Got my copy yesterday and gave it a bit of a going over last night.
On first impressions it's not bad at all. The graphics and overall presentation are a little basic and lacklustre, but I think Triangle Service is a very small team and they were/are on the brink of bankruptcy so it's not that surprising, but they do the job.
However, the gameplay seems to be all there. Yes, it's another straightforward shmup and no it doesn't really 'innovate in the genre' (shudder, I hate that cliche) but it does it's thing well- namely straight-up shooting.
You have shot and bomb and that's about it. You can switch between 3 types of shot, a spread shot, a missile-type shot and twin lasers. Of these the spread shot and the lasers seem the most useful. Switching between them isn't a problem, but one niggle is that you have to cycle through the missile option to get to the lasers, whereas it would be more convenient to go from spread shot to lasers, skipping the missiles. You can only cycle through the different shots one way too- it would be useful to be able to cycle backwards.
The game's fairly tough even on normal difficulty with some pretty intense boss battles. I've been playing lots of Cave shooters recently, and while this doesn't compare in the 'manic' sense, the boss bullet patterns are similarly intricate, though they remind me of the Strikers games for some reason. Trizeal feels a lot more manageable compared to, say, DoDonPachi DOJ though, in the sense that the patterns are easier to learn and you don't necessarily need the lightning reactions that are a prerequisite to play Cave shmups. I definitely think you could 1CC it with practice more readily than most Cave games. The simplicity of the system is quite refreshing too. I'm all for new twists on the shooter genre, but after the rock-hard chaining of DOJ and the kakusei system of Espgaluda, it's nice to just shoot and score without worrying about it too much (Mushihimesama is refreshing in this respect too).
This isn't the greatest shooter ever released, but it's far from the worst. The fun gameplay that it offers and the fact that it's potentially the last DC game, and so potentially a piece of history, make it worth the 30-odd quid.
On first impressions it's not bad at all. The graphics and overall presentation are a little basic and lacklustre, but I think Triangle Service is a very small team and they were/are on the brink of bankruptcy so it's not that surprising, but they do the job.
However, the gameplay seems to be all there. Yes, it's another straightforward shmup and no it doesn't really 'innovate in the genre' (shudder, I hate that cliche) but it does it's thing well- namely straight-up shooting.
You have shot and bomb and that's about it. You can switch between 3 types of shot, a spread shot, a missile-type shot and twin lasers. Of these the spread shot and the lasers seem the most useful. Switching between them isn't a problem, but one niggle is that you have to cycle through the missile option to get to the lasers, whereas it would be more convenient to go from spread shot to lasers, skipping the missiles. You can only cycle through the different shots one way too- it would be useful to be able to cycle backwards.
The game's fairly tough even on normal difficulty with some pretty intense boss battles. I've been playing lots of Cave shooters recently, and while this doesn't compare in the 'manic' sense, the boss bullet patterns are similarly intricate, though they remind me of the Strikers games for some reason. Trizeal feels a lot more manageable compared to, say, DoDonPachi DOJ though, in the sense that the patterns are easier to learn and you don't necessarily need the lightning reactions that are a prerequisite to play Cave shmups. I definitely think you could 1CC it with practice more readily than most Cave games. The simplicity of the system is quite refreshing too. I'm all for new twists on the shooter genre, but after the rock-hard chaining of DOJ and the kakusei system of Espgaluda, it's nice to just shoot and score without worrying about it too much (Mushihimesama is refreshing in this respect too).
This isn't the greatest shooter ever released, but it's far from the worst. The fun gameplay that it offers and the fact that it's potentially the last DC game, and so potentially a piece of history, make it worth the 30-odd quid.
It's pure shooting, and it does a great job of it. It's obvious that they've put hardly any effort/money into presentation, but concentrated purely on the actual gameplay itself. I've played a few very quick games, and after every one, it's grown more, and more on me - More so than Chaos Field, and I really enjoyed that.
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