Josh Worley
Josh WorleyTOUHOU Azure Reflections
Unties Games
Published By Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc.
Release date 5/15/2018
Rated T for Teen
PS4
Story- I dont quite know where to begin with describing this games story. The translation is a little rough in places, like I know what all the words on the screen mean but they make no sense when read together and honestly thats a part of its charm. You start by being told a red cloud made bad stuff happen and you play a shrine maiden who flies around shooting down small witchs and crows with card looking bullets. Not a bunch of story but the interactions between you and the bosses is pretty fun. I remember the boss wiht the pickle on her hand more than the others.
Graphics- The anime style graphics seems to be a natural fit for this kind of bullet-hell inspired side-scroller and normally Id enjoy it but the settings and general astectic of this game just felt weird. It reminds me of playing gradius 3 on the SNES but if I had overdosed on Sailor-Moon and Inuyasha in 2001 and I kinda dug it. 3 stages in and all the bad guys and stages lhave enough differences so you dont feel like you are in one spot the whole game. The music is upbeat and fun and the japanese voice cast sound great.
GAMEPLAY- As I said before Im no stranger to side-scrolling shooters and I loved games like Gradius and Einhander back in the day and this scratched that itch for me. You have three modes to pick (Easy, Normal, and Hard) and you better bring some bandages because hard mode is stupid difficult. Bad guys come from behind and in front of you and squad shoots to the left and circle shoots toward the right. There is a fun shield mechanic called Danmaku Absorbtions thats basically a bullet shield that flings you across the stage at random baddies who explode in tons of the games little collectables that add up to give you points at the end of the stage. Its got a short cooldown so using the L1 or R1 triggers to slow your movement to go between the fast moving bullets is a must when its on cooldown. Plus after you beat it with one character you can go for those perfect runs to unlock the actual ending. And you cna use the in-game currency to buy your adorable kawaii shrine maiden all kinds of fun stuff like funny glasses or a dapper mustache.
Final Thoughts- Azure Reflections shouldn’t work. Its premise for me didn’t feel like it fit into the shooter genre but the gameplay sucked me in. I give it 7 flying maidens out of 10.
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