Ah, shoot ‘em ups(shmups for short). Some of the most challenging games out there. And if you eventually become good enough to finish the game with minimal dying, the greatness that is the internet enables you to challenge the world, bringing the gameplay to a whole new level. Soldner-X is no different.

If you like being blasted from every direction in a spaceship, check out my review of the latest on the PSN! (this is gonna be kinda short… i think)

Graphics
The visuals are really good. Enemy designs are cool, the weapons are simple but nice to look at, the explosions are great, level design and backgrounds are awesome. Animations are very simple but don’t need to be complicated.
I do have a few minor complaints though. There’s a lot of times where it’s hard to see what’s coming at you because the bullets blend in to the background too much. Or if you use you beam attack, enemy bullets will basically disappear behind them making it hard to know where they’re coming at you from.
 But overall the game looks really good by shmup standard.

Gameplay
The basic gameplay is simple enough. The screen scrolls automatically to the left, you move your ship around in that area, shooting at enemies and dodging a slew of bullets and obstacles. Everyone has played one of those. May it be a more  ”primitive” one like Space Invaders or Galaga, or a more complicated one like Gradius or R-Type, the core gameplay is the same: blast enemies and do your best not to die while trying to get a high score.

The controls are simple. L1 and R1 changes your weapons. X shoots. Square uses the Shockwave and… That’s about it. You move with the D-pad at full speed and using the left analog stick gives you a bit more precision in your movements.

Difficulty
This game is incredibly hard. Just to give you an idea, I have trouble getting to the end of the second world (each world has 2 stages) on EASY. There is a “Very Easy” setting but I won’t go that low. I can barely manage to get to the second stage in the second world on Hard. And if somehow it’s not hard enough, there’s 2 extra difficulties that are even harder. The game is relatively short, with 5 worlds that take 5-7 minutes at most, but you’ll find yourself replaying through much of the game a lot since you’ll die so much. 
One thing that does help is the ranking system. As you kill enemies, whether you die or not, your rank goes up, and as it goes up you get extra credits(continues) you can use, which bring you back to 2 lives but removes all your powerups.
And if somehow the game is still too easy at Impossible difficulty, you can try to become the best in the world with the online portion which ranks you against others, and there’s some pretty hardcore trophies to get(5 minutes without getting hit once? this is madness!!). 

The one “forgiving” element in the game is the fact that you have a life bar.  you can take quite a few hits before exploding… though at higher difficulties you can take less damage.

Weapons
You have 2 main weapons in the game: The pulse gun is the basic bullet thing that most shmups have. The beam gun is a lighting gun which covers a much larger area. Those weapons can be used forever as long as they don’t overheat, which is the blue bar under your life bar. They recover when you stop shooting them for a while (so if you’re shooting the pulse gun, your beam gun starts getting cooled down).
The other weapons are the bow which curves depending on where you are on the screen, the flamethrower and rockets (which does massive damage). Those have limited ammo and they don’t cool down. The rockets are especially valuable since you can only have 5 of them at a time.
The final weapon is the shockwave. The traditional “kills everything on the screen” kind of weapon, though it only damages bosses and doesn’t actually cover ALL of the screen, but a good part of it. Really useful in tight situations.

Power ups
There are a few powerups you can get here. Fast shot makes your pulse and bow guns shoot faster and if you get multiple of them they stack and you shoot even faster. Weapon cooler replenishes your pulse and beam guns. The weapon protector prevents negative power ups from affecting you. Multi shot lasts forever and adds an extra shot in certain directions to your pulse and bow guns, which is incredibly useful. You also get shockwaves, healing(not lots of healing, but any of it is appreciated), weapons and points. Negative power-ups I’ll be honest I never got any of them other than the speed down which really screwed me up. There’s also secret keys that are “hidden” through the stages, mostly in enemies, which unlocks the fifth world if you get 4 of the 5 keys in each world.
There’s not a BIG variety of upgrades, but not much more is needed and the negative “upgrades” add a bit of challenge.

Chain system
One thing that’s a bit different with this game is the chain system. The chain energy bar on the bottom right fills up as you kill enemies, and when it becomes green you have to switch weapons to do a chain. If you completely fill up the bar you lose the chain energy and have to fill it back to green again. When you do the required amount of  chains displayed just over the bar you have to switch weapon again and the displayed power-up will pop up at the bottom right of the screen for your taking.
As you get chains the powerups get better and the amount of chains required to get to the next power up increases. Is starts with point upgrades and fast shots and gradually becomes better stuff like healing and multi shots and rockets.
It’s a pretty fun system and it can really help you out.

Scoring
The scoring is relatively simple. You get points for killing enemies and… that’s about it! There’s power ups that give points as well. When you finish a world (both stages), you get a count of everything you did in that world. Number of keys found, number of chains done, time spent in the level, things like that all count towards your score and determines how much you suck compared to everyone else. It also gives you a rank (from E(or was it F?) to S) to tell you how much you suck. If the online option is on, you’ll automatically be ranked against other people. Yay!

Overall
Despite one little bug in the second world where you can get stuck in a wall when respawning and pretty much die instantly (yeah, that’s stupid), the game is really fun to play. If you’re just a casual Shmup player you will get enough challenge from the easy difficulty, and if you’re a hardcore shmup player you’ll love comparing your scores to other peoples’, trying to be the best. And with the extra difficulty levels for the REALLY hardcore players, there’s something for everyone here.
Definitely worth the 10$ on PSN, and there’s also a PC version(here: http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-7s-49-en-70-255r.html) if you don’t have a PS3 at hand. Well worth playing if you like shmups.

jobocan Games, Review