You've got a successful slice-of-life manga about an office lady and her dragon maid, and after capitalising the success with two anime seasons, you get to the point you need a videogame adaptation. So, what's the chosen genre for this adaptation? Vertical shoot'em'up, of course! Normally you'd go for a visual novel, but that would imply writing a lengthy story, draw more illustrations, and have a huge budget for voice actors, surely a shoot'em'up made on a budget will do the series justice, no?
Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh here, but Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Burst Forth!! Choro-gon Breath is not exactly the most expansive adaptation of a manga/anime, and there's a low budget feeling that permeates the title, although it's not as bad as some of Bandai's previous efforts (Full Metal Panic: Fight!! Who Dares Wins!) or even other recent anime-inspired shoot'em'ups (Cotton Rock'n'Roll).
Story goes that Kobayashi, Tohru, Elma, Kanna, and Lucoa are transported into a computer by a curse; the only way to get out is to beat the games installed on said computer. Kobayashi, being human, sits on the sidelines, offering some flavour text here and there about the stages; Lucoa does the same, leaving Tohru, Elma, and Kanna as playable characters. The rest of the cast is mentioned maybe once throughout the story, and having more playable characters, even as unlockables, would have given the game more variety, something that is sorely needed.
There are five stages, plus one secret, each with its own setting that doesn't really get past from the most generic representation of a genre: fantasy, sci-fi, dinosaurs, candy land, and horror. The first three stages can be tackled in the order you want, while the others are in fixed order. The sixth stage is unlocked by beating the fifth with everyone alive.
Each playable character has her won fire, with no alternate modes: focused forward-firing beam with small homing missiles for Tohru; wide-area fan for Elma; and homing shots for Kanna, and she also spreads feathers in front of her every two-three seconds that neutralise most bullet types. All of them share the same bomb meter (you start with three and you can sloooowly charge it back by killing enemies), and power meter. There's a backdash, useful for dodging close bullets and get out of corner traps. You can charge up a physical attack that will home onto the nearest enemy, but I've found this is almost suicidal, as charging up stops your movement and there's a recovery window after hitting the enemy which usually results in getting hit by a stray bullet.
The three humanised dragons have their own lifebar, which recharges when not used. Health does not refill between stages and so far I haven't found a way to get a defeated character back, as apparently there are no extends. A few stages spawn takoyakis that fully regain one character's healthbar, but they are pretty rare.
The only real scoring hook is the a combo counter, also linked to how fast you charge up two meters: power (for standard fire) and choro-gon breath (bombs). Combos are interrupted if you don't kill enemies fast enough.
Before starting a game mode (there's story mode, boss rush, training, and a time-attack mode against the very last boss) you select difficulty and drop rates; higher drop rates net you more treasure but bullets do more damage. What are treasures used for? Well, they are just collectibles.
Similar to treasure, stages have three hidden illustration parts. There are a ton of illustrations, though I don't think there are any original pieces done exclusively for this game. There is a gallery with art from this game, and that is completed in a handful of playthroughs.
Speaking of playthroughs, there are no continues, or at least not in the usual sense. If all your three characters die, you can restart a stage, but you restart with the same resources as when you got there the first time, so if you are in a stage without health refills and you have only one hit left on your last character, you probably won't go particularly far.
Going through all six stages in normal mode takes little more than 30 minutes, and you can post your score to online leaderboards.
Choro-gon Breath wants to be a bullet hell, with standard enemies and bosses weaving intricate patterns you have to dodge. It's not the most perfectly tuned bullet hell though: it's easy to get cornered in harder difficulties, all enemies take more than one hit to go down (making Elma somewhat underpowered), and most bosses are relatively small targets that might preclude Tohru to score important hits while you dodge bullets. This does promote switching between characters, but the overall feeling is that both stages and bosses take a tad too long to be completed, although the constant bullet barrage does keep your interest high throughout stages, it's just that those stages are rather visually boring and enemy waves could have used a bit more finetuning. I'd wish there were more intricate mechanics for power meter, bomb meter, and health, like sacrificing points in exchange for health between stages, or really any kind of mechanic to make the game more varied and exciting.
Because if you want to collect everything you will need to play a lot, and I really doubt this game has enough appeal to keep players interested past a few hours.
One note on options: the game scrolls vertically but there's no screen rotation option, the sides are taken by character portraits and text boxes for whatever they are saying. Good luck reading those in a middle of the stage, or even making out what they are saying as most enemies scream when firing and use the same voice volume as flavour dialogue.
Overall Choro-gon Breath is a perfectly average shoot'em'up. It's not peculiar enough for shoot'em'up fans (especially with the plethora of titles available on Switch), and probably fans of the source material will be stuck playing the game at the lowest difficulty setting over and over for illustrations they might already have seen.
Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh here, but Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Burst Forth!! Choro-gon Breath is not exactly the most expansive adaptation of a manga/anime, and there's a low budget feeling that permeates the title, although it's not as bad as some of Bandai's previous efforts (Full Metal Panic: Fight!! Who Dares Wins!) or even other recent anime-inspired shoot'em'ups (Cotton Rock'n'Roll).
Story goes that Kobayashi, Tohru, Elma, Kanna, and Lucoa are transported into a computer by a curse; the only way to get out is to beat the games installed on said computer. Kobayashi, being human, sits on the sidelines, offering some flavour text here and there about the stages; Lucoa does the same, leaving Tohru, Elma, and Kanna as playable characters. The rest of the cast is mentioned maybe once throughout the story, and having more playable characters, even as unlockables, would have given the game more variety, something that is sorely needed.
There are five stages, plus one secret, each with its own setting that doesn't really get past from the most generic representation of a genre: fantasy, sci-fi, dinosaurs, candy land, and horror. The first three stages can be tackled in the order you want, while the others are in fixed order. The sixth stage is unlocked by beating the fifth with everyone alive.
Each playable character has her won fire, with no alternate modes: focused forward-firing beam with small homing missiles for Tohru; wide-area fan for Elma; and homing shots for Kanna, and she also spreads feathers in front of her every two-three seconds that neutralise most bullet types. All of them share the same bomb meter (you start with three and you can sloooowly charge it back by killing enemies), and power meter. There's a backdash, useful for dodging close bullets and get out of corner traps. You can charge up a physical attack that will home onto the nearest enemy, but I've found this is almost suicidal, as charging up stops your movement and there's a recovery window after hitting the enemy which usually results in getting hit by a stray bullet.
The three humanised dragons have their own lifebar, which recharges when not used. Health does not refill between stages and so far I haven't found a way to get a defeated character back, as apparently there are no extends. A few stages spawn takoyakis that fully regain one character's healthbar, but they are pretty rare.
The only real scoring hook is the a combo counter, also linked to how fast you charge up two meters: power (for standard fire) and choro-gon breath (bombs). Combos are interrupted if you don't kill enemies fast enough.
Before starting a game mode (there's story mode, boss rush, training, and a time-attack mode against the very last boss) you select difficulty and drop rates; higher drop rates net you more treasure but bullets do more damage. What are treasures used for? Well, they are just collectibles.
Similar to treasure, stages have three hidden illustration parts. There are a ton of illustrations, though I don't think there are any original pieces done exclusively for this game. There is a gallery with art from this game, and that is completed in a handful of playthroughs.
Speaking of playthroughs, there are no continues, or at least not in the usual sense. If all your three characters die, you can restart a stage, but you restart with the same resources as when you got there the first time, so if you are in a stage without health refills and you have only one hit left on your last character, you probably won't go particularly far.
Going through all six stages in normal mode takes little more than 30 minutes, and you can post your score to online leaderboards.
Choro-gon Breath wants to be a bullet hell, with standard enemies and bosses weaving intricate patterns you have to dodge. It's not the most perfectly tuned bullet hell though: it's easy to get cornered in harder difficulties, all enemies take more than one hit to go down (making Elma somewhat underpowered), and most bosses are relatively small targets that might preclude Tohru to score important hits while you dodge bullets. This does promote switching between characters, but the overall feeling is that both stages and bosses take a tad too long to be completed, although the constant bullet barrage does keep your interest high throughout stages, it's just that those stages are rather visually boring and enemy waves could have used a bit more finetuning. I'd wish there were more intricate mechanics for power meter, bomb meter, and health, like sacrificing points in exchange for health between stages, or really any kind of mechanic to make the game more varied and exciting.
Because if you want to collect everything you will need to play a lot, and I really doubt this game has enough appeal to keep players interested past a few hours.
One note on options: the game scrolls vertically but there's no screen rotation option, the sides are taken by character portraits and text boxes for whatever they are saying. Good luck reading those in a middle of the stage, or even making out what they are saying as most enemies scream when firing and use the same voice volume as flavour dialogue.
Overall Choro-gon Breath is a perfectly average shoot'em'up. It's not peculiar enough for shoot'em'up fans (especially with the plethora of titles available on Switch), and probably fans of the source material will be stuck playing the game at the lowest difficulty setting over and over for illustrations they might already have seen.
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