Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon Sakuretsu‼ Chorogon☆Breath

[BulletMagnet]

According to Shmups Twitter, there is now a demo for the game on the Japanese eshop, and a Western release is in the works.

[Ghegs]

Thanks for the heads-up. Downloaded it, and all the text in the game is already in English with my non-JPN user profile, even the stuff the characters are saying during game (though the voices are still in Japanese).

Yeah, it looks like a budget title, but I did have fun enough with the demo to play through quite a few times. It's just a one-stage affair, though, and it's the same stage as shown in this video linked previously.

I was intrigued by the treasure system, apparently fulfilling some conditions releases treasure chests, and (according to one of the loading screen tips) you can increase your risk rate which in turns affects how valuable those treasure chests are, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I'm guessing the risk rate is tied to the clothing damage technology (term trademarked by BulletMagnet), but I couldn't figure out how to trigger that, I think I've only had it happen once and I have no idea what caused it.

I did like aspect of having three characters always available, switchable with the press of a button. Each of them has their own attack style, Tohru's being the most straightforward and narrow, Elma's being a spread shot, and Kanna's being homing shots. Each also has a charge shot (on a separate button), which automatically makes the character zoom in on the nearest enemy and hit them with a melee attack. When zooming you're even invulnerable, so it's pretty safe to do, but as soon as the attack lands, you're vulnerable again, so doing it against a boss that's in the middle of firing shots will get you hit. But it still felt pretty OP. This can be combined with the backstep button, which simply returns the character on a straight line to the bottom of the screen. And then there's the dragon attack which acts as a smartbomb. There's no speed changing or anything like that.

I did have some visibility issues. Not with any of the bullets, those were nice and clear to see, but the stage has these brown eagle enemies that eventually swoop to the bottom of the screen, and at later parts of the stage the background is also brownish, so I kept getting hit by those when I was focused on dodging bullets and couldn't see the brown-on-brown enemy approaching.

Could be a decently okay game, overall.

Also, they changed the color of Lucoa's hotpants in the title screen. What's up with that?

[BulletMagnet]

I'm guessing the risk rate is tied to the clothing damage technology (term trademarked by BulletMagnet), but I couldn't figure out how to trigger that, I think I've only had it happen once and I have no idea what caused it.

I wonder if there's an option to turn down/disable it as there was in Caladrius, though in the latter case the only thing it'd affect was the images unlocked for the gallery, if your theory is correct it'd outright mess with the scoring here.

Also, they changed the color of Lucoa's hotpants in the title screen.

BRB SENDING DEATH THREATS TO DEVELOPER

[Rastan78]

So I was checking out the demo and randomly my character would drift toward the bottom of the screen when my controller was sitting at neutral. Similar to if you have an old analogue stick that is drifting randomly. Yet my controller plays fine on other games. What's going on there?

[Sumez]

On Switch? Different games treat the analog stick differently, especially when applied to digital controls, so any drift your joycon might have, might affect them differently. A good way to check if you have any, is to enter the Switch's built in stick calibration mode.

I've very rarely had any issues with drift on my Switch, assuming because it was only very slightly. But trying to play Metroid Dread with it very quickly became straight up unplayable. Fortunately, the "cardboard fix" does a pretty decent job at eliminating it.

[Rastan78]

Good idea to check the calibration menu. I've had issues with joycons drifting in the past, but this time it was the Switch pro controller docked which I've never had any issue with before. I'll also plug in a D pad only controller and test with that.

One thing that struck me as odd is that it almost seemed like when I was drifting it would be down but slightly left or right. But not fully down left or down right diagonal like you would expect in a game with 8 way movement. So yeah there might be something different about the way this game handles inputs.

I bet playing with an SNES style pad (no analogue) will sort it.

[Rastan78]

Yeah so I checked the calibration screen and my controller shows no drifting. I left it sitting for several minutes and not the slightest budge of the cross hair. No drifting on any other game, Switch OS etc. Yet when I fire up this demo I get random ghost down inputs all the time. Like I'd say 10 to 15 times during one playthrough of the single level demo. Fucking weird. Maybe it's some sort of bug they'll get sorted by the actual release.

[BrianC]

Fortunately, the "cardboard fix" does a pretty decent job at eliminating it.

I'm not buying Nintendo Labo to fix my Joycons.

[harborline765]

I must ask - what engine is the Switch version running on?

You can check for third party engines by highlighting the home menu icon, pressing + (or minus), and then going to "Intellectual Property Notices".

I'm hoping it's on a proprietary engine derived from MOSS's previous works.

[Ghegs]

Made with Unity.

[harborline765]

Cursed…

[EmperorIng]

Made with Unity.

This is a good sign to wait for the pc release!

[harborline765]

It's a shame there haven't(?) been any Unity shmups with native PS5 versions, the much faster single-core performance of the Zen2 CPU in PS5 versus the Switch and PS4 cores should clean up the latency and performance bottlenecks we're used to seeing on console releases.

YuruKill will be interesting, since that is getting a native PS5 version. Hopefully G.rev isn't the next developer to ditch their home-grown technology in favour of adopting Unity, but I'm expecting it to be on Unity given the highly multiplatform nature of the game. In modern gaming it's almost as if the real platforms are Unity and Unreal, and PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox, iPhones etc. are just hardware that has to support it.

[Rastan78]

Yeah I just checked this as well and saw that almighty unity logo. The Switch demo is a bit choppy even on some stage 1 bullet patterns. Nothing crazy. More what you might call micro stutter than slowdown.

On first impressions the game didn't seem too bad really.

[Skykid]

Spent the weekend running through it. Weighed in some thoughts:

https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/sw ... gon-breath

[EmperorIng]

Pretty fair I must say, and about where I estimated the game being (middling). Surprisingly no mention that it was made by Raiden devs MOSS, but that might have drawn too many unfair comparisons!

[Skykid]

Pretty fair I must say, and about where I estimated the game being (middling). Surprisingly no mention that it was made by Raiden devs MOSS, but that might have drawn too many unfair comparisons!

Actually, you’d be surprised by how much got cut. This was meant to be a mini-review of 500 words, and I struggled to whittle it down to what it is and still keep the essential details.

[NeoStrayCat]

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the game is getting a western release by Aksys Games (though they released a few STG's themselves in the past). Well, other than importing the game since it already has English text support. Its coming out in the summer as stated in the article -> https://www.gematsu.com/2022/04/miss-ko ... his-summer

The game already has a physical listing at the Aksys Store for both platforms (Switch/PS4) for $40 US. -> https://store.aksysgames.com/collection ... 0848214263 And assuming to be on other specific retailers once they have them up.

[Jeneki]

I see Kaminari Games are a fan of the Star Wars prequels.


There was a 1cc on one of Mikado's stream that shows off a bunch of boss safespots. For those who are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIUsfk4ngl0&t=11545s (start timestamp at 3:12:25)

[Ghegs]

Finally got around to playing this.

It's okay, though it seems to be developed with a heavy focus on fans of the series. There's a LOT of things to unlock and collect but they're all just art and audio things. The illustrations are split into multiple pieces, and there's 288 of the pieces in total. Gathering all the pieces of a single illustration also unlocks an audio file. Getting all of these should take a good while, as they seem to be dropped by enemies somewhat randomly, and playing through a stage might get you anywhere between 0 and 3 of them.

Also, this game might have the most NSFW official art of Lucoa out there. Not that I've made any real research into the matter, but one of the unlockable pics has her naughty bits covered only by very tiny remains of her torn-off clothes, and her face says she's fairly happy about the situation.

As for the gameplay, the three characters having their own attacks and being switchable with the press of a button in still pretty cool. The game has five difficulty options and even in the middle one (Normal) it's beneficial to learn how to use the melee attack properly, as often the characters' standard firepower just isn't enough to deal with all enemies on screen before they run off or release a huge amount of bullets. With a properly timed melee attack you can destroy several smaller enemies at once.

I was wrong earlier when I talked about the treasure system in the demo, you can't increase the risk rate in-game, you choose it before starting a run and after that you're stuck with it. Higher risk rate = better score, but getting hit hurts you more. Doesn't seem like the most elegant way to handle it, you'd think this would be tied to rank in-game or something.

It's pretty fun to just play through it for survival, and it does seem like a decent entry point into bullet hell shmups. I suck at danmaku and I have troubles with some patterns even on Easy (bullets that forego straight lines and instead start going off in circles confuse my brain), but testing the harder difficulties out I seemed to do alright regardless. Plays fine on Switch despite Unity for the most part, though often after you beat a boss' form and all their on-screen bullets disappear, there's a very noticeable stutter. But since it doesn't really affect gameplay, it's not a big issue.

Still don't understand why the series received a shmup as its (so far, anyway) only video game...

[NeoStrayCat]

US release dated for 8/25/22. Will include the Weiss Schwartz card in first print physical copies. -> https://aksysgames.com/blog/2022/06/08/ ... gust-25th/

[pulsemod]

got this for my friend as a joke gift. played it a while and it's not as offensive as I was expecting, with the many difficulty/risk levels it seems like the kind of game that would be pretty good for people new to the genre, or just looking for a silly casual game to mess around in. nothing about this game feels serious. definitely caters towards fans, I have no idea who the characters are and they mention characters who are never even introduced. story doesn't go anywhere either but I think that's just how this sort of thing goes?

DONNNNNN, DONNNNN, DONNNNNN

[ch2]

As someone who fucks with the series and MOSS' games, here's my two cents:

The whole story takes place in a TRON type plot where the characters are trapped inside a computer, as such stage themes and have nothing to do with the series. It was to be expected considering the previous licensed shmup of MOSS was KoF Sky Stage, but considering the series' whole vibe they could have easily made stages that flirted with the dragon lore of the series or the modern Japan/slice of life aspect of it. That's my biggest gripe. I can understand the low budget limitations for a fanservice title, but if you gotta charge it for 40 bucks, at least commit to the fanservice.

On the flipside it means that if you're curious about the latest MOSS game but you don't know shit about the series, you won't be missing much if you decide to play it.

The three character dynamic, with each one having their own shots, speed and their own separate life bar that refills when they are in standby, is pretty damn cool. Makes mistakes more forgiving overall, tho to compensate you have permadeath so it has a strategic element of "you can continue, but now you have less characters to cycle through and less abilities". Reminds me a bit of Senxin Aleste.

The charge shot and backstep mechanic combo is fucking insane. It's like a Castle of Shikigami ability on crack. If you know how to position yourself you can decimate bosses, and with the "invincibility frames" (they don't grant invincibility but a HUGE damage reduction, so they might as well be) you can dance around bullet patterns at any time. It's so jank and over the top you can't help but love it.

Another fun quirk of the charge shot is that you're granted focus speed (I think this might be the first MOSS game to have one?) but you can't shoot... unless you cancel the charge shot switching to another character, in which case you lose the charge but maintain the speed. I don't know what they were smoking when they designed this but god bless them.

There's even a Berserk mode but I would need more time to figure out how to reliably trigger it.

These mechanics alone make the game stand out if you're the type of person who embraces jank, and thank god for them because the stage design and bosses are painfully average. Add to that the budget constraints and the very uninspired enemy and stage aesthetics and you have a game that's clearly a training ground for new talent. The game is fun, but with so much better alternatives, I struggle to recommend it but I do wish MOSS makes a sequel to this (with or without license) that expands on some of its ideas.

[Sima Tuna]

Sounds like there's no reason to get this if I already have Caladrius Blaze.

[ch2]

Sounds like there's no reason to get this if I already have Caladrius Blaze.

If you're not a diehard Kobayashi/MOSS fan or a low-budget-game-with-weird-mechanics connoisseur, then by all means stick with Caladrius. It's a much better game.

[Sima Tuna]

I like MOSS quite a bit, it just seems like Caladrius Blaze is their high watermark for quality.

[NeoStrayCat]

PC/Steam version coming in October 2022 in an updated version (similar to Caladrius Blaze) with the "Director's Cut" subtitle. Additional content in this version includes...

-Additional personified artwork of the stage bosses by the Maid Dragon author.
-Adjusted difficulty. (Selectable between Normal and Director's Cut mode.)

-> https://store.steampowered.com/app/2086 ... CTORS_CUT/

The Director's Cut content will also be included in the console ports in an update.

[pulsemod]

nice that it'll come to consoles. maybe we'll see some improved enemy formations and boss patterns?

[EmperorIng]

Yeah, for one I am glad this is finally cumming to steam, so I don't have to be embarrassed looking at the pic on my switch library page in front of company.

I hope that the "director's cut" aka "authentic evolution of a shooter" or whatever they're branding it as improves on some of the stage design that kind of made me feel so-so on the game as it first came out.

[NeoStrayCat]

Director's Cut for PC/Steam out on 10/27/22. https://twitter.com/maidragon_game/stat ... 7133708288

However, the Director's Cut update for the console versions are delayed sometime early November. https://twitter.com/maidragon_game/stat ... 4781779968