Bullet Witch

"Good title for fans of niche games."

Sometimes people think I'm blind when picking up games. They ask why do I pick up and play such good classics such as Enchanted Arms or Samurai Warriors? Well I tell them, these games are good once you get past the cheesiness that is what the Japanese call humor or emotion. Not to offend anyone, but the dialog in some of these Japanese games are ridiculous. Case in point, meet Bullet Witch a great X360 game that sports horrifically funny dubbing and late generation Playstation 2 graphics..

Story: 5/10
So in the beginning of the game they show this man fall into a hole for no apparent reason. While he does go on to say some inane chatter that you could barely decipher anything from, you tend not too care simply because the scene was too short and uninspiring. After this scene is through they show Alicia(the main character) talking to some inner demon within herself, they go on to speak about the current situation of the environment they are in. Than out of no where these "Geist" as Alicia calls them appear and the fighting begins. As the story progresses you find out who that man at the beginning of the game was and what purpose he had in all the happenings in the current world. You get a glimpse of the final boss in the beginning of the game but you do not fight him. You also meet a fellow comrade throughout your adventure that helps you here and there. The premise of the story is basically Alicia fighting these demons to cleanse the world and have civilization regain it's former structure.

:One thing to note is, you never find out who the demon in Alicia is. They never explain it, which I thought was kind of silly."

Controls 8/10
They are pretty good, you use the right trigger to shoot the left trigger to evade attacks. Also you sport weapon switching on the fly with the B button, X is used for reloading and the right and left bumpers are used for your magical spells. My only gripe would be the turn speed, I know you can adjust it. To me it just never seemed right, sometimes it would be fast sometimes it would be sluggish. This is why I docked two points. Otherwise the controls are perfect.

Graphics 5/10
It's like they couldn't decide what they wanted to do with the graphics. Sometimes you would see some really nice things, mostly sub par PS2 level type graphics. Other times there would just be one simplistic texture on a building and that's it. This becomes really noticeable when you do your spells, because they zoom up on said texture and it just looks awful. The character model for your comrade is excellent though. The hair and general detail of this character look really good, but you as Alicia do not look nearly as good. Alicia's hair looks like bacon strips pasted to her head. It's absolutely atrocious. As for environments they are mediocre. Some buildings look decent while other buildings have that one texture look as I mentioned earlier. Another thing to be wary about is the framerate, it jumps from 30fps down to 5-10fps when a lot of things are going on. This most noticeably happens when you destroy a building. That's one of Bullet Witch's good points the destructibility of the environments. In my personal opinion the graphics were decent they weren't extremely bad to the point where you cannot play the game, but I can see some people passing this game up because of them. This game in no way pushes the X360. Cavia hopefully will make there next game on par with other next gen games of the same genre.

:Note, I have played this game on an RPCRT HDTV at a resolution of 1080i:

Sound: 5/10
Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds weird. I don't know if it's how the sound was mixed our whatever. For some odd reason, they predominately used the left speaker for this game. All the speakers where used, but most of the sound came from my front left channel speaker. Except dialog which used the center speaker. It's also not a problem with my rig, since other games work properly. It's not annoying, it's more of an awkwardness since I'm not use to having the sound setup like that. Other than that, the sound it generic, the soundtrack consist of two songs. Or it seemed that way because the music all sounded the same. The dub voices were funny, even though I don't think they meant for them to have any comedic value. Alicia's voice had zero emotion, even in the supposedly sad scenes. Though I did like her voice and it did fit the main character. It just lacked any emotion compared to the Japanese counterpart. This could be a personal thing though, since other people generally hate the dub or love it. I found it nice and amusing. I especially liked the voices of the Geist. They stood out the most, and also fit the most in this game.

Replayablity: 5/10
Yeah, you can play it again and again and again and again for achievements. As for me though one time was good enough. Supposedly downloadable content is suppose to be coming out. More missions and costumes, but as I said one time was good enough for me. This game is great for people who want easy achievements for just beating the game. So the replayablity only lies in getting achievements which some people might like. As for me not so much.

Final verdict: 6/10
A great rental or bargain bin buy. A great attempt for Cavia at something new. Play this game if you like niche titles.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/07