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Idinaloq is a game I have been aware of for quite a while, but despite having it on my computer and enjoying the OST for years, it is only now I get to try it. It may not be a masterpiece but it was still a decently fun time and I was not disappointed by the love that seemed to have been poured into that game.

This definitely seems inspired by Raystorm with the perspective, the PS1-style 3D graphics, the ship designs and general sci-fi themes, but also the Taito lasers hehe. I caught a Raycrisis double pod spin pattern thrown in there too, so perhaps there's even more Ray references that I saw.

The thing that makes it stand out mechanically the most compared to the Ray games is the pod you can use to cancel bullets and recharge the Graviton weapon, a powerful forward laser that is the game's bomb sorta equivalent. It's quite fun when you cancel a whole bunch of bullets and blast lots of lasers on the bosses, or take out busy swarms of enemies in a stage with that weapon. This Grid Seeker-like addition is definitely welcome compared to the slower bomb recharge in RayStorm and Crisis.

That said, depending on the character you pick, the bomb recharge rate and the pod cooldown duration can vary a fair amount, which can in turn drastically alter the game experience and the challenge level. I went with the default girl because her recharge and pods are really good which lets me fire off Graviton attacks way more often than the others. This is somewhat important because the Taito lasers in this game are...kinda weird. It is difficult to estimate how they will behave at first, as they curve and all, but don't seem to accurately go after you which often results in you dodging into the laser.

The best dodging is no dodging, so I tried to recharge Graviton attacks to bypass as many of those lasers as possible. The fourth (and also last) stage is a big boss that has some more lasers and you can't really bypass them all even if the bullets are very generous. Thankfully, it seems like staying bottom center magically avoids most of the lasers? I stuck with it and it worked for the most part.

Getting clears with other characters would probably be harder due to the bomb recharge thing and some are kinda slow too, but they sometimes have advantages of their own like a spread shot or more shield units. Clearing the game also unlocks the operator girl who has a spread shot with heart bullets haha. A shame the character variety is not very interesting as most seemed to be just worse versions of Sayuri. However, they have voice lines and maybe you'll need to play them all to figure out the whole story (if you understand Japanese at least)

It was definitely worth checking out that awesome music in proper context! I just had to let the title screen music play out after getting that clear hehe.

Official website (EN ver) : https://www.namikaze.org/software/idinaloq/index_e.html