I know I said I'd be playing something else for my next home console review(s), but this game was free with PS Plus this month, and I've really been craving to play a vertical shooter, so it was a match made in heaven! I'll catch up on my promised game(s) next week, probably. It's possible I may be good to go with another tomorrow, but it all depends on how much time I have to game tonight.
My history with vertical shooters is limited, but pleasant. I used to play one of the Raiden games on my friend's computer (not sure which Raiden game), and I absolutely adore Aerofighters. I've also played a ton of vertical flash shooters on sites like Kongregate, but I have very little context for this review, only my gut sense for the genre and how I liked it. I have a bit more experience with horizontal shooters like Gradius and R-Type, but I generally prefer the vertical experience for some reason.
Anyway, Sky Force Anniversary is a vertical shooter a la 1942. It's definitely not in the bullet hell subgenre, but there are portions of the game that feel a bit like that. It's a remake of an older sprite-based game, but I never played the original, so I can't comment on how good of a remake this is.
The plot of the game is that you need to progress through 9 levels, shooting down every bad guy along the way, beating the bosses, and stopping the sinister end boss. It's not heavy on plot, but that's fine in a genre like this. More shooting, less chatting is my motto. You begin with one gun, and can upgrade your ship with stars that drop from enemies you've killed and objects you destroy. The enemies will frequently drop powerups, but these aren't powerups that substantially change the shape of your shots, or add new ones. These power ups merely increase the damage and fire rate of the weapons you currently have.
Rather than a one hit death system, Sky Force Anniversary gives you a health meter which depletes as you get hit. You don't get to get hit a ton of times, but it's definitely more forgiving than a game like Gradius. You can also upgrade your health to increase the number of times you can get hit before dying.
As you upgrade your ship, you can add a few passive weapon upgrades, including heat seeking missiles that fire every few seconds, and wing cannons that go along with your main cannon. You can also upgrade your ship with active powerups that must be collected in each level, including a laser that burns through everything, a bomb that blows up a ton of enemies on screen, and a shield that makes you invulnerable for a time.
The levels are challenging and will definitely require you grinding more upgrades to complete, unless you are a shooter genius of some sort. Most are of the standard fly straight and gun everything down variety, but one features you getting hit with an EMP and being unable to shoot, requiring you to dodge enemies for the rest of the level. This is the point in the game at which it most resembles a bullet hell shooter, although it's not really the same.
So is the game any good? Yes, although it has some weaknesses. The game looks excellent, and the music has a pleasing if repetitive nature to it. The controls are good, and the game is plenty challenging for a novice shooter like me, without feeling impossible. Each level features a chance to get bonus points by earning medals by accomplishing additional objectives like killing 70% of the enemies, 100% of the enemies, rescuing all of the hostages, or getting through the level without being hit. This gives the game a fun grindy nature to it as you cycle back around to each level to accomplish the more advanced objectives after upgrading your ship enough. The bosses are all fairly fun and challenging, and are nice to look at.
There are plenty of secrets to figure out in the game, as certain cards will randomly drop, powering up your ship even more. Finding these cards is pretty fun, and some can be very powerful.
The game, however, uses an annoying system of progress, in which you not only have to beat a level to advance to the next one, but you also have attain a certain number of medals to advance. This necessitates grinding old levels even after you have beaten them just for the privilege of trying the new level. I would have much preferred it if you had been able to advance as soon as you had beaten the newest level, and then find that you need to grind more just to be able to have a chance at victory.
The game is grindy, but it lacks some of the most fun aspect of grinding, seeing your ship grow stronger! Most of the upgrades in the game are incremental in nature, and very expensive. Getting an upgrade in your cannons should result in them changing color, getting a wider spread of damage, or something of the sort. In this game, it looks almost exactly the same before upgrading as after, making the rush of seeing a new upgrade very limited. For example, they could have easily made the health upgrade make your ship have cool looking new armor, but they just make the ship look exactly the same no matter what.
In addition to the problem of not having cool ship upgrades, it's also problematic that there's exactly 0 customization available to change how your ship fires/looks/performs. It would have been much better if they had had some sort of skill tree to make your ship small and fast, or big with high health and firepower, or to change the cannons from a direct line to a piercing shot to homing shots to spread fire. But you always just shoot forward with missiles flying around, which makes for a dull experience that doesn't play to your desires as a player, rather than completely being controlled by the designers of the game.
It also feels like they used the extremely grindy nature of the game to hide a low amount of content. The grindy nature of old games was a feature intended to overcome limited space on cartridges/discs/rom boards, or to suck more quarters out of you, which is two problems that many games no longer have. They could have easily added 5 more levels to this game, and reduced the grind a bit to make the game a bit less repetitious for no reason. This would be like if an RPG now included far less questing and more grinding. Sure, we all have fond memories of Dragon Warrior, but Dragon Warrior was made that way for a reason, and that reason no longer exists. Few could deny that a game like Chrono Trigger is better for its large amount of content that was enabled due to increasing levels of technical excellence. This game feels like it's playing at Dragon Warrior when Chrono Trigger is easily within reach.
But all in all, Sky Force Anniversary was an enjoyable experience for me. I don't think it's one of the best shooters available, nor do I think it's innovative in any way. But it does what it does well, and it scratched an itch for me. I'll give it a 7.6/10.
-TRO
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