[Hazelnut Hex] Moderate (Hard) Type C ALL Clear (Score: 2,660,750) [CC Commentary]
2Hazelnut Hex is a fun one. I love it, though on Moderate the patterns' difficulty curve isn't well balanced. Pretty unstable, in fact! The shot types overall aren't that well-balanced either, a bit more glaringly than it should.
Hazelnut Hex is a hori shmup. You can shoot, bomb and charge shot. You charge your shot by not shooting. She is, on an overall game design standpoint, adequate, but she feels sluggish if you're a bit more picky. You have 3 shot types which can be boiled down to medium-narrow, narrow, and wide. Okay, doesn't sound so bad. But neither of the shot types change her movement speed. Compared to the agile Cotton, for example, she's slow! There is DPS difference on each shot type. Obviously the Type B has the best DPS, but she's slow. It's not unviable, but it certainly makes her vulnerable to popcorns especially from the sides. Type C has the coverage benefit. For a shmup with varied enemy spawning points, its coverage is stingy aside of Type C. I suggest Type C for the best fun.
But Type C's DPS is weak! Worry not, there is the charge shot. Regardless of the shot type you choose, the charge shot is the same. A bit narrow, but the fun part is it cancels bullets! How cool is that!? The thing is the only cost of using this is to not shoot. You'll be vulnerable to shooting enemies. That's actually a good deliberation for decision making, but this is the core weakness when facing bosses. On a pattern that's not from the right, the pattern is difficult since the bullet-cancelling can't do much. On the other hand, if the pattern exclusively comes out from the right, then with well-timed charge shots you're practically invincible! This makes some parts become very hard then crashes down to very easy! Not ideal.
There is the bomb that is rechargeable. It's part of the scoring system, so you'll want to take account of that like the bullets cancelled when you use it. The important things to note are when you lose a life you won't lose the bombs you currently have, but you won't gain any either, so you're vulnerable to chain deaths with 0 bombs. Careful!
On the stages the scoring system is nice. Charge chain hits, bullet cancelling, even power up item medal collecting. It falters on the boss fights, however. The bullet cancelling from your charge shot won't gain you any points. I don't see any time bonus either. The only way to farm points from bosses is the bombs, which you may have spent on the stages instead for similar reasons. Not sure what to say about this, but they could do more for scoring here.
Criticisms aside, it is far from a bad game, though. Good, even. Nice variety, amusing story, and the finale is delicious! And the visuals, while too bright at times, is too charming to hate.
The game itself has no replays, but it has a surprisingly robust practice mode. You can even select your starting stats and which part to train on! Without this tackling this game would be more painful than it required to be!
I can certainly say you can't go wrong with Hazelnut Hex, but I'm pretty picky with stage design + moveset synergy, so I don't think it's as great as people say. Spam that charge shot!
This is the Nintendo Switch version.
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/hazelnut-hex-switch/
#stg #shmup #NintendoSwitch