Universal AKA TO BLUE (By Tanoshimasu Co., Ltd.)

This may be me being dumb, but at least twice now on stage 3, towards the end when your flying above the highway I could swear that I have been put on an alternate path that fly next to the highway but not over the top of it directly. Is this just something I'm imagining? Screen does the little rotate bit like towards the end of level 1 as well...

 

I mentioned this in the review comments a few days ago. Blue is definitely more difficult to play with.

To be fair, I think synth mentioned it first.

Also, someone earlier said you can't tell your bomb level without looking at the number. The rings around your ship tell you your bomb level (five segments) and progression to the next level.

 

Impressions

1. Difficulty: THIS IS HARD. I love the punishment it offers, tho. Still stuck trying to beat Stage-3 boss. My score keeps getting higher (at first, I'd get to the boss with around 30mil, but now I can make it with 100mil and with his HP reduced to 1/2, I reach 400mil+), though I can't beat him! Hopefully they'll add an "Easy mode" for beginners instead of tweaking main difficulty. Adding another life to the counter would make it quite easier (THAT WOULD BE EASY MODE). It'd be hilarious if after clearing Stage-5 there was a pop-up waying "Tutorial Complete".

2. Polygons: Even though sprites/pixels in CAVE's games are top notch, this game looks pretty good. No complaint here.

3. Enemies: Need more variety. Still I focus more on bullet patterns than on enemies.

4. Music/Voice: I don't understand japanese. I can barely understand a couple of typical sentences, but it's not like I don't like being oblivious to what they're talking about. They could be saying "Look at that dumb noob trying to get through this curtain of bullets! Hahaha! What a loser!" and still enjoy it. I usually don't care much about story in shmups (I used to play U.N Squadron as a kid, when I didn't even know english at all and still loved the game).

5. UI: Nothing to complain here. Maybe I have a decent/good peripheral vision. I'm aware of my bomb level easily based on the left gauge's color/height, level indicator that surrounds the ship, number at the base of the screen and with the corresponding visual effect everytime charge Lv. goes up. Also, there's an audio hint. A quick glance at the top during not-so-crowded moments allow me to check whether I'm scoring high or not (tho so far I just want to get past that bastard xD)

6. Price: At first I thought it was a little expensive for what it offers, being just 5 levels, 2 ships, no difficulty levels other than HELL, no online leaderboards (tbh I only compare scores with friends, since there's lots of hackers who screw competition). But, man! This game's polished, runs smoothly, music and SFX are good and most importantly: IT HAS KEPT ME PLAYING IT EVEN IF I CAN'T GET PAST STAGE 3 (I tend to buy games and not play them).

7. Game comparison: I think someone mentioned DU3 is better than A&B. I don't agree, but I respect their opinion. For me this looks way more polished in every aspect. Still, I purchased both games just to fill my games folder with cool shmups.

8. Gameplay: Smooth, control is just not as perfect as in CAVE's games (those didn't even need any kind of touch setting, they were perfect by default), but after trying a few settings I managed to find the most comfy combo for me: Input ratio at max and Auto-tracking at 50%. Controlling ships is easy and responsive, enough to avoid bullet collisions in tight situations. Bombs go off as desired: One at a time, and I always try to charge them to Lv.5 and let them go off even mid-stage since the gauge charges pretty quick in my opinion. At first I only played with Aka, but now that I got the hang of it, I've been using Blue a lot, since her focused fire is useful for taking down enemies faster, even before they get the chance to shoot at me. Aka has a wider shot, but since his attack is slightly weaker, enemies have the chance to fire and it becomes a hell-ish mess when there's a bunch of them at once on the screen. Bombs are easier to set-off with Aka, but the trick to using Blue is slightly moving her ship backwards in order to make the arrow point forward and let those bastards know what a good bomb is.

9. Performance: I have an iPhone 6. Performance has only gotten affected with GFX set to the highest quality in specific situations. E.g, the moment I set bombs off on that stupid Stage-3 boss, he drops SO MANY SCORING COINS that framerate drops considerably, even making it "easy" to evade incoming bullets. I tend to play it with the lowest settings, tho, because this game is a battery killer (and mine isn't at full performance nowadays).

10. Level progression: Beat to unlock and play any stage as much as you can stand punishment works for me. I even revisited Stages 1 and 2 to raise their corresponding Hi-score (taking a break from S-3). I just hope I get stuck on S-4 for long because, somehow, I don't wanna clear the game and be like "Ok, let's hope they make another game" and never play it again.

Overall: I love this game. I'm not a pro, but I like the challenge (Because I know it's not impossible). My favorite shmup is still U.N Squadron (I know they're different kinds of shmups, tho)! Maybe I missed expressing a few opinions, but currently I'm at work and I've been typing this for like 20 minutes now. My boss is giving me the eye... >_>

xD

PS: Let's hope they make another game.

To the devs: Get the rights from CAVE and make the world a better place by updating their older iOS games! (I'm dreaming haha) AND DON'T TOUCH THE ORIGINAL DIFFICULTY SETTING YOU MADE THIS GAME WITH. IF ANYTHING, MAKE A SEPARATE EASY MODE. P-L-E-A-S-E.

 

Has anyone beaten this yet? I finally made it to the second half of the final boss on Stage 5, where he's shooting huge fireballs at you, but quickly died. Just wondering if anyone's gotten past him.

 

I was thinking about asking the same, but I just didn't want to double post.

Anyway, I'm still stuck in Stage-4's boss fight. I think I can beat him by cheating my way through the bullets but I just don't wanna do that, so I'll use my cheating as a "trainer" to learn how to avoid massive patterns that come from all directions.

Just in case anyone's wondering, my "cheating" consists of setting gfx quality to the max, making the game run slower when there's many bullets on the screen. Add golden medals that get released by the boss when you throw a bomb and you'll get a nice slo-mo battle in which you can "easily" avoid incoming bullets that seemed impossible before.

Dude, this game is H-A-R-D.

 

So far I've only beat it with auto bomb turned on. Watch out for the massive laser that shoots down the middle of the screen after the fireballs.

 

Finally beat it. Pretty elaborate ending that actually has English text. I’m gonna put this on the back burner and go back to DU3, at least until they hook this up to game center.

 

Yeah, finally beat it myself with AKA. Can't imagine playing the game (well) without auto bomb.

 

Missing iPad mini screensize support (black borders).

Greetz Chris

 

In terms of shmups designed for mobile touch screens, this one has yet to really be surpassed. I’m always a sucker for games that don’t rely on on screen buttons.

 

Then Ordia is a must-have for you. ☺️