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Wednesday 11 August, 2004
I picked this up about a month ago, and finally cleared Easy mode without continues, so now's as good a time as any to blog it. This will be something of a review (English reviews of this game are virtually nonexistent), so it's likely to be long...
First, I must serve notice that PCB is a shmup - and not just any shmup. This game is what they call a danmaku ("bullet curtain") shooter. It even has a little warning symbol on the jewel case saying, in Japanese, "Warning: Contains danmaku scenes."
Which is to say that this is the kind of shooter where the enemies have at their disposal approximately as much firepower as the combined military forces of any five Third World nations - all of which is hurled at you, the player, in screen-filling sheets of light.
Now that we've got that out of the way, how does the game play? The short answer is - it's dead fun. This is a beautiful example of the shmup designer's art; the smart level design and well-crafted enemy patterns put even commercial shmups to shame.
The story, since my Japanese is mediocre at best, runs something (very vaguely) like this: this bunch of evil (or simply misguided - the game seems to lean towards the latter) spirits have somehow caused the winter to drag on and prevented spring from coming. Or something. And so the player, as one of three characters (all cute anime-style girls), has to find and defeat them and their motley assortment of goons, including but not limited to snow fairies, insects, and various other small sprites which are beautifully-drawn but very difficult to see (especially when one is focused on avoiding the hail of bullets emerging from said sprites), in order to have spring and the cherry blossoms appear once more.
The art of the game is good, as indie games go. Oh - did I mention that this game was made by an indie developer, Shanghai Alice? Apparently they're incredibly famous in certain circles in Japan, such that people line up for hours to BUY DEMO DISCS containing the DEMOS of their new games. It's surprising enough when that happens for commercial developers; to have this sort of furore over one guy ("Team Shanghai Alice" is a one-man outfit whose only member goes by the name Zun) is pretty impressive. But I digress.
As I was saying, the art is good for an indie game. Zun's sprites blend well with their environment, and the backgrounds, which use 3D effects, are (cliche alert!) simple but elegant. His character portraits (anime style, and inevitably cute girls) aren't outstandingly awesome, but considering that the guy did all the designing AND coding AND composed/performed the game's great soundtrack, that's excusable.
The soundtrack is terrific. While the effects here are the standard selection of whooshes, roars, and beeps one would normally expect, the music is professional-quality and has a fairly unique style, being inspired in equal parts by traditional Japanese music and popular dance/trance music. While I can't say I'm a big fan of any of those styles, the resultant fusion is very easy on the ears, and I've found myself launching the game just to go into the Sound Test menu and listen to the music.
So... how does it play? Well, Perfect Cherry Blossom is by no means easy. It starts out simple, but in the early stages you're scrambling to collect powerups, and by the time you're at full power, the bad guys are throwing a LOT of stuff at you. It's an excellent balance between memorization and skill, as often the patterns can be dodged with a simple shift - if you're quick enough to spot it. Later enemies require more careful handling, like the bullet-spamming Fallen Angels (I think) which inhabit Stage 4.
The bosses (all cute girls too - figures) and their attacks deserve a section to themselves. They're not BIG HULKING TARGETS like in every other shoot-em-up; they're as small and nimble as the player, which presents a problem when trying to hit them. Thankfully, some of the player-characters have homing or tracking attacks, which leaves the player free to concentrate on dodging the intricate and beautiful patterns the bosses throw around.
There's a little wrinkle, though. Remember that old shmup standby, the famous "smart bomb" (which dates back to Tempest)? Well, each boss has a number of them, and when they get low on health, they'll use them. In practice, this is just the boss changing into different "forms" with different attack patterns, but it's pretty cool to watch.
The first couple of bosses are pretty standard fare, but after that things get more interesting. The boss of Level 2, for instance, has the ability to change the direction of her gunfire when said gunfire is in mid-flight - this is accompanied by a little chime to let you know You Are In Deep Doo-Doo. When she's in one of her later forms, she will also zip across the screen launching a spray of large bullets - then pause in the center and split them into a shower of small, but equally deadly snowflakes. Level 3's boss uses little dolls to launch attacks from different directions, and Level 4's is actually a trio of spooky musicians who can fire off some very nasty formation attacks. The boss attack patterns are usually inventive, always beautiful, and invariably deadly, and discovering the "secret" to beating each one is very gratifying indeed - although sometimes the "secret" can be something as simple as "dodge and don't get hit".
In summary, this is possibly the best shooting game I've ever played. Sadly, it's not available outside of Japan now; the only online store I know of which carries it is out of stock. Watch this space, and I'll post if I come across a place which has it.
p.s. the demo (3 levels) is available at http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/th07_update.html - look for the first link under the purple heading, dated 2003/07/12.
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