So playing this game for the GotW convinced me to pick up the game to try it in the comfort of my own Duo.
My second time playing it, I 1CC'd the game. What an easy game! It showers you with lives (courtesy those cute Minmay icons), and the game is a pretty smooth ride, even up until the final boss.
Does anyone know how to activate that second menu, with the "Unrivaled" / Player options? And what the unrivaled option even does?
There's a lot of things to like: the Area 88/UN Squadron "shop" to select weapons - though since you don't "spend" any points to buy weapons it's made even easier to get the good stuff. Great boss designs, even if most of them were pushovers. The enemy design is pretty lame though. Circles, triangles, and the occasional battlepod. I see this game compared to Thunder Force in some reviews; well Technosoft had much better stage enemies, for sure.
My favorite levels have to be the huge armada fight, and the interior of the giant warship. The former for its grand scope, and the latter for a stage that finally had some interesting terrain as opposed to the flat levels that typify the game. It was both neat and a little disappointing to learn that you could safely touch the walls and floors in the game (contrary to most shooters). It took the sting out of trying to navigate the narrow corridors of the ship. Boss fights seemed to be designed to cheese your way through with the VF health-bar - your ship is now so huge that it's significantly harder to dodge. The last boss really drove this home with the annoying, erratically-moving snake attack.
I'll have to see what Hard and Very Hard offer - in my heart of hearts I'm hoping for more enemies and more aggression, instead of the lazy "up the boss health" stuff. For what it's worth now, it was an enjoyable easy ride through what is (going by Zeta's post) essentially high-quality Macross fanfiction.
