Pocky & Rocky Reshrined - Story Mode - Hard Mode 1cc (No-Death, No-Bomb)
298Pocky & Rocky Reshrined came out about a week ago on Japanese PS4 and Switch, with the Western release coming about 2 months later.
Continuing the trend of modern sequels to random old games, Reshrined is a sequel to the 1992 SNES Pocky & Rocky.
This time actually made by the original developers; Natsume. Lately they've been making remakes/sequels to their old IP's in the style of the originals, which is pretty cool.
Before this they did Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again.
The original title of the series is Kiki Kaikai, which started as an arcade title in 1986 and got several ports and sequels, including one on the GBA. When the games were brought overseas they were renamed to Pocky & Rocky.
Kiki Kaikai is set in a somewhat land of fantasy, inhabited by humans and youkai, and Sayo-chan, the miko of the Shrine and the main character of the series, is often tasked with resolving supernatural "incidents".
As you can probably tell Kikai Kaikai was one of the major inspirations for Touhou, especially if you know the PC-98 games.
The game has a Story mode and a Free mode.
Story mode features all the story (obviously) and has preset characters for you to use during stages. Certain abilities are also locked until stage 3.
Free mode lets you choose between one of the five playable characters to play the entire game with, with all abilities unlocked from the start.
Hard mode is the hardest difficulty in the game. Enemies are more aggressive and shoot more, and some enemies now shoot revenge bullets. Though it's not -that- much more difficult than Normal.
The most significant change is that you lose power after getting hit and you can't pick it back up again unlike Normal. There is sort of a Gradius syndrome going on if you get hit too many times in a row, it's really hard to survive at low power and it's usually a downwards spiral when it happens.
Game manual: https://imgur.com/a/SeMGZjC
The movement speed in this game is really slow, so it's not really about dodging and more about making good use of the slide, reflect and shield
Every character has different shots for blue, green and red powerups, but red is usually the strongest. It does the most damage and this game mostly has tanky enemies instead of popcorn, so just raw power towers over everything else in overall usefulness.
Powerups work kinda weirdly in this. You need to keep picking up powerups of the same color to increase their strength, if you keep switching you'll not power up anything. Different color powerups are their for a liability and can be actively more dangerous than the enemies if you accidentally switch to a shit shot. The hardest attack on the stage 2 boss is when it drops a bunch of powerups on you.
The reflect is really good. Its range is pretty huge and reflect most bullets. It also does decent contact damage and pushes you away from enemies so they don't ram into you when they're moving towards you.
The dash is mostly for movement since it doesn't give you i-frames.
Pocky can have three mirrors on screen at once and they shoot aimed shots at enemies when you shoot any of the mirrors.
The mirror shots don't go through other mirrors though, so you need to align them so that doesn't happen.
You can also use the shield barrier to activate the mirrors instead of your shot, so you can use that for additional DPS or if you want to shoot two targets at once.
You can use coins that enemies drop on roulettes spread across the stages.
These can give you a variety of items, including 1ups, but it can also change your current shot. I got kinda screwed over by one in stage 2 where it gave me an awful shot and then I just didn't bother anymore lol. I did kinda forget that the 300? coin roulettes give you guaranteed 1up. Probably missed like 3 or 4 extends that way.
There are also some secret item boxes spread across stages.
These are invisible and can only be uncovered with the gohei or other melee attack.
The game is great fun and has absolutely gorgeous pixel art. Definitely recommended.
Pocky is probably the weakest character in the game which is kinda sad.
Rocky's blue shot is mega trash but his charge lets him fire from a fixed point which is huge.
Ikazuchi red lock-on laser is mega powerful and Hotaru Gozen has super powerful melee attacks.
Ame-No-Uzume is just mega broken and just a better Pocky in every way.
Some cutscenes were added in post.
00:00 - Intro
00:20 - Story
01:23 - Stage 1: The Haunted Shrine
04:55 - Story
06:34 - Stage 2: Enchanted Forest
13:54 - Story
16:43 - Stage 3: An Ancient Land
22:20 - Story
24:03 - Stage 4: The Underworld
30:37 - Story
33:30 - Stage 5: Cursed Airship
41:25 - Story
44:36 - Stage 6: The Burning City
46:25 - Story
51:04 - Stage 7: Battle with Black Mantle
1:00:30 - Story
1:02:25 - Stage 8: The Final Battle
1:04:51 - Ending & Credits
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