Violent Soldier (PC Engine)

[CIT]

I'm playing this at the moment.

I think it's pretty good, one of the better HuCard shooters. Solid mechanics, good music, decent graphics. Great title as well!
But holy shit is it tough!

Stages 1-3 are a breeze and you almost get complacent, but then in stage 4 the difficulty suddenly spikes. You really gotta memorize this stage if you don't want to die here.

However, from stage 5 onward the game really starts going to town with everything it's got. People say Rayxanber II is a difficult PC Engine shooter, but I think Violent Soldier takes the cake. Apart from memorization the final stages really require perfect use of the charge shield with no room for mistakes.

What's your opinion of this game? Anybody 1CC it?

[blackoak]

I'll have to check Violent Soldier out, as I've been slowly going through the PCE library. My biggest complaint with this era of games, and it seems to be a problem with a lot of the PCE developers specifically, is that the challenge isn't there until the last few stages. I wish the design philosophy had been a little different... its really bad on something like Gunhed. I love the aesthetics of these games but I'm just bored to tears by 50% of the game. And that complacency you mentioned can really screw you over when you finally have to play.

[renardqueenston]

i rather like this game. the ship design is goofy as hell but it's solid fun! nowhere near a 1CC with it, it's a tough bastard. pretty neat (if occasionally very phallic) graphics and atmosphere. underrated, i'd say, but not for everybody.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

I just discovered this game yesterday and I'm really surprised by how enjoyable it is in spite of the slow difficulty curve. My only problem comes with the hit detection; it's really hard to take advantage of the "beak shield" when the nose of your ship is so huge. Love the art direction above all though. Aside from the obvious Irem influence, stage 2 gives me a major Captain Neo vibe.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Same thing could be said of Data East's OverRide shmup title for the PCE platform...really nice first three stages to breeze through, then upon reaching stage four and beyond does the difficultly factor ramps up quite a bit.

If some of those PCE shmup titles had been play tested for proper gradually difficulty for each stage, then they'd be even better. Unless development of a game was on a tight budget and trying to get it released in time, such things like that did take a backseat in those days.

Sure is crazy having to go against the same ol' end-stage bosses for the final stage showdown of Gunhed/Blazing Lazers. Didn't they appear once already in the earlier stages?

Would've been nice if Hudson Soft had given Soldier Blade the Super CD-Rom2 upgraded treatment to compliment the Hu-Card release.

The difficulty increases quite smoothly on the TTI version of Magical Chase.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[ED-057]

Cool game, but I couldn`t stop dying on the stage with the enemies that have shields on the front. I was flying in close to kill them with the charge attack but invariably I would get too close to one and go poof.

[Despatche]

I'd like to point out that some may have this game under the name "Sinistron", the US localization. Doesn't seem people know that name or this game very well; even the PC Engine Bible has their gameplay video up under Violent Soldier.

As far as regional differences (from Violent Soldier to Sinistron), I'm told that there's a change to those green robots in stage 1 (one of the dumb kinds of changes where their attacks are removed), stage 4 is fairly different, and stage 6 is much harder.

And yes, this game really ranks up there in difficulty. I wouldn't its difficulty to Override though; Override is a little more like Cyber Core, while Violent Soldier here is indeed more like Rayxanber II or Gate of Thunder. Speaking of Cyber Core, I think Violent Soldier was made by the same people.

[Jeneki]

Oh yea, Sinistron, I know that one. I remember the title screen music really well. And the stage 6 checkpoint (which made me really glad the controllers had built in turbo).

[Kollision]

So this isn't part of Hudson's Soldier series?
Interesting.

That difficulty spike is definitely there in the last stage of Cyber Core, and if Violent Soldier was made by the same people then I have an idea of what to expect.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yep, it's the IGS dev team that handled both releases of Violent Soldier/Sinistron and Cyber Core titles. There was a prominent ad for the TurboGrafx-16 releases of both Sinistron shmup & Tricky Kick puzzler games in an early 1990s Video Game & Computer Entertainment magazine back in the day. I still have that particular issue.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~