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Grab it while you can. If you have a Nintendo DS, you must have this game.Bangai-O Spirits keeps up the fantastic Treasure tradition, and brings it to a new world via the NDS. It's worth a gamble at twice the price.There is no more fun way to waste time, than with a well done shooter. There are long, very colorful levels, over the top visuals, and a sweet soundtrack. The difficulty curve starts easy enough, so it's a good pick up and play game.The price tends to fluctuate a bit, as for right now, in January 2010, it's less than $10.00 for a new copy. Games like this are unfortunately, in the minority. If you like fun [and who doesn't] and beautiful graphics, near perfect sound, you must own this game.I hate the hyperbole that some reviewers put in their reviews, but with a piece of silicone perfection such as this, you have little choice.
Fantastic little game. Missions are randomly selected from a large preformed database. The levels tend to be equal mixtures of bizarre, wacky, and frantic. Gameplay is genuinely challenging at times.What really makes this game, however, is the level creator, where you can create and transmit home-made levels online in one of the most innovative uses of the DS's hardware that I've ever seen.Two things made me deduct a star:1) No story mode/main set of missions. You can also, of course, create and play your own levels, or the levels made by other people on the internet.2) So much information is packed into one tiny screen (the other screen is used as a level map display) that it can frequently freeze for several seconds at a time in order to process the information. Not a huge bother, but very noticeable nonetheless.
Instead, Bangaio Spirits is about finding enough time to charge up your cannon so that you can release a hailstorm of bullets to counter the enemy, who is also firing a hailstorm of bullets at you. I've never played the original Bangaio on the Sega Dreamcast, but I'd seen glowing recommendations. Certainly the DS version has several marks against it, the biggest being the tiny screen. Perhaps its because shooters are generally about flying, shooting and evasion. However, I believe the real fun in a shooter is when the player is the one annihilating his enemies with an endless array of power-ups and colorful weapons, not the other way around. One of the two screens just acts as a map during gameplay, so all of the real action is confined to a single, low-resolution screen.
On many levels, it's not uncommon to die in 3 seconds. Unfortunately, the DS version makes me doubt the validity of those accolades. In some early levels, your survival requires you to charge your cannon from the moment the round begins, and to release the cannon-load in 1-2 seconds, or you'll die. The programmers even admit in the game that the screen is too small to fit the hundreds of bullets and contrails, so they work around it by making the making the bullets larger; if you release 100 bullets, it will display as one or two really big bullets. Nice idea in theory, but in execution it's lacking somehow. Like most Dreamcast shooters, Bangaio Spirits believes that the fun in a shooter is avoiding millions of bullets coming at you in all directions.
If you're like me, you'd best avoid Bangaio Spirits.
but the amount of stages will leave a lot to be desired of. simple and extremely addicting. a lot of fun. I just dont get it, are the makers too lazy to design more stages. I finished the whole game within 2 weeks.
The game has a meaty level editor so you can rest assured that even with 100+ levels, there's more meat and potatoes than you can shake a stick.err laser cannon at and it's got a dose of tactical and strategy to boot. Treasure does it again with Bangai O Spirits on Nintendo DS and the results are nothing more than stellar. I've been a fan of Treasure ever since I've played Gunstar Heroes 1 and 2 along with Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, Bleach, Silhouette Mirage and of course, Astro Boy: Omega Factor. But like most games in Treasure's library, the difficulty may be too overwhelming for casual gamers and because this sucker is long may have you reaching for the Visine; especially when the phrase "Twitch Gaming" comes to mind. You gotta love Treasure for it's devotion to ingenuity and fast-paced gameplay mixed with cutting edge graphical special effects and it's one of the reasons why it's the most beloved game developer by legions of fans worldwide and it's a blast to play with a buddy and online. And that's not all. I love this game and it's great to see Treasure back again to deliver that sense of gaming nirvana that's all but disappeared. Can't wait to see what they're gonna do next.
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