Why does this game have such a reputation?

Why does this game have such a reputation?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=3vAO6akjqdg
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

It had a novel gimmick, was hard, and was rare as fuck to buy back in the day.

it was fun and hard to come by. still have my copy. good game

It was a puzzle game, so all casuals loved it. This made it babbys first (and probably only) shmup. Right now it's all nostalgia goggles. Also, Treasure.

Read: hardcore people hated it because to play for score was to turn it into a memorization game from Hell.

Then again games like Gradius and R-Type especially make it so that you might as well be doing that or kiss any chance of first try clears goodbye.

I seriously don't understand people who said it was hard. To my memory, I actually can't think of an easier mainstream shmup to 1CC than Ikaruga.

Now, getting high points is another matter. But in that regard, Ikaruga is more of a puzzle game. You should see some power plays on YouTube. Yet, I wouldn't consider that pure shmup shooting, though.

If you think Ikaruga was hard, then how would you fare in Radiant Silvergun? Holy fucking shit. Now THAT is an extremely hard fucking game. I've 1CC'd a ton of shmups but have only gotten 2/3 through Radiant Silvergun at my best.

Stylish 3D graphics, made by a cult classic developer, cool music, unique gimmick that even the biggest pleb journo can understand ans appreciate, the western market didn't have many quality shmups at time of release, big sites reviewed it and other things. It's not that a huge mystery to be honest. Presentation is probably the most important thing for getting casuals to buy shmups and say what you will about Ikaruga, but it has style.

It's hard to score in. If you just play for survival of course it's easy, you just sit in a corner and change polarity when the curtain gets too heavy.

Ikaruga is worthless since it fails to integrate both systems into its core, forcing you to choose one or the other (scoring or survival) and not both, unless you're a savant.

>forcing you to choose one or the other (scoring or survival) and not both, unless you're a savant.
I think is actually a genius design.

Wat. Survival is part of scoring well and scoring gives you extends. Scoring is always far more risky than simple survival. That's how it should be.

It's not genius, it's how most games with elaborate scoring systems function.

I have never beaten the game, but I still boot it up from time to time just to play just to listen to that sick first level's music.

really mechanical

Wtf are you talking about? You literally can't score without survival. Dying breaks your chain.

youtube.com/watch?v=3vAO6akjqdg

The puzzle elements far exceed what is nominal to be defined as a shooting game. You are essentially playing match 3 in a scoring run of Ikaruga, not a shooting game. It's not strong in either.

I was literally only in this thread to see how long it'd take for someone to post xoxak. Thanks.

I like the color mechanic. The only other game I know that does something similar is Great Mahou Daisakusen (Dimahoo)

This, along with it being developed by Treasure and being the game that journos can name drop for "hardcore cred"

I'm not a fan of it personally.

Who the fuck cares about this semantics shit. It's a shmup with puzzle game elements. Or what, is Twinkle Star Sprites not a shmup now too?

Not in the same way Gradius is a shooting game. Not in the same way Dodonpachi is a shooting game. Those are actual shooting games. Twinkle Star Sprites and Ikaruga are superficial and barely scrape the surface of what it is to be one. Now Radiant Silvergun? That was a shooting game. That was a game.

>actual shooting games
>less focus on shooting than Ikaruga and more focus on dodging
hmmmmmmm

When you can sit in a corner and press polarity shift to clear the game is when you've got a laughable title my dude. Even DFK/CC require you to have resource to cancel bullets.

As opposed to moving left right at the bottom of the screen and bomb spamming bosses in DDP? Who cares about clears, scoring is where it's at. Plus even if I use your standards then Twinkle Star Sprites is more of a shooting game than anything you mentioned

>Tfw can't even clear most shmups.

most shmups are about 30-45 min long. It takes about 10-20 hours to get good enough to survive. If you already can survive a loop in most modern games. You can then get a good survival loop in maybe 5 hours. Shmups are really about getting over the hump of survival and then learning the score system to then get the two or so loops to really beat the game.

Is Ikaruga actually good? I got it on my Gamecube, haven't touched it in years. Is it a good intro to shmups?

Practice. The first couple of arcade clears will be really hard, it gets much easier after that to the point where you will want to play for score or second loops to feel challenged.

Yes, it's good. It seems to work fine as an intro to shmups for a lot of people. Should also play some classics like Gradius/R-Type and more traditional bullet hell games like Dodonpachi and Ketsui to get a good feel for the genre.

I miss the days when this genre was a thing.

Mars Matrix was here, Traysure is a faget

No it's not. In any shmup, a player can sacrifice score for survival at any moment during the game. This is where the gap between good and bad players becomes evident. A beginner/bad player would play for survival only, while a professional/good player would go for risky moves for points. This is literally the design philosophy behind Crimzon Clover.

In Ikaruga, you can't switch gamestyles because of the chain system; since there's no powerups, bombs or extra lives through the stage, the only way to get lives is by chaining (playing for points) and if you drop a chain you might as well restart the stage because a dropped chain doesn't net that much points. So in the end, you either play Ikaruga by chaining points or cheese the game by abusing polarity and camping a corner. There's no middleground, there's no room for creativity.

Ikaruga's chaining isn't anything special, if anything it's quite forgiving. You can max out the multiplier pretty quickly if you drop it without losing too much score. Games like Dodonpachi, on the other hand, will quickly discard your thousand hit chain as soon as you make a mistake and you will never recover from that.