I've put up a new review on my site. This month it's Battle Bakraid. Any opinions and corrections would be greatly appreaciated.
Cheers.
Battle Bakraid review
Battle Bakraid review
Ikaruga review now up in PLASMA BLOSSOM
You mean this one-
Battle Bakraid
SGCD-0008, Scitron/Gamest
Composed by Atsuhiro Motoyama
01 Outbreak
02 Odyssey
03 Sky Gunner
04 Illegal Mission
05 Terrible Object
06 Following Wind
07 The Advance
08 Steam Syndrome
09 Crisis
10 Gray Stream
11 Battle Logic
12 Aqua Zone
13 Parapsychology
14 Game Over
15 Last Episode
16 Photograph in Twilight
17 Outbreak (Opening)
18 Odyssey (Player Selection)
19 Sky Gunner (Stage 1 [FOREST])
20 Illegal Mission (Random Stage [SEA SIDE])
21 Terrible Object (Aerial Boss)
22 Following Wind (Random Stage [NAVAL])
23 The Advance (Random Stage [DESERT])
24 Steam Syndrome (Random Stage [RAILROAD])
25 Crisis (Ground / Marine Boss)
26 Gray Stream (Stage 6 [CLOUD])
27 Battle Logic (Stage 7 [VALLEY])
28 Aqua Zone (Stage 8 [EMPIRE])
29 Parapsychology (Last Boss)
30 Game Over (Game Over)
31 Last Episode (Ending)
32 Photograph in Twilight (Name Entry)
33 S.E. Collection
Erm... I got it though...err...very shady friends =
It was just for reviewing purposes mind. 
Battle Bakraid
SGCD-0008, Scitron/Gamest
Composed by Atsuhiro Motoyama
01 Outbreak
02 Odyssey
03 Sky Gunner
04 Illegal Mission
05 Terrible Object
06 Following Wind
07 The Advance
08 Steam Syndrome
09 Crisis
10 Gray Stream
11 Battle Logic
12 Aqua Zone
13 Parapsychology
14 Game Over
15 Last Episode
16 Photograph in Twilight
17 Outbreak (Opening)
18 Odyssey (Player Selection)
19 Sky Gunner (Stage 1 [FOREST])
20 Illegal Mission (Random Stage [SEA SIDE])
21 Terrible Object (Aerial Boss)
22 Following Wind (Random Stage [NAVAL])
23 The Advance (Random Stage [DESERT])
24 Steam Syndrome (Random Stage [RAILROAD])
25 Crisis (Ground / Marine Boss)
26 Gray Stream (Stage 6 [CLOUD])
27 Battle Logic (Stage 7 [VALLEY])
28 Aqua Zone (Stage 8 [EMPIRE])
29 Parapsychology (Last Boss)
30 Game Over (Game Over)
31 Last Episode (Ending)
32 Photograph in Twilight (Name Entry)
33 S.E. Collection
Erm... I got it though...err...very shady friends =
It was just for reviewing purposes mind. Ikaruga review now up in PLASMA BLOSSOM
Nice review, Ord. It's hard to describe how crazy this game is. It looks so simple at first. The deeper you get into the scoring system you find out the game is brutal, ruthless and evil.
The system lures you into sacrificing all of your lives and bombs to stall the multiplier, but lose it and you'll fail to receive the extends that you need to keep going. Then your odds of getting another big scoring chance are minimized big time. You're all out of lives and bombs and your whole run is pretty much crash and burn from there.
Not only that, but once you learn the optimal scoring routes through each level you've still got to deal with the fact that extends appear from random popcorn enemies. For each extend that pops up, and there will be tons of them, you've got to instantly evaluate whether you can deal with grabbing it and still make the next hit in a chain. This forces you to improvise constantly and deal with really unlucky situations that were totally not your fault. Many situations will test your brain's ability to think of many things at once. In one given second you may be chasing an extend, getting in the correct position to place a bomb, dodging enemy fire, weakening an enemy with you main shot, and keeping your eye on the chain timer in order to time your bomb at the last second. A few seconds later and you're grazing near a lone bullet in an attempt to time a collision with it at the split second that your bomb ends.
Sometimes you have no choice but to let some extends go bye-bye. Sometimes you simply run out of bomb chips but you can't suicide and you just have to sit and watch your chain go instead of suiciding. Usually an extend pops up two seconds later as the game seems to say, "Oh, is this what you were looking for?" Combine this with somewhat random enemy patterns and the Garegga medal system going on all at the same time and you've got a recipe for total mayhem, not to mention insane levels of frustration.
Like all good score based shmups, Bakraid is all about the ratio between risk and reward. They just upped the stakes and the risk to the highest levels in this game. The system is very flexible but at the same time totally unforgiving of a flawed run. Underneath all this is a fun "Garegga Lite" kind of a game that beginners without knowledge of the game system can get a kick out of playing just for survival. I'd give it a 10 on gameplay and an 8 on graphics and music for an overall 9/10.
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The system lures you into sacrificing all of your lives and bombs to stall the multiplier, but lose it and you'll fail to receive the extends that you need to keep going. Then your odds of getting another big scoring chance are minimized big time. You're all out of lives and bombs and your whole run is pretty much crash and burn from there.
Not only that, but once you learn the optimal scoring routes through each level you've still got to deal with the fact that extends appear from random popcorn enemies. For each extend that pops up, and there will be tons of them, you've got to instantly evaluate whether you can deal with grabbing it and still make the next hit in a chain. This forces you to improvise constantly and deal with really unlucky situations that were totally not your fault. Many situations will test your brain's ability to think of many things at once. In one given second you may be chasing an extend, getting in the correct position to place a bomb, dodging enemy fire, weakening an enemy with you main shot, and keeping your eye on the chain timer in order to time your bomb at the last second. A few seconds later and you're grazing near a lone bullet in an attempt to time a collision with it at the split second that your bomb ends.
Sometimes you have no choice but to let some extends go bye-bye. Sometimes you simply run out of bomb chips but you can't suicide and you just have to sit and watch your chain go instead of suiciding. Usually an extend pops up two seconds later as the game seems to say, "Oh, is this what you were looking for?" Combine this with somewhat random enemy patterns and the Garegga medal system going on all at the same time and you've got a recipe for total mayhem, not to mention insane levels of frustration.
Like all good score based shmups, Bakraid is all about the ratio between risk and reward. They just upped the stakes and the risk to the highest levels in this game. The system is very flexible but at the same time totally unforgiving of a flawed run. Underneath all this is a fun "Garegga Lite" kind of a game that beginners without knowledge of the game system can get a kick out of playing just for survival. I'd give it a 10 on gameplay and an 8 on graphics and music for an overall 9/10.
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freddiebamboo
- Posts: 1366
- Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2005 9:17 pm
- Location: UK
Yeah, I think people hate on bakraid too much for it's suicidal gameplay.
I find it a novel scoring method in a gaming world populated by no misses and chaining etc...
A far more complete game than garegga IMO, I can't understand why the original is held in such high regard and bakraid recieves apathy among many players.
Maybe it's cause so many loved garegga and were hoping for garegga x2 and didn't get it
I find it a novel scoring method in a gaming world populated by no misses and chaining etc...
A far more complete game than garegga IMO, I can't understand why the original is held in such high regard and bakraid recieves apathy among many players.
Maybe it's cause so many loved garegga and were hoping for garegga x2 and didn't get it
thanks for describing what it feels like to actually play Bakraid the way it´s supposed to be played, Rastan78. When I had the game for about a year, I couldn´t figure it out no matter how much I read about it. Finally seeing a replay changed nothing, really. But even after reading your post, I think I´m just unable to concentrate on that many things at once. I can´t even keep DDP´s chain bar in view, the only way I ever get to chain is by developing a rhythm for triggering shots. But grazing a bullet while looking at a multiplier to know when to hit it? Seems like I would need 2 disconnected eyes, and a 2nd brain as well, to do so.
Bakraid's key scoring mechanic is in manipulation of the multiplier.
In order to increase the multiplier, you need to destroy key targets while you still have a multiplier active. In order to keep the multiplier active, you need to freeze it somehow, in order to give yourself enough time to get to and destroy the next target.
To freeze the multiplier, you can fire off a bomb - which resets an invisible timer down to one, and freezes the timer at this value for as long as the bomb is active - or you can die - which freezes the timer at it's current amount (out of 120, or roughly 2 1/2 seconds). [Thanks Rastan78 for this info stored in my ST thread]
Knowing when to bomb and when to suicide is the key to unlocking stupidly high scores.
Lets just say that Medals are irrelevant once you get the multiplier system down, as you can gain pretty much the same amount of points from a 64x'ed large tank as you would picking up 12 100k pt Medals
Once you get a handle on how the system works, it's actually pretty intuitive, but the way the system is designed places it in the "fixed chain route" category of scoring systems, similar to the 'Pachi's, while Garegga and Batrider featured more freeflowing scoring methods.
In order to increase the multiplier, you need to destroy key targets while you still have a multiplier active. In order to keep the multiplier active, you need to freeze it somehow, in order to give yourself enough time to get to and destroy the next target.
To freeze the multiplier, you can fire off a bomb - which resets an invisible timer down to one, and freezes the timer at this value for as long as the bomb is active - or you can die - which freezes the timer at it's current amount (out of 120, or roughly 2 1/2 seconds). [Thanks Rastan78 for this info stored in my ST thread]
Knowing when to bomb and when to suicide is the key to unlocking stupidly high scores.
Lets just say that Medals are irrelevant once you get the multiplier system down, as you can gain pretty much the same amount of points from a 64x'ed large tank as you would picking up 12 100k pt Medals
Once you get a handle on how the system works, it's actually pretty intuitive, but the way the system is designed places it in the "fixed chain route" category of scoring systems, similar to the 'Pachi's, while Garegga and Batrider featured more freeflowing scoring methods.
