DEVIL BLADE REBOOT (SHIGATAKE GAMES) - coming to Steam

[BurlyHeart]

From what I seen on twitter (X), Mark's video was put up as he thought content from the game would be copyright struck if streamed or uploaded to YouTube. The developer clarified it was only a request and there would be no legal action. I think that's way Mark deleted the video, which is very fair from both sides.

As for the game, I just cracked the 8m mark and having a blast. No 1Cc yet, but that's because scoring is so fun and I keep taking too many risks. Loving it so far!

[FunktionJCB]

After several days of having 100% positive reviews on Steam, a rare case of positivity around a game, yesterday I noticed 2 users had posted negative reviews, not because they didn't like the game, but because the game had, in their words, "anti-streamer" sentiments.
Of course, I should have known: it had to mean a youtuber/streamer posted a video on the game, and a bunch of people, unable to think for themselves, had to go around and do their "defence".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the game has is a request (that, of course, it would never be enforced; it's a game mostly done by a single guy, in his free time; did anyone really think he would go around taking down videos and channels?) that, if people are going to stream, please do so with a streamer mode on, which skips the final cutscene, and some or all contents of the gallery you can unlock (illustrations, music, ...).

Is it that unreasonable for a developer to make a request that people don't post the final cutscene, and the gallery contents you can unlock?

From what I seen on twitter (X), Mark's video was put up as he thought content from the game would be copyright struck if streamed or uploaded to YouTube. The developer clarified it was only a request and there would be no legal action. I think that's way Mark deleted the video, which is very fair from both sides.

No, it's not fair. I originally checked a bit of that video, since someone linked to it, and what the guy did was making a big drama out of this (even comparing the developer of the game to the villains in Lord of the Rings), as if this was some big cause, essentially rallying people against the game and its developer.
And now, that some damage was done, he hides his video. How is that fair from both sides?

[Nahar]

It was a very bad move coming from MarkMSX. I don't think it was in bad faith, but the drama was never that big to begin with.

Also he made no point about the game. He said nothing about it and that kind of defeats his own point when he says that "the shmups community is not that big and we need to support it". I'm a bit disappointed on this matter.


The game is awesome, it has no "anti-streamer" sentiment, go play it, clear it, try to score it. Shigatake has made a great shmup and it deserves playtime, not drama.

[Steven]

I have no idea why people even listen to the guy who made the world's shittiest R-Type Final 2 review, got called out for its shittiness, and then made a followup video where he complained about being called out for it.

[qmish]

R-Type Final 2 review was the moment after which I stopped watching his videos for a while and went to ShmupJunkie instead (who is more relaxful and not edgy).
Not only the whole "review" was very biased (though I think Mark never hides the fact he prefers danmaku etc.), but also the way how replies were treated... he was leaving "thumbs up" and commenting on those that were similar to his position, and ignoring others. Also bunch of replies were deleted, I remember seeing that in real time.

I agree that "sheep mentality" of audience is plague of modern youtube/e-celebrity entertainment and not limited to specific personas. Like, if reviewer or streamer doesnt like the game, fine (nobody is 100% compatible with your taste, some stuff you agree with, with other you don't). But why do I see all those people (mostly in comment section) are blindly agreeing with their favorite "guru" without playing the game themselves first? That bothers me and I cant understand that. And Mark's channel was not the first one where I noticed such behaviour, it was also same with Civvie11 (you might know him if you're into Blood: One Whole Unit or other oldschool FPS) and others.

[XoPachi]

I don't agree with Mark on a lot of specifics like StarFox Zero being a misunderstood great game (it's not) or Metroid Dread being some bastard game by Westerners who don't get Metroid (it's not). But his polarizing nature tends to be why I enjoy his channel.
I don't think the Devil Blade video was an attempt to ruin the game even if handled poorly admittedly.

[oversoul17]

There's a lot of coulda, woulda, shouldas in hindsight for us all, I understand. Not everyone will do everything right the first time all the time.

However, Mark should have reached out to the developer to ascertain what the intended purpose of the requested streaming restriction screen was before lashing out at the game in a very public rant. The platform he has built for himself over the years would have allowed him plenty of reach to do so. But, he's on a personal crusade against bad developer/publisher practices right now (judging by his last few videos), and when you're wielding a hammer, everything that looks like a nail if you squint just right will get impulsively swung at.

He privated the video, and that's good on him. I do wish his explanatory statement after the video removal would have owned responsibility for the mistake a bit more than "others thought so too." Yeah, others with far less of a platform or reach in this niche community.

I like Mark's content. I watch most of what he produces because I think he thinks deeply about games, and I share a lot of his tastes and opinions. This was a miss though, no way around it.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Pretty dumb, not realizing why posting game videos may harm a game's sales. But what can you expect, these days.

[Rastan78]

I think Mark's reaction was heavy handed, but not without some good points.

He's right that these type of restrictions serve no real purpose. (And there is a bit of a pattern with these having already cropped up in the genre here and there.)

Your goal as a dev making a niche title is to get anyone to even care about the game. Let alone the ending which even devoted fans who buy day one likely will not care about. Why give youtubers/streamers that can share and promote your game even the faintest whiff of copyright strike potential whether intended or not.

[DMC]

Played two runs, seems like a very good game. Some early impressions fwiw:

+ Fast-paced gameplay, enemies use a lot of tracking lasers and lock on shots that give you a second or so to dodge them. It is quite intense with each wave quickly following the other. Fun dodging!
+ A classic risk-reward scoring system (kill enemies from shorter distance to increase the multiplier) that encourages aggressive playing style
+ The 3D space background, although simplistic was quite immersive and looked rather beautiful
+ Nice little hommages to popular shooters, some Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, and Dodonpachi bullets patterns/enemy movements from what I could tell.
+ Although I didn't quite get the Booster /Bersek system they seem to add some tactical decision-making/depth to the game. I presume Boosters works similarly to the DDP DOJ hyper system (there is a 5x multiplier while in Boost mode, but enemy hp is higher).
+ The sound and voice effects are ASMR-level sweetness (slightly too soft explosions perhaps) and the OST is solid as well.

- The visual presentation is quite noisy (so many things happening at once, so many laser beams, and other kinds of shots, while the background is quite present). It was a bit overwhelming/exhausting for me, my eyes got a little tired after two runs, but I am quite sensitive.
- The stages are not so distinct, essentially the same background and similar-looking ships through stage 1-5 at least. Perhaps the gameplay is distinct enough to cover for it though. Compare to, say, Battle Garegga, where the factory (stage 6) is so different from the others it is quite a wow experience the first time you reach it, or say stage 4 in Soukyugurentai where you can target harmless floating rocks, which affects the gameplay drastically. Here it felt like there was just one long stage, like an 80s shmup with waves. Intentional, I guess, but not matching my preferences. It would have been cool if the this game visited a couple of planets or was a bit more fanciful.

[beer gas canister]

Re: visual business, it helps to tweak the visibility of the ship's bonus range rings and berserk meter.

[nogden]

Played the game for about 4 hours now. I gotta agree with the above posts that this is some high quality stuff. Major props to the developer for putting this level of care into his game. For me, the game is extremely satisfying to just simply play. The sound effects, the music, the enemy attacks, the overwhelming telemetry on the screen, it all comes together in a package that embodies the adrenaline rush-esque nature of the genre. I also liked the difficulty level as I'm not the most talented player out there. I was able to 1CC the normal mode after several attempts, although it may be that hard is the actual normal mode level of difficulty most players are used to. Either way I can see myself replaying this one for a long time to come.

[XoPachi]

This is one of those games where I just run into things I seriously shouldn't. The game is not that hard, but I am so squirrely for some reason. Losing a life in this game on hard mode is a really steep cost because you are not getting another one anytime soon.

[Zaarock]

The visuals are a bit busy, but personally borderline where its not annoying yet. Sometimes there are bright/white dust particles in the background to indicate 3D movement, I'd rather not see such things as a player. Something that looks cool as a viewer of a video but as a player mainly takes up some of your concentration to ignore (unless you're acting entirely on muscle memory). Stage 2 midboss explosion is also kind of overwhelming. I think a background dimming option would make short work of most of this.

I had mixed feelings about the longevity of this game at first, seemed like a basic indie shmup that happened to have good graphics. But grinding Inferno mode for a bit the scoring is more nuanced than it looked at first glance i.e. there's more going on than landing those 20x kills or using boosts. I got a hard 1cc in less than 2 hours but can see myself playing for score for 30+

[Daytime Waitress]

I definitely felt the visual noise a lot at first, too.
In fact, the abiding impression I had in my first couple of runs was that it was a really "red" game - I was losing orange enemy projectiles amidst orange explosions atop orange-tinted backdrops.
And the amount of lock-ons and tracers (for the lasers) was kind of overwhelming.
Initially, I put it down to me having predominantly played less visually "busy" or intense late-80's/early-90's shooters in the run-up to DBR.

It got easier to parse visual information the more runs I attempted, the more familiar I got with when enemies would fire, and when they would effectively "enter play" (i.e.: get on the same axis as the player ship and gain a hitbox after having come in from the background or offscreen).
And I started to welcome how much of a heads-up the lock-ons and especially the tracers give you before attacks are inbound, and how that works into the rhythm of combat - it accentuates the flow and pacing.

But I'm finding that in certain spots the game has a lack of reference points that makes judging when you can hit enemies and when they can hit you a little tough sometimes. What I mean by this is that in other games you might have a zako heli take off from the ground, and you can't hit it until it reaches a certain altitude, but you can say, "when it's level with that skyscraper" or "when it gets close to that small cluster of trees", you can be sure you can nail it. But here, even with some of the opening waves, it's like I'm kind of eyeballing how close I can get to an enemy before they've already collided with me. And I feel like that's at odds with how it wants me to point-blank everything.

I probably just need to be less of a scrub, though

[linko9]

I'd heard (maybe just in this topic) that the original game was on PS1, but didn't know about the Famicom version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dW03pJElZA

Pretty dope! According to the video, the dev made this version in 2015.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Shigatake just released a 43.63kb patch d/l that updates Devil Blade Reboot to v1.01.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[spmbx]

Does he publish a changelog anywhere?

[FunktionJCB]

Does he publish a changelog anywhere?

He posted them on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 5406562794

It was a few minor fixes, plus further clarification that the "streaming mode" thing was a polite request, and not a demand.
Of course, that had no effects, since despite the developer even replying to the steam reviews from people who posted negative reviews due to the game's "anti-streamer" sentiment ( ), they naturally kept the negative reviews.

[Steven]

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought. - Ian Malcolm

[clippa]

I heard Mark did a knee jerk clickbait video about it, which wouldn't have helped.
If these people had taken a second to actually read what it said they wouldn't be shitting their knickers in the first place.
It was clearly just a request not to spoil the ending and some of the unlockable content for other players.
Such a nothingburger. I've seen people elsewhere trying to make it a thing and actually boycotting the game because of it.
Bloody gamers. Just relax and let yourself enjoy the nice thing for once.

[Steven]

Hence the Malcolm quote. It's even more terrifying when you consider that Crichton wrote that line 35 years ago, before the proliferation of the internet and the World Wide Web.

I sometimes wonder what he'd think if he was still alive. I'm sure he'd be appalled.

[DietSoap]

A third negative review just got added today over "copyright kinks". This is especially strange when

• Mark's video was taken down days ago

• The stream disclaimer was changed in an update yesterday to make it more clear it's just a request

• Even the original disclaimer said nothing about "copyright"

The dev also personally responded to the other two negative reviews yesterday. We'll see if they change their reviews, but I doubt it.

[linko9]

Did another run on normal and got 15m; but at this point I'm not sure how to optimize the route for using boosts throughout each stage. Anyone know of a high-scoring recorded run on normal or hard? Jaimers' inferno run is amazing, but that mode doesn't have bursts.

[Some-Mist]

I haven't gone back to normal and have still been working through hard mode, and for hard mode I've been just planning out boosts throughout the stage to allow myself to keep 2-3 bombs for the boss fights in case I need to rely on those, otherwise I use them as boosts on the boss because the start of the stage is going to replenish me back up to 3 anyway.

when I go back to normal I imagine I'm going to do something similar, except maybe have only 1-2 for boss boosts

[PC Engine Fan X!]

What is unlocked if cleared on normal and hard difficulty settings with Devil Blade Reboot?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[linko9]

I don't remember it unlocking anything, just a steam achievement for each. All the unlocks are done with the coins you earn from playing.

[DietSoap]

The dev also personally responded to the other two negative reviews yesterday. We'll see if they change their reviews, but I doubt it.

I'm happy to be wrong. It seems those two changed their reviews to positive now. The only negative review left is that one that was added yesterday.

[BIL]

The dev also personally responded to the other two negative reviews yesterday. We'll see if they change their reviews, but I doubt it.

I'm happy to be wrong. It seems those two changed their reviews to positive now. The only negative review left is that one that was added yesterday.

That's good to hear!

[Air Master Burst]

This game is pretty dope so far! The aesthetic reminds me hard of a mid-budget dos game from 1995, which I LOVE, but it's also getting me killed due to lack of visual clarity. Then again, I also have trouble with most shmups where enemies drop loads of scoring medals and such (Progear is my limit for this), so I'm not sure I can really ding it too hard for that since it's probably my visual processing speed at fault.

The lack of even a rudimentary scanline filter option KILLS MY SOUL. Anyone got an easy solution?

Hard mode seems about right for difficulty, made it to stage 3 my first run. I'm mostly grinding it out to unlock the retro version, which is actually more interesting to me than the main offering (which makes the lack of scanlines all the more dire). Hopefully it doesn't let me down!

Definitely recommended, and it's a steal at this price. Get on it!