"You'll either love this game or you won't"

I have to say I love this game. It's the most cutesy, psychedelic, moderately badly translated game I have ever played and it's absurdly addictive.
It's an over-the-top view shooter BUT the interesting part is that it's a VERSUS over-the-top view shooter. It just keeps getting better...

GRAPHICS: 6/10
Ok, not what you'd expect from the Dreamcast. If you've played Magical Drop or any of those types of SNK games you'll know what the graphics look like. It's old MVS engine graphics at it's most scarily adorable. They're slightly less impressive than Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Everything is so sugary sweetly cute it'll have you running for the insulin but if you can get past the seemingly Strawberry Shortcake look of the game you'll find really enjoyable gameplay

SOUND: 6/10
Bohs-Attaku! The Ingrish, and japanese sayings during gameplay are slightly funny and the music gets tuned out if you get into a heated battle cause it's so blah. You only really notice the music at the beginning of a battle and it's not the best music in the world. The voices are funny cause it's usually the announcer lady yelling about power-up (like FEEVAH, which is Ingrish for Fever), boss-attack or your own character wailing in defeat or saying something in japanese when they win. Not great but it's better than Metal Gear Solid 2 codec conversations with your girlfriend during a fight...

STORY: 5/10
The main reason to play this game is for the 2 player mode, the story is a good way to practice if the tutorial isn't enough

GAMEPLAY: 10/10
It's near impossible to explain without making it seem like it's some sort of drunken nightmare or a drug induced brain fart, but it is fun. There's a very good tutorial but you'll have to play it to get the hang of it. I'll try to explain it but I'd probably have more luck getting you to understand Multivariable Calc and other hard stuff...and junk...

...How can this be? you ask, understandably baffled. Directly competing in an over-the-top shooter? This aspect of the game more than makes up for the 2 seemingly negative aspects of the game itself. It's both simple and hard to explain. You each start out w/ 3 hearts but with 5 heart containers for a life bar. Touching the bad guys on your screen takes half a heart each time you hit one (each time you're hit your life gets transferred to your opponent, the baddies on your screen alone can't kill you though) BUT your opponent can send over bad guys to your screen and they're the ones that can actually kill you. Basically you shoot puffy cloud beasty things or clams with eyes or treasure chests or whatever the bad guys are a particular level level and they turn into cute flames with eyes that jump over to the other side of the screen to your opponent. NOW your opponent can either avoid these flames, which can sometimes seem impossible, or shoot them back to your side of the screen. If your flames get shot back you can destroy them to unleash a special character specific move or a character specific boss attack (depending on how many flames you destroy at once) like a robotic cat or a giant evil cake to terrorize your opponent.

Now what also adds to this fun is the variety of characters with different stats and special moves. Each character has stats in two categories; power and speed. They also have specific charge moves and special moves (you have a power bar that charges for 3 levels that builds as you blow stuff up, level 1 is a powerful shot blast, level 2 unleashes multiple special moves on the opponent's side and level 3 unleashes a boss onto your opponent). It actually makes the game very well balanced and fun to play.

LANGUAGES and ETC:
The other thing that might be good or bad is the different languages the game can be presented in. English (default), Spanish, and Japanese. The English is passably ok but when you read some things they'll either make no sense or be hilarious. It's no zerowing but you'll get a couple of giggles. For example, in one of the endings someone says
"Cleaning and Doing laundry are fin" instead of fun and the boss character says something funny when she wins:
"Time to go back to my castle and munch on sweet tacos"
Sweet tacos? The hell?
Apparently she likes to eat cause all her special moves are foods that attack you.

Another thing is that there is slowdown at times. The action does get hectic and there are lots of flashes and explosions to the point you think you're watching "Battling Seizure Robots" but the slowdown does help you out at times so you can actually find out where you are so you can move out of the way of a tsunami of bad guys. Other than that it doesn't happen too often.

IN SUMMATION:
It's the weirdest group of things to combine into one game but if you give it a chance you may enjoy it. Interesting versus gameplay, balanced characters and special moves, and it's really easy to pick up and get the hang of.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/25/07