Finally got around playing this game to see what the hype is, and I think this game is way overrated. It feels to me people just play this game and get spanked and then figure you must act like this game is super awesome so you don't lose your hardcore cred. That's not how it's supposed to work. The game is supposed to be accessible and make you want to get better at it, not that you've to get better at a game so that the game is accessible. It's no different than the super duper ultra hardcore scenarios in quite a few of the strategy games I played. The reason why you've never heard of any of them is because only someone who is totally obsessed with the genre would even attempt these things, and while they might be adequately challenging for the few freaks that knows the genre inside and out, they're certainly not how you're supposed to introduce anyone into the game.
Similar to Touhou it's super memory dependent, and like the later Touhou games, I actually don't see any reason why I'd ever want to get good at this game. Just like Touhou's intersting girls dried up after TH8, the whole polarity thing gets old after you died 20 times. I know the Touhou games always like to think of the enemy shooting pattern as some kind of art, and likewise in this game I guess you're supposed to manuever in some of kind of equivalent of a fancy footwork to navigate through all this stuff, but honestly, most of the time it just doesn't work. I think the final boss had a few genuinely good looking patterns but everything else is pretty bland. In fact, this game reminds me of Touhou in the sense that there's always a better game that's an obvious cheap knockoff of the original. Just like Concealed the Conclusion is arguably better than any Touhou games (even the good ones like TH6/7/8), Exceed Rex 2nd is arguably better than Ikaruga. You can actually get to Fenris on one credit the first time so you'll actually have the motivation to beat her, and she's plenty hard if you don't cheese her with the max polarity charged shots. Maybe it's because Fenris has a very good voice actor (you can probably guess what she's trying to say even if you don't understand what she's saying, and I looked up her quotes and they're actually very relevent to the fight and the story itself) while Ikaruga is silent. The weird thing is that the last boss is probably trying to talk to you (you see text on the screen) but there is no voice acting.
I'm guessing the game is supposed to wow you with its graphics, which is indeed quite good for a shooter. But the bullet hell genre is all about the actual bullet patterns, and there's nothing here that's remotely comparable to say Fenris's wing blitz or Remilia's Scarlet Meister. I do give them credit for designing a shooter game that doesn't look like it came out before the PSX era, but shooters is one genre where I can cut the developers some slack of graphics. At least the game does have unlimited continues (Touhou does not for many, many games). Is this a bad game? Of course not, but if graphics don't matter, it's not even better than Exceed 2nd, which is an obvious cheap knockoff of Ikaruga. The music is quite good, but it's not better than Touhou, and Touhou's music didn't save it when it ran out of interesting bosses, so it doesn't work here either.
Similar to Touhou it's super memory dependent, and like the later Touhou games, I actually don't see any reason why I'd ever want to get good at this game. Just like Touhou's intersting girls dried up after TH8, the whole polarity thing gets old after you died 20 times. I know the Touhou games always like to think of the enemy shooting pattern as some kind of art, and likewise in this game I guess you're supposed to manuever in some of kind of equivalent of a fancy footwork to navigate through all this stuff, but honestly, most of the time it just doesn't work. I think the final boss had a few genuinely good looking patterns but everything else is pretty bland. In fact, this game reminds me of Touhou in the sense that there's always a better game that's an obvious cheap knockoff of the original. Just like Concealed the Conclusion is arguably better than any Touhou games (even the good ones like TH6/7/8), Exceed Rex 2nd is arguably better than Ikaruga. You can actually get to Fenris on one credit the first time so you'll actually have the motivation to beat her, and she's plenty hard if you don't cheese her with the max polarity charged shots. Maybe it's because Fenris has a very good voice actor (you can probably guess what she's trying to say even if you don't understand what she's saying, and I looked up her quotes and they're actually very relevent to the fight and the story itself) while Ikaruga is silent. The weird thing is that the last boss is probably trying to talk to you (you see text on the screen) but there is no voice acting.
I'm guessing the game is supposed to wow you with its graphics, which is indeed quite good for a shooter. But the bullet hell genre is all about the actual bullet patterns, and there's nothing here that's remotely comparable to say Fenris's wing blitz or Remilia's Scarlet Meister. I do give them credit for designing a shooter game that doesn't look like it came out before the PSX era, but shooters is one genre where I can cut the developers some slack of graphics. At least the game does have unlimited continues (Touhou does not for many, many games). Is this a bad game? Of course not, but if graphics don't matter, it's not even better than Exceed 2nd, which is an obvious cheap knockoff of Ikaruga. The music is quite good, but it's not better than Touhou, and Touhou's music didn't save it when it ran out of interesting bosses, so it doesn't work here either.
