I've sporadically lurked around here for a while now since getting into shmups a few years ago, and I've always noticed that Battle Garegga tends place near or at the top of the annual Top 25 Shmups of All Time threads. I'm someone who has been sampling pretty much every major arcade and console shmup released since the mid-to-late 90's since falling in love with the genre a few years ago, but I hadn't yet given Battle Garegga a fair shake until recently. Now that I have been playing it for a while, I'm struggling to understand its top placement on an otherwise really solid Top 25 list as voted on by some of the most devout fans of this genre.
Don't get me wrong. I completely understand the appeal of Battle Garegga, especially from a shmup enthusiast perspective. It has unique and captivating aesthetics, great music, and some of the most free-form gameplay and depth you're likely to find from a scoring perspective. Out of Raizing's shmup offerings, I agree that Battle Garegga is probably their best and most complete package. Having said that, I think that certain design weaknesses are given maybe too much of a pass here.
The two that keep jumping out at me as I play are probably fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the game:
- Bullet Visibility: This one probably goes without saying since it's easily the most readily noticeable and frequently mentioned issue with the original arcade game, but it's such an egregious design oversight that I feel it should almost single-handedly prevent the game from taking the top spot in the Top 25 rankings. Sure, the M2 ShotTriggers port rectifies this with its various bullet visibility options, but that doesn't seem to be the specific version called out in the ranked list. As the original stands, it's the only shmup that I've ever played where I can't see what killed me 80% of the time. It's an egregious problem that shouldn't ever be ignored when discussing the game, IMO.
- Sluggish Movement: Battle Garegga is one of those games like Batsugun that sort of straddles the line between classic shmups and modern bullet hells. Similar to a Psikyo game, for example, the game combines fast-moving bullets with the occasional slower, denser patterns that don't quite add up to bullet hell numbers. That's all well and good, but I'd argue that the denser patterns that do occasionally confront the player call for Cave-esque levels of control precision to comfortably micro-dodge through. This game, however, does not come close to the responsiveness and precision of a Cave shmup in my opinion. In fact, it almost feels like there's some small degree of inertia on most of the ships in Battle Garegga, which I know is a big no-no in these kinds of arcade shmups. If there isn't actually inertia, then there must be some palpable input latency inherent to the game's engine itself. I'm playing it via an emulation setup with the lowest possible input lag (2 frames for most arcade shmups), and Battle Garegga's movement always feels just slightly delayed to me. Maybe it's the acceleration curve or something, I can't say for sure. I just know that it never feels quite right to me.
Now I realize that these criticisms are somewhat subjective, but I'm personally struggling a bit to understand how enough people on this forum feel differently enough about these perceived shortcomings to consistently vote it as the best shmup ever made over games like Mushi Futari, DDP DOJ, Ketsui, etc. I'm not here to say that anyone is wrong. I'm just wondering what I'm missing while evaluating the game through a critical lens.