1999 Cave / Atlus

As you might have guessed, I'm a bit of a shmup junkie.  I've played lots and lots of them in my time, and now I come to review Guwange.

If you're just looking for the bottom line - well, play it.  Now.  Alternatively, hit "Full Review" for a couple of pages of gushing about how this is simply the best game I've reviewed so far.

The first thing that will hit you about Guwange is the presentation.  Guwange isn't just pretty - it's God damn beautiful.  The bosses aren't just ugly - they're God damn ugly, rendered in horrible detail.  The game is set in feudal Japan, and is Japanese through and through, never having had an English-language release.

There are three characters to choose from, each with beautiful artwork, their own ending sequence and slightly distinct playing styles.

The scoring and control mechanism is challenging, but utterly intuitive.  Pressing the shot button fires arrows straight ahead; holding it down unleashes your Spirit Guide, which can be used for direct bombing attacks, collecting powerups and - this is crucial - slowing down enemy fire, which comes in extremely handy.  While the Spirit Guide is active, your movement slows down considerably, and your main weapon's power is diminished.  However, if you use your Spirit Guide to destroy an enemy entirely, then all of the surrounding bullets are turned into coins which are immediately collected for a points bonus.

The game's depth is further enhanced by virtue of it being played on foot; you must navigate terrain as the level scrolls in three directions, and use your Spirit Guide to take out enemies above your level whom you can't shoot with regular arrows.

Bullets fly at you from all directions at once.  There must be upwards of a hundred and fifty bullets on-screen during some of the more intense boss fights.  To counter this, only absolute direct shots to your head will hurt you, and you have a health bar rather than a number of lives, so you can take quite a few hits before you die.  Also, the ability to slow down enemy fire gives you plenty of room to save yourself.

But that's just the physical.  What strange magic Cave and Atlus have worked to make this game so utterly perfect lies in the psychological - you can tell they've done their research and subjected the game to months of intense playtesting.  I felt overwhelmed at points, but at all times in control of how the game was running.  If I took a hit, it was always my fault, and there was always a way I could have gotten out of it.  There's a strange feeling you get with some shmups, a feeling of being in a trance, which usually happens when your eyes are centered on the middle of the screen, you're looking off into the middle distance, and your hands seem to be listening to your eyes without commands passing through anything in between.  Not so with Guwange, who have cleverly split your attention between where your Spirit Guide is, and where you are.

The one and only complaint I have about this game is that there's no English translation.  That's it.

Guwange is the sort of game that sets your pulse racing, that always challenges and is always fair, that's easy to play and hard as diamonds to master.  Guwange is simply an amazing game in every respect, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Go.  Play.  Now.