ESPgaluda

By Spencer . September 26, 2005 . 9:23pm

Purchase at Play-Asia

 

Purchase at Lik-Sang

 

Some would say the age of the side or in this case the vertical shooter is a dying genre. Recently games like R-Type Final, the upcoming Gradius V and now Espgaluda have been reviving the genre. Props to Ikaruga, which was one the games that ignited this trend with its revolutionary light/dark system. Espgaluda follows in the footsteps and inevitably lives in the shadow of Ikaruga. Yet, Arkia’s Espgaluda manages to hold enough gameplay and thrills to make it’s own name.

 

If we’re going to get right down into gameplay Espgaluda is a vertical scrolling shooter. Unlike some of the other revival shooters like R-Type Final, Espgaluda really piles stuff on the screen. The game throws wave after wave of battle ships, fairies holding guns and giant robots at you. The endless swarm of enemies constantly pummels the player with barrages of bullets that you either have to dodge or block. At times it seems that there is way too much stuff on the screen for players to focus on. The constant flashing of the bullets and explosions is at best a minor seizure. On the other hand, all of the action on the screen drives players to react quickly, which means there is never a dull moment playing the game. When you play the game there are a couple of basic strategies, which are simple to learn, but hard to master. The first is your basic attack. You can hold down the X button and you’ll shoot out a concentrated straight laser blast. You can also gently tap the X button and you’ll unleash a wide spray of bullets.

 

At times shot down enemies will release emerald gems. These gems play a role in the Kakusei system. By pressing triangle your character’s state to an "awakened" state. In this mode the game has a bullet time effect where all of the bullets change to a purple color and move at half speed. This means you’ll be able to dodge shots easier. If you get hit while you’re awakened you’ll automatically use your guard barrier energy to make a shield to deflect bullets. While you’re in awakened mode you constantly use up your gems, each gem equates to about a tenth of a second in real time. Gems will also drain when you shoot enemies down, but if you shoot ships down in Kakusei mode you’ll get lots of bonus points. You can switch in and out of Kakusei mode at anytime, to conserve gem energy. Although, if you don’t switch out of awakened mode before time runs out the enemy bullets will move at double speed. Mastering when to use Kakusei mode is a challenge. Fortunately, the game comes packaged with a DVD featuring a "Super A-Class" player completing the game, which helps give players an idea of how to use it. The DVD is something amazing and defiantly a nice addition. If you put it in perspective many Ikaruga fans purchased the Ikaruga Appreciate DVD for an extra $50, while Cave packages a comparable DVD for free. The only catch is the DVD is a region 2 DVD, which means you’ll have to break out your region free player to watch it.

 

The soundtrack in Espgaluda compliments the intensity of gameplay. The background music is electronic dance music that sounds something like a Webster Hall Tranzworld CD. The fast BPM music represents the fast maneuvering a player has to do to beat the game. Most of the songs sound really good, even if some of them, like the boss tune, are played too much. The sound effects such as the explosions, laser sounds and so forth do drown out the excellent soundtrack. Worse of all about the sound effects is that they don’t sound too sharp. This is probably due to the conversion of the arcade board effects, which won’t be up to the same level of quality as the PS2 can handle.

 

If there is one thing wrong with this game it’s the graphics. There is nothing wrong with sprite based graphics, if they aren’t smeared and pixilated. The explosions and power up icons suffer from some serious pixilation. All of this pixilation is surprising since the game is running at such a low resolution, it doesn’t even cover the width of the screen. The enemies aren’t that clear and sometimes blend in with the screen, which is due to the lack of different colors. Seriously, there are some Sega Genesis games that use more colors per level than Espgaluda uses. The low resolution makes the main character and enemies tiny, real tiny. During a two player game it’s easy for your character to get lost if it’s not constantly shooting things. Arika did have some nice concept art in mind, which can be viewed in the gallery mode. The original concept graphics have a fantasy feel to them, even though you’re fighting giant machines. Unfortunately, the in game graphics don’t do their original concept justice and don’t have much distinction to them.

 

Espgaluda is a short game if you play it through using the unlimited continues the game offers. Shooters like these are more about mastering the game for replay value, rather than offering lots of bonuses. Arika does offer two different characters to play with: Ageha and Tateha. Both characters have different styles of attack for instance Ageha relies more on a powerful linear attack while Tateha has a wider attack. For a real challenge Arika added in an arrange mode that has two new characters and no continues for a real challenge. If you’re looking for a challenging and intense shooter look no further than Espgaluda.

 

Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 1

All of the game’s menus are in English and story sequences are in English, which is nice for import gamers. The only thing that remained in Japanese is the "How to play" tutorial, which explains the game’s controls.

 

US Bound?

Ikaruga made it over and so did R-Type Final so it seems possible that this will come over as budget software like Gunbird.

 

+ Pros: Perfectly fitting sound track, intense shooting, bonus DVD

 

- Cons: Dated and unpolished graphics, "short" playthrough, overload of stuff on screen

 

Overall: Espgaluda is sure to quench the thirst of player looking for a new shooter as a challenge, but it might be too old fashioned for modern gamers.

 

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