Devil Engine REVIEW (SWITCH) - Bullet Heaven
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- There has to be something to those rare games that literally everyone wants us to weigh in on. But what is it about Devil Engine? Well, we think we have the answer to why this standard, traditional horizontal shooting game with a touch of Thunder Force DNA is such a hot contact on everyone's radar. But how does it stack up?
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This episode of Bullet Heaven was made with a copy of the game provided by the publisher for review. The opinions expressed are our own and are not paid for by developers, publishers or any retailers or resellers in any way.
Fun Facts about this game:
The chain multiplier is actually a mechanic from Devil May Cry(it’s even called the style gauge in the game’s files)
Lead Developer Sinoc(did all of the coding, some of the bullet art, and a few other things) would often get so far ahead that he’d have time to play other games while waiting for other staff to do their thing: he’d often go onto playing FPS games(started with Team Fortress 2, then played Apex Legends when it came out, and I once saw him playing Titanfall 2 on a discord message)
The ZeroRanger palette reference actually makes perfect sense if you look deeper, since Sinoc was a QA tester for that game and he’s online friends with developer Eebrozgi.
He’s also in the top 10 for PC leaderboards(#1 is held by Kiwi on the shmups server)
Sinoc also changed the nickname on the shmups server to “thunderforce fangame maker” as another allusion to Thunder Force, and qwesta also is nicknamed “sexy sax guy from devil engine” on that server.
Andrástê
I like the fact that it takes a simpler, more old school approach to scoring. Complex scoring systems are cool, but if every shmup has one, what makes them special? I appreciate that the genre is diversifying again, so it’s not all danmaku all the time, and a game that embraces the basics and does them well can get attention and acclaim. Hoping someone picks this up for a physical release.
I'm OK with a simpler game. Just because it lacks ingenuity doesn't make it devoid of fun.
Studio Mudprints Yeah, that’s basically my point. I think it’s good that it’s not another bullet hell game without a differentiating gimmick or hook.
The stunted animation frames in its intro scream Gate of Thunder to me-I really like the look of this game.
It's just really refreshing to see a shmup of this quality that feels more like Thunder Force and less like a typical danmaku.
It actually feels more like a limited sidescrolling Raiden than TF.
Working on several of the sound effects as ec2151 (many of them being the player cues), I am glad you (per usual) took the time to mention them in your review! Making sfx is often more difficult than making music, as I've found.
Credit to the main dev Sinoc for the boss explosion though. That lovely cue has been there since near the beginning.
Can confirm FX are harder to do than BGM. I can do decent work with foley though.
@@StudioMudprints I'd love to have access to an actual recording studio and do foley sounds. I imagine you can make a nice explosion from a bucket of rocks, some balloons, and some aluminum siding... Maybe when I've hit it big =)
ASMR of Ser saying ¡Andraste! on repeat when?
Imo , the best thing about the awesome / brutally tough Devil Engine , is the fact that between it , & Rolling Gunner's impending release on Switch , the shmup scene is more alive , & well , than todays Fortnite fanatics would have us believe . lol
And we'll be there when Shoot-em-ups hit their deserved audience.
Been waiting for this one! I would like to add that Devil Engine plays more than a tribute to the classics of the past. In particular I recognize stage 2 being a homage to Last Resort and stage 4 being a love letter to Thunderforce IV (Strite and Air Raid say hello). Superb review as usual!
Agreed. Love letters notwithstanding though, I think more could have been done with the gameplay. The unlockable Scathach was more fun to use than the An drrrass teh.
Comments are overwhelmingly positive, hooray!
Thanks for this review, and for the clarifications on composer credits and other details as well
Thanks for watching; the composer thing really struck home with me; I did the arrange soundtrack in Ghost Blade HD, but was never once mentioned in any of the game's marketing. Everyone was praising Tsukumo for work he didn't do, and that really bugs me.
A n d r a s t e
An drrrass teh
Thank you for your efforts!
You are welcome.
Another damn fine review Ser! Had my eye on this for a while.
Glad it was worth the wait.
Dame bugs lol! Great review Ser!
It was the only real issue we found poking out of the programming.
I encountered a bug in challenge mode, I restarted hundreds of times trying to S rank the arkanoid level, and the screen began to corrupt, and it wouldn't go away until I closed the game.
Aaaah, there's the review. Thank you. I've been waiting for your opinion to drop before I picked this up. The only two things I'd have liked to see done differently in the game would be an easier mode with fewer bullets to help with enemy memorization for harder modes and I'm not super hot on the explosions. Everything else looks and sounds great...sans that audio bug. ;)
Yea, that audio bug was actually caught after I wrote the script, too. I wanted more footage and lo and behold, there it was.
I’ve been waiting for you to do a review on this game. It looks amazing. I’ve been holding off in case someone decides to make a physical copy but I way just have to get this digitally for now anyway. Thanks for the awesome review.
Thanks for watching, we're glad you enjoyed it.
Was surprised how high a score it received. Between criticisms of level/enemy design, mediocre gameplay, mechanics lacking innovation, being propped up by its art game status, and its punishing level of difficulty was expecting a less positive overall takeaway. Maybe just a function of how the categories get tallied. At least the fundamentals sound solid.
While I can see how higher number = harder game is one way to make things immediately clear may have been worth docking it on Challenge to better reflect how the difficulty impacted your experience with it. Definitely seems like you felt the level of challenge was detrimental to the game rather than constructive. If anything I'd expect the high level of difficulty to indirectly pump up its length.
Thanks for the informative breakdown. The intro/outro credits seem overly loud btw.
The visuals and music are really the best parts and they are pretty cool. The gameplay fundamentals are strictly middle of the road. However, sometimes if a game is spitefully hard, it will get a lower score or an indicator, depending on the year of production the review is in. It should also be noted that the final score is not an average of the criteria rated. I might be abandoning the whole system anyway.
I wish that I had gotten this game before the controversy happened. It looks sick as hell.
Yeah, I'm super bummed about Dangen's asshattery.
Great review and bang on my own thoughts. The only thing that annoys me is that the difficulty in the higher levels doesn't even feel like something you could master as you just cannot keep up. It feels like they just maxed all settings and left it like that.
The worst part is, there's an even higher difficulty...
@@StudioMudprints I've been half way through the highest difficulty, it's ridiculous
I'd like to add that Qwesta did the OST for ZeroRanger, so you know your ears are in for a good time!
Zero Ranger's OST only really got fantastic in the second loop though. This one is great all the way through!
unfortunately that's not true, I only did the DDP style arranges that occur later in the game. Eebrozgi was responsible for the rest of the OST.
The DDP style stuff was excellent.
The beautiful pixel art is this game’s best feature. It’s still a solid shooter, but the games that inspired it are superior and all are available digitally. It clearly lifted the city scene from Last Resort and the ship armada and opening over the ocean clearly cam from Lightening Force (and looked better there too). It feels like the difficultly was jacked up to compensate for a short overall length. Mechanically, it gets all the basics.
AN DRAHHSSSS TE
Every. Time.
Hi there, love your content! Are you planning to make some other nice pc shmups reviews? I mean like Blue Revolver and Infinos Gaiden?
It's possible for infinios and completely unlikely for Blue Revolver. We have some PC doujin games coming in that we think will make for great videos though!
After dying around 40-50 times, I was very proud of finally beating this game on "Very Easy". I thought I was going to unlock the other mode but I still only have arcade mode to select from. What does it take to unlock the other mode?
Yay my prayers are answered
Tadaa
Damn this game looks good, I'm gunna have to get a switch soon! Rotating to screen for TATE is very appealing.
All kinds of games support that now. Downwell is a great one that costs less than five bucks!
I'll have to borrow my sons Switch cause that game reminds me of Gleylancer which is my favorite mega drive game. Great video man.
Ok, here's a hot take: this game is actually an excellent entry point in the STG genre.
I'll concede that on very easy with the unlockable ship, you MIGHT be right... but it takes a long time to get those features.
@@StudioMudprints I mean i don't use Scatatch at all, and i can 1cc up until Stage 5 on Very Easy - about 7 hours in, and this is the first schmup i've played seriously in my life.
Same here, but It's still not a good barrier of entry. Having played both, Rolling Gunner is a much better starting point.
@@StudioMudprints still have to check that out, yeah! Is it related to Eschatos in any way?
Completely unrelated, though both are top-scoring games on Bullet Heaven. Project Rolling Gunner took more inspiration from games like Akai Katana.
the art is okay for your average indie game but I think it cripples itself with little use of hue shift for appropriate lighting and small color palettes one each sprite. These are two things that sega mega drive and Arcade games were good at even though they had smaller color tables. These flaws make the art look like someone glued together construction paper for an art piece in school. I'm no artist but I'm just using my previous observations and experiences. But I bet it's still fun to play. Also, Let's go Tsukumo 🤘
ATTENTION VIEWERS:
Do not buy this game until Dangen Entertainment collapses!
Money was stolen from the Protoculture Games team totaling to over $100,000 USD, literally almost all of their profits. They have not received one cent from the OST release either.
If you’re that desperate to play it, crack it. Even development lead Sinoc agrees with that statement.
Don’t buy the Wonderful 101 remake either: Platinum Games is desperate to hide the fact they’ve signed on with Dangen for that release.
Dangen has been completely unacceptable with the handling of Protoculture's work. This is worth a pin.
@@StudioMudprints Strongly agreed.
We'd rather you pirate it, frankly.
Make sure you find an up to date version as we've fixed a bunch of bugs and tweaked the balance a bit since launch.
I knew that Devil Engine was hijacked from Protoculture, but that much money being took?
Heading to the torrents
@@protoculturegames9376 hey, can we pirate it and then give you money for it? Paypal info please.
Pretty game
Agree.
Such great reviews.. If more shmup fans knew of your channel you'd have half a million subs!
We're still a ways off from out 10k subs goal, so feel free to spread the word ;)
I will do my best. Cheers@@StudioMudprints
I want to hear you say the name of that ship again
An...
...Drrrrasss teh,.
WOW
In the famous words of Billy Madison “slooooww dowwwwwn” 😂
Lol jk I guess I’m just really lame at these type of games so I don’t totally understand the lingo. Sweet review though😁👍 game looks really cool but tough😅
Ah, sorry. I'm thinking of doing a video going over a bunch of shmups terms and throwing it onto our channel trailer slot for newcomers to the genre.
Studio Mudprints haha that’s cool;) I was only joking around but yeah there is a lot of shmup terms I’m not familiar with so that would be cool. Thanks
A N D R A S T E
I was really hyped because of the launch trailer, I wan not prepared for some of the attacks in the game, it feels like they made it like that intentionally as a reference to games like Last resort, which I thought had some very frustrating levels.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's not fun though, I keep playing over and over doing better and enjoying it more each time, unlike R-type delta which actually made me rage quit because of the stage 6 checkpoint and boss.
I can S rank the double snake boss challenge but I still can't 1cc the main game on easy...
The Scathach is way more our style than the An drrrasss teh, and it feels more engaging and adequately powerful.
The demo was fun and, despite the historic gameplay > graphics argument, I think pretty graphics are very important to the gameplay of a good shmup... but this review highlights my worries about the difficulty.
I'll probably pick it up when it's on sale sometime but there are many cheaper shmups on my steam wishlist. Demo was very enjoyable though.
The scathach is pretty good for making efficient progress in the game; using it we can already get to stage 6 on Credit 1 of "Very Easy."
The lack of online leaderboards has just put me off.. I just refuse to play a shooter without them.. as a single player, what other motivation is there for repeated play once completed?
Zero Ranger is a good example of a single player game done right for repeat play. Devil Engine lacks a certain element, not the least of which is an online leaderboard.
This or Thunder Force IV?
Giving the situation with the publishers I guess I'll get TF4 now and this at some point, but which one's better?
The two are very different from one another, so a direct comparison os flimsy at best.
That said, Thunder Force IV, if not simply to stand up to Dangen. If you can, Protoculture games recommends pirating DE on PC for the time being. Just make sure to do it safely. If they had a paypal link or something, I'd throw in a few bucks.
Would love to play this but too bad it seems like the dev still hasn't gotten paid.
Devs have, but composer has not.
Since a dlc to devil engine is coming up with loads of new content, will there be a new review regarding it?
I don't know. Depends how badly we get hounded.
Ok about 3 minutes in and this game looks like the bastard child of Thunderforce 4 and Last Resort - well aware I could be stating the obvious here
Very true, albeit with simpler gameplay that actually resembles neither; this game sure does look great though!
the last boss is based on one from touhou 5!!
You should review the prequel to iron Crypticle Instead. Iron Fisticle (Steam) is a much better game in my opinion and evidence that less is more.
Maybe so, however, we were given a review code, so Crypticle it shall be.
Also that sounds NSFW
On PS4 yet?
Was it announced for PS4?
@@StudioMudprints Yes
@@StudioMudprints gematsu.com/2019/02/devil-engine-launches-for-switch-and-pc-on-february-21-ps4-and-arcade-later
Well, a quick google search says, "no." Follow them on Twitter and you catch any announcements.
This strikes me as the kind of flavor the month shmup that only appeals to masochists which quickly fades from memory after a couple months.
Gameplay wise, yes. it's very samey;. The main draw here is definitely the presentation, and it's a winner. The unlockable ship is more fun to use in the end, too.
From the way you describe it, it sounds to me kinda like the Shmup version of Persona 5. Excessive hype brought about from lots of flash while lacking in substance.