Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo
- Developer: City Connection, Psikyo
- Publisher: NIS America
- Switch, PS4
Compiling six shooters from developer Psikyo, Shooting Stars Bravo follows an evolution in their philosophy of creating shooters. Shooting Stars Bravo is split between two series: the mythical Japanese themed Sengoku Aces, and the colorful fantasy of the Gunbird series. Each series follows a similar trajectory, with a no-frills first entry, peaking at the second, then going to wildly different places with the third. They each get to that point in unique ways, with wildly varying results.
The Sengoku Aces series makes up the first three games in the collection, confusingly named Samurai Aces, Tengai and Sengoku Cannon, due to localization quirks. They don’t immediately seem connected thanks to name and gameplay changes, but each keeps a similar theme and returning characters.
Samurai Aces is the least interesting of the package, simply taking the format of Psikyo’s Strikers 1945 military shooter series and swapping it into a mythical Japanese series. Similar to Strikers, the opening stages have a randomized order each time you play. Characters even pilot fighter jets, which provides a surreal contrast to the setting. There’s not much else to say here. It’s a no-frills vertical shooter with a primary shot, charged shot, limited use screen clearing bombs and multiple characters to vary up your approach. It comes off as functional more than anything, and while it’s competent enough to be enjoyable, with a few excellent between stage quotes from the characters, it’s dragged down by an overall average formula.
Thankfully, Tengai, its sequel, varies it up and provides a much more interesting approach to the Sengoku Aces setting. The most immediate change is the switch from a vertical to horizontal format, with a greater emphasis on the setting and characters. Tengai leans heavily on Shinto and Buddhist imagery, even incorporating digitized photography of temples into its detailed background art. Characters are no longer represented by ill-fitting jet planes, but fly through the air themselves and fire magical spells. The charge shot has a little more utility here as well, where in Samurai Aces it often felt as if using could get you in trouble. Its an excellent shooter, fast paced and well balanced, while still keeping the straightforward playability Psikyo games are known for. The only real slight against it is that the character art, while better rendered, exudes a powerful horny energy, no doubt assisted by Psikyo hiring a prominent hentai doujin artist this time around.
After the highs of Tengai, Sengoku Cannon comes as a bizarre and disappointing followup. It retains the horizontal format (and horny character designs) of Tengai, but tries to evolve it by adding a further story emphasis and multiple attack options. Attacks are split between normal shots, strong shots, bombs and the titular cannon attack. Cannon attacks fire off a huge burst which increases in score multiplier as you hit enemies, while your other attacks fall more in line with the style of modern shooters, with wide shots used to control the screen, and strong shots concentrating power for stronger foes. With bombs of course, providing a unique screen clearing attack.
It never finds a good balance for all these options, coming off as kind of haphazard in action. That continues elsewhere, with enemy patterns and movement speed feeling ever so slightly off. Sengoku Cannon doesn’t even have the benefit of flashy pixel art like its prequels, instead utilizing a mix of sprites with low resolution 3D backgrounds, which look even worse here than they did originally on the PSP, thanks to the higher resolution bringing out their lack of detail.
The Gunbird games offer up a more consistent level of quality. Gunbird 1 and 2 generally stay closer to the usual Psikyo vertical shooter style, but they give it a unique dungeon punk flair and fantastic character art that brings to mind Tatsunoko productions like Yatterman or Time Bokan. You fight through castles adorned with turrets, shoot down blimps and face off against massive mechanical knights. Each are presented with lush, detailed pixel art and plenty of cute animations to show off. Gunbird 2 in particular ups the ante on the art, with even more detail, including tiny humans that populate each area and scramble as you destroy the area. The only real downgrade is the character art, which is still great for the main cast, but less striking for the main villains you chase down throughout the story.
The return to the usual vertical shooter approach, with a combination of bombs, shots and charged shots isn’t initially as exciting as the latter approaches in the Sengoku Aces series, but it’s better balanced overall and as I played on I began to appreciate how each character changed my approach and used their unique quirks. Gunbird 2 is the most successful here, thanks in part to adding a charge meter that allows you to decide how long to grow your charge shot before cashing in, and a “NICE BOMB!” mechanic that rewards you for hitting with points for hitting a bomb close to as many bullets as you can. It’s got that unique balance that makes it fun to return to both for casual sessions and more serious score attack runs.
Gunbarich, the final game in the collection, is the most left-field of all of them. It’s not a shooter, but a breakout pinball hybrid instead, starring Marion, Gunbird’s main character. Its color and tone feel more in line with something like Tatio’s Bubble Bobble or Parasol Stars, with bright colors, cheerful music and silly boss designs. It retains the vertical playspace, but instead of shooting you control Marion as she rallies a pinball towards the top of the screen, attempting to smash every block. By timing your hits you can flick the pinball back at higher speed and cause more damage, as well as protect yourself from enemy shots that cause you to become paralyzed. It’s a unique hybrid that provides a novel approach to a genre that can easily become stale, and it’s worth playing just to see how it iterates on the style.
As a collection of games, Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo is excellent. The Gunbird entries are undoubtedly the stronger games, though the first two Sengoku Aces games play a good supporting role. The only outright bad game in this collection is Sengoku Cannon, which is more due to its unevenness than any spectacular failure. What holds Shooting Stars Bravo from being out and out excellent is how barebones the package itself feels. The menu is simply a collection of icons used to boot up each game, which are unchanged from their digital download versions. There’s no extra features, and controls and display settings need to be changed individually from within each game. It’s generally fine, if not ideal, especially if you’re playing some of the games in vertical mode, then have to navigate the menu on its side, since there’s no option for vertical menus, like in the SNK Anniversary or Namco Museum compilations.
By far the worst slight against this collection is the choice to use a high resolution font to replace all the text in certain games. It doesn’t fit at all with the original aesthetics of each game, stands out against the lower resolution pixel art and looks garish and bland. There’s no option at all to disable it, which is bewildering. Other than that, the option to view Sengoku Cannon’s 3D at its original resolution, universal control options, and nicer menus would have made it feel like more of a premium package than a simple bundle.
As it is Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo collects several excellent shooters that cater to both casual and serious play, each with their own interesting, if not always successful, ideas on how to iterate on Psikyo’s shooter philosophy.