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Post by Sarge on May 30, 2021 18:44:29 GMT -5
I started the game, but died a couple of times at the temple stage (which has a bangin' theme, by the way). Also, I'd note that you can actually change how your main character plays on the option screen. 1-Way is the default, but two way lets you flip as well, and 8-way does just that - turn a direction and hold fire and you'll lock in that firing pattern. This also just reminds me that despite taking out some tough shooters this month, I'm still basically a shmup noob 'cause I definitely didn't beat it on my first try. EDIT: Aaaaand never mind. I finished Battle Mania Daiginjou myself. Other than a couple of really stupid deaths (screen crush, baby!), yeah, it really was easy. Lots of extra "lives" to earn, apparently you earn continues along the way, too. And what I wasn't doing that I needed to in the temple stage was actually use all the tools at my disposal, i.e. the charge attack/bomb. Made all the difference, and it was mostly smooth sailing from there. It definitely leans hard into the kooky, which was probably quite fun back in the day, but I do agree it can get a bit old. Guess that's the drawback of us old-timers and also years of "weird" games becoming more prevalent. It's a very polished game, though, and I see why it's loved, even if I don't think it's at the level of other stuff I've played this month. I agree with toei's assessment of "good", so it gets a 7/10 from me.
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Post by Xeogred on May 31, 2021 12:46:21 GMT -5
I got up to stage 5 today in Soldier Blade. The stage 4 boss wrecked me the first time too. It seems like you might have infinite continues? But I put it down for today. Freaking good stuff though. Is this the best PCE OST of them all?
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Post by Sarge on May 31, 2021 13:05:52 GMT -5
Yep, infinite continues. You can just keep chugging until you clear it. And yeah, the OST is top-tier.
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Post by Ex on May 31, 2021 20:43:42 GMT -5
I agree with toei's assessment of "good", so it gets a 7/10 from me. I gave the game an 8/10 back in 2016, which falls in line with HLTB's user average of 83/100. Seems I enjoyed the game more than you and toei did. But I'm glad you guys played it.
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Post by paulofthewest on Jun 2, 2021 19:25:57 GMT -5
I got up to stage 5 today in Soldier Blade. The stage 4 boss wrecked me the first time too. It seems like you might have infinite continues? But I put it down for today. Freaking good stuff though. Is this the best PCE OST of them all? Ya, infinite continues and a rocking sound track. Man that was a good game! I did a hold of Super Star Soldier (PCE/JP) and this comes off as the precursor to Soldier Blade. The power ups are pretty similar as well as the level design is familiar. Everything was very enjoyable, but not quite Soldier Blade level of polish/quality so 7.5/10: a great game to play in your backlog/library.
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Post by Ex on Jun 2, 2021 20:40:16 GMT -5
paulofthewestGlad to see you enjoyed Soldier Blade and Super Star Soldier. I hope you complete the PCE trifecta of awesome by way of Blazing Lazers. It's my personal favorite of the bunch.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 3, 2021 6:39:23 GMT -5
I got back to Soldier Blade and knocked it out! I think altogether it was about a 1h38 run for me. Stage 5 was a pretty big difficulty spike and even though that boss seemed easy at a glance, it was a test of endurance since it takes forever to kill. I noticed the green spread weapon was pretty good covering most of the screen in front of you, but dealt the least amount of damage by a long shot. So the laser or normal shot was best against bosses. Stage 6 wasn't too hard after getting the first miniboss down. The final boss was a toughy during the last phase, it felt best keeping my speed to low (for most of the run, despite some fast moving traffic like in stage 5).
Overall awesome stuff. So what the heck is the deal with the lead designer Uriko Uribo? This person even did the music! And ... is this it? Their gaming career was Soldier Blade?
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Post by toei on Jun 3, 2021 7:56:29 GMT -5
I got back to Soldier Blade and knocked it out! I think altogether it was about a 1h38 run for me. Stage 5 was a pretty big difficulty spike and even though that boss seemed easy at a glance, it was a test of endurance since it takes forever to kill. I noticed the green spread weapon was pretty good covering most of the screen in front of you, but dealt the least amount of damage by a long shot. So the laser or normal shot was best against bosses. Stage 6 wasn't too hard after getting the first miniboss down. The final boss was a toughy during the last phase, it felt best keeping my speed to low (for most of the run, despite some fast moving traffic like in stage 5).
Overall awesome stuff. So what the heck is the deal with the lead designer Uriko Uribo? This person even did the music! And ... is this it? Their gaming career was Soldier Blade?
Nah, he didn't do the music. Keita Hoshi and Makiko Tanifuji were the composers. Hoshi was a very active music & sound composer at Hudson who worked in the field for at least 20 years. Ukiuki Uribo (which is probably a pseudonym) was a graphic designer at Hudson who ended up taking the lead on Soldier Blade (this was not unusual at all then). He's got credits for Susanoo Densetsu 3 years earlier, so he must have worked on several games there. We don't know his real name or what other pseudonyms he might have used, and online videogame credit databases are actually very, very partial. Here's an interview with him about Soldier Blade. He wasn't that proud of it.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 3, 2021 8:40:13 GMT -5
Wikipedia fails again.
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Post by toei on Jun 3, 2021 12:29:35 GMT -5
Wikipedia fails again. What's funny is that the wikipedia entry is almost entirely based on the same interview I linked, but they wrote his name wrong in one section (and not the other), and they just... misread or made something up about the music. This is the only part of the interview that mentions music: "Regarding the sound and music, I took the advice of programmer Masaaki Inoue and designer S-guchi-san, and only conveyed my image of the stages to our composers, and (rather conveniently for me) let them do the rest. I did have one selfish request for a medley theme of every stage at the end. Composer Keita Hoshi rose to that challenge." This doesn't mean he composed anything. It means he told the composers something vague, ie "this is an intense stage, lots of small aircrafts, the player is on edge" and let them write music that fit that image. This is akin to how this process is described in tons of other interviews with classic game designers. Actually I got so annoyed with it that I just changed the page lol.
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