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EastAsiaSoft Publishes Soldner-X.

This is game is hard. Very few games frustrate me this much because of their difficulty. Before Soldner-X, I had almost forgotten what it is like to die so often and so frequently within the first level. It took me a solid 2 hours of myriad retries before I could beat the first half of the first level, and then an additional 4 hours to actually beat the first level. Currently I tackling the fourth level and being spanked to tears by the boss. It brought back horrors of my attempts at “Ikaruga”.

Putting all ranting aside, this is a solid game nonetheless. You are given 2 basic weapons at the beginning of the game and you find ammo for the other 3. The first weapon is a cannon that shoots out little beams, while the second shoots streaks of lightning that takes up a fifth of the screen. As someone who has been looking really forward to this game, I was very disappointed by the fact that there were only 2 main weapons. I was really hoping that we would have more choices because the lightning gun is looks absolutely amazing, and I was really hoping to see what other weapons they could conjure up with their engine.
Enemies in the game have vulnerabilities towards each of your 5 weapons. These vulnerabilities are usually attributed to the size of the enemy as large enemies tend to be weaker towards you cannon, and smaller enemies weaker against you lightning gun. These vulnerabilities force you to juggle your weapons to do optimal damage to the units on the screen. Juggling at the correct time becomes more interesting as you also need to “chain” properly. “Chaining” is killing enemies consecutively using one weapon and filling up a bar, which will release a power-up when you do. It seems stupid and superfluous but it has saved my life many times. In this game, you are always on the edge of dying in one form or another, every little bit of help that you can get is a blessing, whether it be an extra burst of speed, faster rate of fire, or even a second gun. Chaining also provides you with upgrades to your ship that you direly need, especially for boss battles.

The most memorable thing about the game for me is the graphics. For the most part, everything is pre-rendered in high-resolution, and it certainly gives the game that extra shine of quality production. The background is so unique and gorgeous to look at; however, it is for the most part static. Not to say that it is a bad thing, because a fully animated background would be utterly confusing as I would have a hard time discerning objects from the background. The units are also in high-res with some being exemplary. One unit in particular is the Mech that shoots out slow homing missiles at you. The visual quality of the Mech from an animation standpoint is very impressive because even though it’s just a 2D object, it looked like a 3D object with a very nice shader on it. For a game this pretty, I would have imagined that it would have the particle effects to go with it, but sadly this is not the case. For the most part, they all look like simple circles that are scaled and tinted with a various color gradients to make them look different; not exactly spectacular in terms of particle effects.

Soldner-X is refreshing to play as it is inherently classic in its design with some modern twists. There is something thoroughly fulfilling about blowing up space junk to German techno beats. I really wish they gave me better menu options because I want to play Soldner-X in 1600×900 windowed and not 1280×1024 fullscreen; also the ability to adjust controls for keyboard and controller is needed. The two-player option plays amazingly well. I honestly thought it would horrendous to play, but it works out quite well.
I would say that this game is worth the money you spend on it, but I would advise that this is for enthusiasts only. You really have to enjoy side-scrolling shooters to get your money’s worth. I sincerely hope they have a sequel in the future, and if they do, I look forward to what they can do with the engine.

Graphics: 5/5
GamePlay: 5/5
Sound: 4/5
Overall: 5/5

Tags: Action Games //