I wrote this review for a gaming website, and when they turned it down I didn't wanna just throw it out. I figured it would make a great first post, and I hope that y'all find it useful and amusing.
Trigger Heart Exelica: Panty shots and “meh”
Trigger Heart Exelica combines the two things Japanese people love most: giant flying robots and underage girls. The whole game is painfully Japanese, from the horrible “engrish” voice acting to the nigh-impenetrable bullet hell encountered late in the game. But how does a port from the arcades of Tokyo hold up here in Xbox Live Arcade? If you ask me, it gets a solid definitive “meh”. While it takes a little getting used to at first, Trigger Heart Exelica (heretofore referred as “THE” to save time) has a surprisingly solid play system but falls short in terms of accessibility and graphics. It’s no wonder that THE has received a reputation of being little more than a novelty game that you play because the girls show you their panties whenever you hit the “kill everything on the screen” button.
There are two girls to choose from, referred to as “Exelica” and “Crueltear,” but all you need to know is that one fires in a straight line while one is all about the spread shots (not THAT kind, you perv). There’s some story you can read about them being created by C.H.I.L.D.A. and coming from a distant planet to Earth, but it has no bearing or relevance on anything. All you need to know is that there are flying things that aren’t you that need smashing.
The game is pretty much the same sort of top-down scrolling shooter you’ve probably played since you were old enough to demand quarters from your mom at the pizza parlor. You fly around, you make things explode, and while it’s not exactly a new idea it’s rather fun for awhile and the game is perfectly suited for short, quick bouts of play. The top-down scrolling shooter has kept itself alive through action and spectacle, if nothing else this game has spectacle in large quantities. Like every shooter that came out on the NAOMI arcade system THE also has a gimmick so as to assist you to get through the bullet hell parts. This time instead of going the bullet absorbing route like Ikaruga (or all the games “borrowing” from Ikaruga) your flying, scantily-clad twelve-year-old is equipped with an anchor she can use to capture enemy ships and swing them around, then hurl them into the enemy. There’s an advanced mode where you can drag the ship to be a shield in front of you and have it absorb bullets until it’s ripped apart by it’s own friends. It’s very satisfying and essential if you want to go for the high score, but if you’re just in it for the spectacle then it’s not that big a deal. There’s also this thing called the “Variable Boss Attack System” which means the bullet hell pattern used by the boss will be harder depending on how many powerups and bombs you are carrying when you get there. However, most bosses can be killed with one or two bombs anyway, so the “V.B.A.S.” makes itself irrelevant unless you’ve got no items to begin with.
The scrolling shooter fanbase divides neatly into two groups, those who are in it for the spectacle (me) and those who want the high score (Japanese people) and this release works to please both. You are granted infinite continues from the start and the option to increase the number of bombs and lives you get per continue, although this means your high score won’t be posted on the leaderboards (though if you need more lives and bombs odds are you don’t care about that). The graphics could be a lot better (Giga Wing 2 and Ikaruga both came from this genre and era and are graphically superior) but if you’re just playing for twitchy self gratification and big explosions that’s not too much of an issue.
Players who are going for the high score will find that the game plays like an intricate puzzle, in which you must time your every thought and motion carefully to avoid bullets, carve out paths, and defend yourself by using enemies as shields. Learning how and when to capture and swing enemies takes a lot of practice, but the increase in points (and the little golden tokens that increase in point value as they are collected) make it worthwhile. After many hundreds of continues you’ll eventually find yourself evolving a strategy and doing little to no shooting as you become one with your anchor system and rely purely on turning your enemy against itself. I’m sure there’s some sort of ancient Japanese martial arts metaphor there, but since I don’t have the patience to achieve Scrolling Shooter Nirvana I don’t really care, and I’m sure most of you don’t either.
Of course this points to one of the major faults in THE, which is that it has a very narrow goal and a very niche market, namely perverts who like to spend long periods of time playing the same four levels over and over. Yes, it’s a brilliant blazing spectacle, but you can’t sell a game on spectacle alone, even if you do throw in scantily-clad loli robots who clear the screen by jamming their ass in your face. To get really great at the game you have to invest huge amounts of time and trouble. If you’re not willing or able to do that then the game is pretty much nothing but a sound and light show, because you can get through all four levels in under ten minutes. The fact that the majority of the achievements require you to play perfect or near perfect games just rubs this “either play this obsessively or don’t play it at all” attitude in your face, and no doubt turns off a lot of gamers who were willing to look past the gratuitous characters in hope of shooting it up for awhile.
THE has a number of standard options to permit you to adjust things to your liking. As I already mentioned if you just want to get through or make the game even easier you can increase the number of bombs and lives per continue, and you can also adjust the difficulty level. There’s also an option to play horizontally and take up the whole HD screen if you just like to play that way or can rotate your TV/monitor 90 degrees. Like the game itself it’s a cute option but something only an obsessive genre fanboy would ever care about or be capable of achieving.
Overall THE has been met with mediocre reviews from all but the most hardcore obsessive scrolling shooter fans, and odds are unless you’re the sort who lays up late at night dreaming of threading the needle in Ikaruga this game isn’t for you. I had fun but a lot of people won’t, so unless you’re either one of those people who wants to make things explode for ten minutes or wants to get an extremely high score on a game no one else cares about, stick with Omega 5 or Ikaruga.