Go get it.
And now let us forget that this ever existed. I am hoping that this is like BMW Act 1 and just Werk’s way of doing a proof of concept test before making a real game, but somehow… I doubt it. It’s a shame to see all this spriting talent turn out what is basically a gimmicky Flash game. Now if they’d only make their Battle Idol Wars or whatever the hell their April Fool’s joke from a year or two back was… we’d be in business.
Man, is this the Comiket of terrible control schemes? You may as well just give yourself Carpal Tunnel now. Sky Fight uses the same control as Joust or Balloon Fight that involve rapidly tapping a button just to stay afloat. That’s okay in the party/free-for-all mode, but then they demand precise control in the single player modes. That doesn’t work. The party mode is kind of fun, but janky controls can be frustrating. The ⑨ item also has various effects, but most boil down to losing control of your character who then kills themself for the next 5 seconds. The stage hazards can also be irritating, but at least they don’t meow at you incessantly. Nice music and love the story mode presentation at least. And it has netplay built in, not that I can imagine adding lag will help things.
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One more quickie for the night. The sequel to Sanae Challenge doesn’t mix up the formula too much. You’re limited to three jumps this time, have Okyuu backing you up (including an all out "Go nuclear" option for an instant game over), and the bosses of course, but the core mechanics remain pretty much identical. Still not a bad way to pass an hour or so, which is more than one can say for certain other games… Werk… but I feel like Lionheart’s gotten a bit lazy since Mystical Chain.
Well, the good is that if you liked the trial from last year, this is more of the same. The bad is that they didn’t improve much either. The mechanics are still very basic, the controls a little frustrating at times, especially with the dashes being hard to control and sometimes sending you in the completely wrong direction… along with the screen simply pulling you in directions. They also made the incomprehensible decision to force you to sit through about a 5 minute unskippable introduction that you must watch every time you load the game until you complete the first stage, at which point you must play the first stage again to unlock the second stage. That’s just… moronic. Nice music at least, although it’s a little overly electronic for my tastes. You unlock more weapons and whatnot that you can switch out of the basic slots as you progress, and like Suguri, is trying to sell itself as having some kind of overly melodramatic plot, but eh… what can you do? And I’ve still got three Touhou RPGs sitting in front of me, begging for attention. Oi.
The good. It’s very cute, Tasofro’s music is still awesome, and it is very Marioish, if such things appeal to you. There are a ton more powers, including the ‘giant’ power being a rather terrifyingly over-inflated Marisa. The bad. Tasofro stuck with the original Marisa Land’s physics engine, which means that control varies from frustrating to rage inducing. Particularly jumping. Marisa stalls at the top of her jump regardless of any other movement. God help you if you try to turn around in midair. Run speed also doesn’t scale with time, it just suddenly goes from medium speed to full after about 2 seconds, which gives the sense that you’re controlling a hippo on ice skates. It’s still a decent game, but definitely not up to Megamari or Patchcon’s level.
