Gradius III is one of the games that was included given to me when I rebought a Super Nintendo in college, along with a bunch of great games (Super Mario World, Star Fox, F-Zero, NBA Jam) and several terrible ones (Bill Walsh's College Football, The Incredible Hulk). I was immediately drawn to Gradius III upon completing fooling around with the really good games, and enjoyed it, although the difficulty absolutely crushed me. I recently came back around to it to draw to beat it, and failed, but I'll still review what I played here.
The game is, as you might imagine, the third game in the Gradius series, a Japanese side scrolling shooter (think R-Type, although Gradius came first). The original feature in the Gradius series is a weapon bar which gives the player choice over the upgrades he would like to give his ship. In a shooter like R-Type or Raiden, enemies drop particular powerups which confer specific benefits to the player. For example, grabbing a red powerup will give you homing missiles, while a green one will give you a more powerful main cannon. In the Gradius series, you pick up powerups like currency, and can spend them as you will. So for one powerup, you can increase the speed of your ship, while for two you can add missiles, three upgrades your cannon, and so on. Strategy is thus really important in the game, as some levels will require more or less speed, the use of missiles, shields, and other powerups. It also allows the player to customize his ship to his own playstyle, which is fun.
Gradius III took the series to a new level by not only allowing the player to choose between preset powers on which to spend his powerups, but also determining what those powers are before even beginning the game! This ability to edit your ship will allow you to build a ship that fits what you want to do, and then spend your powerups accordingly in levels.
The gameplay is generally exactly as you would think, with sidescrolling levels, projectiles everywhere, and enemies plentiful and challenging. In keep with the Gradius tradition, you will need to beat bosses by waiting for them to open up to your fire and then shooting the core. The feedback you get from this is usually good, so you can figure out when you're doing damage, and when you're not.
The music is extremely good, with some of the better tunes on the SNES. These will stick in your head for days, and you won't be disappointed.
The graphics are nice, if a bit unremarkable. As a launch title for the SNES, however, it's just fine.
The powerup system is fun, and I love the basic idea of getting to spend your currency when you want, and how you want. There are certain issues with it that I'll cover later, but generally I think its inventive and enjoyable.
The game is absolutely brutally difficult. Having broken myself on R-Type, I will admit that it is not even close to as difficulty as that fiend, but it was still too hard for my taste. It feels like a game that is exactly as it is, an arcade port. Its attractive colors and music, combined with its fun upgrade system, make for an addictive experiment that would make you want to pump quarters into it, and the difficulty ensures that you will, in fact, be pumping quarters into it. I like that in the SNES port you have a limit to continues which ensures that you have to be pretty good at the game in order to beat it, but I think I would have liked it better if they had a mode where you could save your progress so that you could grind your way through it, as having to replay all of the levels you've already cleared just to get back to the part that killed you last time takes quite a long time.
The game's biggest weakness is it's typical SNES slowdown. When tons of enemies and projectiles are on the screen, the system really struggles to maintain a good framerate, which is a problem in a game like this where one hit can kill you. The game will frequently swap back and forth between solid framerate and extreme lag, so you can't predict with accuracy where all of the enemies and projectiles will be due to the varying speed at which they travel.
I felt like they could have gone a bit farther with the powerup system to help make the game's difficulty a bit smoother, and to reward good play. There were plenty of times when I'd have a full set of powerups, and collecting more would do absolutely nothing for me. It would be nice if you could stockpile them and save them to spend on multiple items after dying, as the game gets so tough when you die and then are left with nothing. Your powerups do remain after death, but after you spend on one thing, the counter goes back to zero, so this is really difficult. If you could take your 6 points and spend them on a speed up (1 point), missiles (2 points), and improved cannons (3 points), that would do a lot to improve your chances. But rather than being able to divide it up on multiple powers, you can only spend 6 on the max powerup, which is typically a one time use item that won't fuel you through the level.
In the end, I quit on Gradius III. The crushing difficulty level combined with the need to go all the way back to the beginning upon every game over made it just too much of a time commitment for me to complete. But I did enjoy playing what I did, warts and all. I think it's an above average shooter. I'll give it a 7.8/10.
-TRO
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