- Full disclosure, this was not a 1cc run; I just fired it up, didn’t change from the default settings, and ran up against the wall till I hit the ending screen. That being said, you don’t hit the wall too often and the game is pretty easy. Would recommend as a starter-shmup for anybody
- The only thing technically wrong with Harmful Park as a game is that there are sections (especially near the end) where the contrast of enemy bullets is a little muddy and I had a hard time seeing them. It could use an accessibility setting for that
- However, everything else about the experience is really awesome. Great cute’em’up aesthetics, great sprite work, HUGE variety of enemies, and soundtracks for every level and boss.
- (Though, I would not say that the soundtrack is one that you can put on in the car and listen to any time - It sort of only works in the context of Harmful Park)
- If you could say that every shmup has a gimmick, the gimmick in this one is the weapons system. There are 4 distinct weapons you can switch between at any time, which by default are all assigned to the 4 shoulder buttons as hotkeys. Collecting an upgrade will power-up your current weapon, and getting hit downgrades your current weapon. For this reason, there’s an element of strategy where if you know you’re gonna get hit, you can switch over to a lesser-used weapon real quick and not reset a powered-up weapon
- But most of the time you really will not need to go that far. The game is fairly easy and losing all your powerups is not a death sentence like on Gradius.
- All 4 weapons are good in different situations, and also have their own special attacks associated with them - dropping a bomb does not always drop the same bomb. Learning to switch to the right weapon for the right job is part of the fun of the game, none are totally worthless (except maybe the pies, you can get through the game without that)
- Lastly, I’m pretty sure there is an english patch of this game, but I didn’t use it and you don’t really need it.
サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW
