Comiket 70 has released a wealth of interesting doujin games onto the market, as Tsubaki has showed in his reviews. Here’s my two cents on one of those games that came out.
Acceleration of Suguri is a “shooter/fighter” based on the sidescrolling shooter Suguri by Orange_Juice, whose demo I played awhile ago (very hard game). AoS is a fighter/shooter because you fly around a screen shooting at your opponent with lasers and missiles, with some close action melee attacks for good fun. The characters are basically 2-D sprites floating around in Midair with an artificial ring so you don’t fly out. There are seven characters total, six from the beginning and a hidden seventh one. I’ll go over them all in detail below.
First I have to describe the setup and what weapons you have. You have your basic attack, usually a laser of some kind, and a secondary heavier attack, usually a barrage of missiles. You also have power meter, that when charged up allows you fire a super attack. Also holding down other buttons along with the super attack button allows for stronger attacks that take more energy to use. To get around you have a dash button, which is extremely useful as when you dash through energy attacks they don’t hurt and add to your power meter. Finally there’s a kind of “switch” button that when you hold down makes all your attacks different. No more powerful, but just different (usually different kinds of melee attacks).
We begin with are title character, Suguri, who I actually think is one of the weaker characters. She has basic attacks of shooting a rather slow laser that she can charge up and homing missiles. By switching out she can also attack with sword slashes and a nice dash attack, doing a ton of damage if she get’s in close. Her power attack is either a giant laser or a powerful dash attack. I have yet to complete arcade with her as she just not that fun to play with only sword attacks being useful.
Saki is a young girl who alway’s where’s a raincoat for some reason and attacks with missiles shaped like juggling pins. I’m not kidding. She can send out energy bullets in a circle around her or throw a boomerang like circle that comes back. She also has the aformentioned juggling missile attack. Her power up sends a bunch of bullets flying or created one giant homing energy ball to follow you, that you can pretty much just dash through to not get hurt. The most useless charcter in the game with a weird mishmash of attacks that don’t hit often. First fight in arcade mode.
Green haired Iru is your projectile fighter, her attacks consisting of firing a bunch of lasers or differently shaped missiles. She can also form mines whenever she wants. Her power attacks are very useful, as she can summon a bunch of mines or missiles to hit the enemy, or fire one big missile that does a ton of damage (beware it will hurt you if the explosion hits you). Iru a very straighforward character with all her attacks just focused on hitting the enemy.
Smarmy pink haired Nanako leaves all the fighting to the small robotic drones she has flying all around. They do everything from firing barrages of energy bullets and lasers to firing swarms of mines that hover around. You can also have them physically ram the opponent. the switch button tells whether the drones stay close to you or hover around elsewhere. The power attacks are nice, mostly consisting firing large lasers in different directions. Nanako a good character but confusing to play as, with a bunch of drones flying all around doing different things.
Fiery red head Kae is my favorite character for just how versatile she is, you can decide how close or far away to play easily with her. Her ranged attacks are firing a bunch of scythe lasers in a row or a bunch of missiles that bounce around the ring after hitting the edge. She’s a strong melee fighter, getting in close and attacking with a flurry of fists and kicks to kill the opponent. She also has the added bonus of summoning clones of herself that attack at will. Her power attacks are a strong dash move and the ability to boost all her attacks with fire to make her stronger. Clearly the best character to play as.
Kyoko is the ’sensei’ character, complete with mature look and glasses. She’s also the most defensive character, being able to summon a bunch of crystals to block all attacks. Her basic move is to fire a bunch of lasers in a spread pattern. She can summon crystals to either attack or stay put to defend and also has a close range attack of stabbing crystals. Her power attacks consist either of firing a bunch of lasers or summoning a crystal ring to encircle her completely. With Kyoko you just hunker down behind a bunch of crystals and begin firing away with all your lasers.
Hime is the secret ‘boss’ character, being the person you fight at the end of arcade mode and whom you have to defeat once to play as. Being a boss character has a mishmash of different ranged and melee moves. Her ranged moves consist of firing a bunch of laser arrows a short distance or just one big laser. Her melee moves are way more satisfying, attacking with crystals short range like Kyoko or shooting out a bunch of chains to pull the opponent in for a devestating close range power attack. Her power attacks are either a large laser or sending out an attack array across and area, like above. Her mixture of attacks make her difficult to use but very satisfying to pull people in with chains and then kill them.
The game consists of an arcade mode, VS mode consisting of two player, practice, or online play (which I have yet to get working). Beating a character in arcade unlocks a little story and illustration about them in extras. Of course the story is in japanese so I have no idea what is going on in them, but their nice none the less. Also I love the music in this game, especially the moonlight stage, it all being interesting techno remixes.If your interested you can get the game here, while here is Orange_Juice’s website (all character images taken from here).
