I believe Dodonpachi Maximum and Aka to Blue share the same primary developer. Maximum was $12 when it came out in 2012! Five years ago! The graphics and effects aren't really comparable and there is a lot more dodonpachi history and artifacts to incorporate into that game. If anything, I would compare a2b to the original donpachi or dodonpachi games. I just played though maximum all the way through and switched to a2b. A2b is brutal by comparison because the patterns move so much faster. It's exhilarating and I'm still working out how to get through level 3. Also, from watching the various trailers I would bet that the purple and black characters are unlockabkes.
Again, I did repeatedly say I didn't think it was a bad game, and that people with more skill than me would probably really like it. Just wish some people had been a little less enthusiastic over the Cave connection... and that I'd been a little less desperate, I guess. My complaints still stand, though - too hard for any real wide appeal, too barebones, too generic. None of those are a dealbreaker (I mean, I'm not asking for a refund or anything!), but they still frustrate me. I've bought shmups for full, console/PC premium price before, but generally with the expectation I'd get more out of them than just high score chasing. Oh, also ...yeah, that was something else that ticked me off. I have no idea what stage the bomb gauge is at without looking down at the actual number; I just hear some garbled machine noise and see a faint flash which pretty much looks like all the regular pyrotechnics. I went back to Psyvariar 2 for a bit - where you scrape along the edge of enemy bullets to score big, and also to charge up a gauge that lets you be totally invulnerable for a second or two. If I hear the callout in that game and see a bright pink glow that doesn't look like any other effect, I know straight away I'm invincible for a very short time. If the callout keeps looping (because the gauge keeps filling over and over), then I'm still invincible. No way it can be anything else. Aka to Blue still manages to feel a bit like that but I'm never totally certain what I'm doing, because there's nothing to tell me for sure that I'm at a level 5 bomb or a level 1 without looking down at that number - the voice is just gibberish, I can't even tell what it's saying - and a 1 and a 5 do very, very different things so I need to know. It's still a very good game! These are just nitpicks! But part of me expects masterpieces from anyone associated with Cave, not just "very good", and it's a pretty big blow to be reminded yet again that nope, this isn't the good old days any more, this isn't "Cave", and they're gone from iOS forever. I mean, the nick I use comes from a Cave game...? So it's hard not to be let down. :shrug: EDIT: Haha, so that's kind of on me; turn off the 'story' (the talking) and the pilot calls out the charge level instead, in a proper clear voice. That's much better. Still a complaint, though... you shouldn't have to play the game a certain way to get one of the mechanics to work properly. <_<
Oh Haha I was actually the same, I had no idea what my charge level was or if the bomb was available (which was a gripe I had). Then I turned off story and all of a sudden, super clear call outs which are great.
Up to the final boss and... this game is a really weird mix of pretty easy and not-at-all, tbh. It's hard to find the right words: it's not that difficult to reach a kind of "Will this do" performance and sit there repeatedly charging up to level one and firing it off, but occasionally I slip up and usually die a few seconds later. Thing is the same thing happens at the opposite end of the scale, too - I got to the final boss and was repeatedly charging up to 5 in about half a second, but then I died because the iPad wasn't registering the taps on the screen properly any more (it is definitely not 100% reliable at all times, especially when the screen is really busy). Some patterns feel almost impossible (I'm an old, and my eyes/reflexes simply are not good enough any more to pass that rapid left/right pattern on the stage 3 boss with anything other than pure luck). Others are just "Is that it?" - I beat stage 4 on my second try, and my first time on the boss (it's really, really easy to repeatedly fire level 1 bombs off his patterns). I stand by my complaints - it's a good game, but it's not up to Cave's old standards - the visuals get a bit better (stage 4 was more impressive), and the music is growing on me, but I've seen it done better too many times to ignore where it falls short (often by the very same people). And once I've beaten it I know I'm not likely to be thinking "Oh, I really have to play that again". It's much too hard to score really well for me to ever bother with that, and there's not much else to keep me coming back. So on the one hand it feels like "Yay, a new relative touch shmup for iOS, whoo, this is awesome!" ...and on the other hand it feels like one of the biggest disappointments I've had from playing games this year.
The sound works fine on my iPad Air. But touches don't work on both side black area when trying to fire a bomb.
So is this game not optimized for the iPad because it just uses screen in the middle with 1 inch black nothingness up the sides
Not sure how I feel about this one. In terms of challenge, it’s about on par with hell mode in your average CAVE game, albeit with the two amenities of only having to survive through one level at a time to progress, and really fast bomb charge refill. I can get through every iOS CAVE release at max difficulty on a per-level basis; can’t do it here. I guess acquiring a good sense of when to use bombs simultaneously will make the game both easier and be conducive to high-scoring. I’m not crazy about this focus. For an insider example, I prefer playing DDP:BD with Exy; this is very much a Shotia experience. So far, I’ve been stuck on level 4.
Still stuck on the final boss; got him down to pretty much no health (he seems to do one final attack pattern before you finish him off) but - this will sound like the most "U NEED 2 GIT GUD" thing in the world but I swear I've been killed at least five times because the game will frequently not allow you to fire a bomb off/will even fail to do the auto-bomb if the pilot is still saying the callout. I've heard "STAGE THRE- UUUURGH" or whatever more than I like to remember. It's ridiculous. Add to that the fact that when his patterns really go nuts and you fire a bomb off the sheer amount of stuff on-screen means the game seems to stop picking up the second finger tap (this is an iPad Air 2, still on the last version of iOS 10, with the game on high settings - it doesn't seem to affect the framerate, however) and it's much harder than it ought to be. Same opinion as my other posts: I like it and part of me hopes it sells but it's not remotely a replacement for prime Cave and people shouldn't be saying it is.
The auto bomb doesn't work if you crash against the enemy, it works just when you're hit. If you crash, you'll lose a life. This becomes obvious in the level 3 boss. If you go over the trains, you'll crash and no auto bomb will save you from losing a life. I'm enjoying this one a lot, and the fact that bullets go faster than in Cave shooters is great for me, it's really making me improve in this kind of games.
I am aware you get hit if you collide with the enemies. I am saying that if the pilot is currently calling out the charge level, the auto-bomb does not work as intended - that if you get shot and the pilot is speaking, the auto-bomb will not fire. It's very easy to avoid crashing into the enemy ships; I'm practically certain that's not what's doing it. EDIT: And also, just to make sure I'm being clear here: on the final boss, certainly when he makes his first appearance, when I'm firing off a level 5 bomb into his heavier bullet patterns when I've already got one triggered - so there's bullets and coins and explosions all over the place - I have to tap repeatedly with my second finger to get the game to recognise it because sometimes it simply won't let me fire off a bomb until way after he's said "CHARGE EXCEED!". The game does not appear to slow down to any appreciable degree, but it stops responding to the double-tap. This has got me killed more than once. The bullets don't really go faster than Cave shooters, IMO, unless you mean on the easier iOS difficulty levels. Either way that doesn't really bother me, though, given you're supposed to be cancelling them most of the time (you should ideally be firing off bombs almost constantly. Certainly on the really chaotic parts of the stages you'll charge up to level 5 almost instantly if you get it right). EDIT: Whoops, okay, that one's on me, I... wasn't actually on the final boss. Bleh. Now I am (at least I assume I am). Same criticisms, though, and that's a fairly jarring difficulty spike.
You have to wait until the bomb you set off goes off the screen before setting off another. The larger the charge, the longer it takes to leave the screen, which is why you can't set off a lv. 4 or 5 bomb and then another one right after it... But you can usually spam levels 1-3 fairly quickly... It's covered in the 'How to play' section.
Hmm... I did read that, but probably just glossed over it; the way they actually implement it still doesn't feel quite right to me. Like I said about Psyvariar 2 before, in that, if you see and hear the feedback the game is giving you, you know you're invincible for a couple of seconds, no ifs or buts - the fun is trying to guess exactly how long that "a couple of seconds" will actually be and seeing if you can trigger the effect again within that interval. With this, I feel like the game is telling me "If you have a level 1 charge or greater, you're invincible" and yet that's clearly not always the case. I find that very frustrating at times. (EDIT: Note that I'm utterly rubbish at Psyvariar 2 and can't even beat it on Very Easy, I just think the invincibility mechanic is a brilliant piece of design.) Still, I stand corrected, and it is more of a nitpick than anything else. It won't stop me trying to finish it just yet. EDIT again: to be absolutely clear, I think that if you've got a bomb on screen, and if you have any charge built up, you should at least get to eat a bullet/dodge death still. It is not "beginner-friendly" to basically punish you for having fired off a level 5 by making you wait for what seems like an eternity in a bullet hell shmup before you can do anything else with your only effective weapon. The game is still good enough I want to keep trying (I agree, it does manage to do that thing where you get better almost without realising it) but I think these things still deserve to be pointed out.
Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. I'm really trying to hold off on critiques until I get through the game and then start going for a higher score. I'm still stuck at the last boss myself, but from what I can tell (at least I think, anyway), is that the key to scoring big is holding off on bombs until the end level boss, building your chain meter then letting a lv. 5 bomb go during the end of the boss battle to get all the coinage pts while your chain meter is as high as it can be. Bosses also seem to drop coins at a steady little drip if you're holding onto your max bomb charge... I dunno yet. I'm enjoying it, but I totally agree with the 'not beginner friendly' sentiment. If nothing else, I already feel like the 4 hours or so I've spent playing since release has been worth the purchase. And I'm almost certain the added challenge of trying to get through stages without letting bombs go will change my opinion of the game after I start trying to play for a better score. Cave seemed to have a very special team of people all at the same time while they were producing their masterpieces. Holding this up as a comparison because a few people who were involved with those games kind of feels like comparing a few people who played in a great band, but wound up doing their own thing after that band split apart, to the original great band. More often than not, those couple of musicians are just not going to be able to capture the absolute magic they were able to be a part of previously. If that made any sense at all... =oP
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is the difference between the two character's bombs. AKA guy's bomb seems to shoot straight up and is wider in diameter than Blue girl's, which seems to sort of veer off to the side or target the closest enemy. I think Blue's bomb is meant to be homing, sort of. In practice, AKA's bomb seems to do more damage, generates more score items, and thus refills much more quickly if used well. There may be a more effective way to use Blue's bombs that I haven't discovered yet. Or am I just imagining the difference?
Blue has an arrow that goes in the opposite direction of movement, whichever way the arrow is pointing is the direction your bomb will travel.
