the-way spectacle, but the adrenaline rush that comes with pinging Hypers at key moments, cancels Instantly drop bullets on the screen or successfully connect the boss’s diverse attack patterns, delivering a high like few others. And, while Cave does its best, with the conditions for the true final boss Hibachi and later Inbachi aimed at shooting maniacs, SaiDaiOuJou is the first game in the DonPachi series to only require a single loop best of the game.

A bit of unevenness keeps SaiDaiOuJou from being the best movie, but it certainly comes close. The Hit-box’s parameters are particularly unforgiving, especially when compared to the likes of DaiFukkatsu, making lucky escapes less common; and aesthetically, it is so overwhelmingly blue that all the stages seem to blend into one. Some achievements cannot be achieved by mere mortals, but others will be satisfied to play the game on their own terms, reshaping the game with new tactics and deeper insights.

The package itself is extremely comprehensive, with plenty of options to configure, allowing you to define everything from screen rotation and sizing to replaying records and online leaderboard achievements. With so many variations to experiment with and so many avenues to take, one could lose several glorious years because of it.

Conclusion

Despite its beautiful appearance, DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou’s anime style is really unremarkable and the non-stop chatter will be turned off by many. But these are just small, pithy criticisms of an astonishing work by the masters Danmaku: a series finale that performs and often boils over in endless hail of bullets, drawing you in. back and forth in the eye of the storm as you forge your path to victory. There is a beauty here that only Hang can have; harmony between scoring and surviving; Enjoy the sheer adrenaline rush as you string hitboxes across the pixels, finding routes amid breathtakingly dizzyingly choreographed chaos. It may not be easy, but oh it’s worth it.