Ikaruga: A Review

I figured that to jump start whatever this blog is, I would write a review for the wildly hyped Ikaruga, by Treasure.

Treasure is famous for being the developers behind the 'King of Shmups' Radiant Silvergun. Personally they are one of my favorite developers of any type of videogame and for shooters are right up there with Cave, Psikyo, and Raizing.

Story:

(From the manual of the Gamecube version)
Several years ago in the small island nation of Horai, one of the most powerful men of the nation, Tenro Horai, discovered the Ubusunagami Okinokai -- The Power of the Gods. This energy emanated from an object he dug up from deep within the earth and gave him powers of unimaginable strength. Soon after, Tenro and his followers, who caled themselves the "Divine Ones," began to conquer other nations one by one. They considered themselves "The Chosen People" and carried out their conquests in "the name of peace."

Meanwhile, a freedom federation called Tenkaku emerged to challenge the Horai. Using fighter planes called Hitekkai, they fought with the hope of freeing the world from Horai's conquests -- but all their efforts were in vein. They lost battle after battle and were eventually almost completely wiped out. Miraculously, however, one man one young man survived. His name was Shinra.

Refusing to accept defeat, Shinra set off again for Horai to wage another battle. He was shot down and crashed in a remote village called Ikaruga, inhabited by a group of aged people who had been sent into exile there by Horai's conquests.

Kazamori, the village leader, and the other inhabitants pulled Shinra from the wreckage of his plane and nursed him back to health. Shinra regained his strength and announced that he was determined to continue the battle against Horai. The villagers entrusted him with a fighter plane that they had built themselves, called the Ikaruga.

While not terribly unique or interesting, the story sets itself up in such a way that you are treated to lots of deep, quasi-philosophic quotes and several passages from The Art of War by Sun Tzu. So while not groundbreaking by any standards, it sets the game up well enough and you can tell that it wasn't thrown in "just because".

Sound:

I love the sound in this game. The sound effects are nice. Perhaps a little minimalistic, but so is the art and music so it fits. The sound is standard shooter fare: Explosions, laser-esque sounds, etc.

The music is done really well too, although probably a bit too synthesized for some. Not something you'll be putting on your iPod, but you'll recognize the various tracks and a few are sorta catchy.

Graphics:

The graphics are in one word, beautiful. They look fantastic and if what I hear is true, the Dreamcast version is even better. Everything on the foreground like your ship, the enemies, and bullets, look crisp and clean. I never had trouble discerning bullets or enemies from the background, seeing as all of the enemies and bullets are of two predominant colors: black and white. Not only is this important to gameplay, it also creates a polarizing sort of visual.

The background seems to have recieved as much attention as the rest of the graphics. Oftentimes if you take the time to glance into the background you'll see enemy ships as little ants buzzing to and fro in the background around carrier ships. These enemies will sooner or later go off the screen only to reappear as enemies on the foreground. You'll see bosses lurking ominously beneath you, so on, so forth.

The visuals wouldn't be nearly as pleasing with out the great art to base it off of. Like the music, the art is very minimalistic, concentrating more on the overall picture and the contrast of black and white rather then fine, intricate detail and color. Personally I like it, and you can unlock galleries of sketches, screenshots and such by meeting certain goals or playing for a certain amount of time.

Gameplay:

Now for the meat and potatoes of any good game. Ikaruga's gameplay revolves around 'polarity'. In the world of Ikaruga, enemies and bullets are of either black or white polarity. Your ship can change it's polarity to black or white. When you are black, you can absorb black bullets and your ships weapons do double damage to white enemies and vice versa for when your ship is white. Because of this approach, the bullet patterns more closely resemble bullet curtain games Perfect Cherry Blossom or Imperishable Night instead of manic games like Dodonpachi. They require careful use of the polarity to navigate through. Most of the patterns after the first stage are impossible to get through without switching polarities. This adds another level to the dodging aspect.

There are also no bombs in Ikaruga. What you have is a release shot. As you absorb bullets, a meter fills up on the side of the screen. The meter is split into 12 equal parts. Once at least one of the segments is full you can release the shot and however many segments of the meter were full, that many homing missiles will be unleashed upon the enemy. This is necessary for defeating many enemies as they will appear from behind you, or you simply cannot destroy everything before they begin to leave the screen.

Scoring in the game is based on a chaining system. Since enemies are already conveniently of either a black or white color, you can create a 'chain' by destroying 3 enemies of the same color. Destroy three more enemies of the same color (they don't have to be the same color as the first 3) and you will create a chain of 2 and the enemies base point values will be multiplied. Simply put, higher chain equals higher score. This combined with the nature of the bullet patterns turns Ikaruga into a twisted sort of puzzle game. You have to dodge and absorb bullets while Chaining enemies together for points while strategically using your release shot. One of the most satisfying things about Ikaruga is the feeling you get when you finally find the perfect route through a tricky part of a stage and pull it off flawlessly.

Ikaruga also includes a Practice mode and a Conquest mode to help you learn the patterns and pacing of the stages.

There are three difficulty modes. Unlike other shmups that make a game more difficult by making the bullets faster or adding more enemies or bullets, in Ikaruga the three difficulties affect suicide bullets. On easy, no enemies release suicide bullets when they die. On normal, only enemies of the same polarity release suicide bullets, and on Hard all enemies release suicide bullets. If you're not prepared, these bullets can cause you a lot of headaches.

An interesting thing you can do is if playing the game regular has gotten a bit stale then try a bullet eating game. The rules are simple. Get as far as you can without firing a single shot. Theoretically you can 1 life clear the game doing nothing but absorbing bullets.

Closing:

If you own a Gamecube or Dreamcast and prefer your shooters a little more intricate and planned out, then Ikaruga will probably suit you. If you dislike 'gimmicks' or chaining, then Ikaruga will probably frusterate you to no end.

You can tell Treasure put a lot of effort into Ikaruga and it turned out really well. It's a nice complete package with nearly endless replayability since the point of the game is to improve your highscores instead of finishing the story or beating the last stage.