[シルフィア/Sylphia] Normal ALL CLEAR (Score: 5,992,150) [CC Commentary]
This is by the team that will go on to make Radirgy and Chaos Field, right, after their seniors that made Spriggan and became Raizing after they quit?
The game shows how green the team was. At the very least, it's entertaining.
Compared to the previous Compile shmups it's quite basic, really. You can shoot, change speed and bomb, which is a long laser! It has to be noted that the lasers won't recharge when you lose a life, so choose the moment to spam it wisely! Preferably on the final boss.
Sylphia resource-wise is recommended for beginners. With a single life you're given 3 HP. That's 2 shield before you actually lose your life. When you clear the stage or get the HP item, your life will fully recover up to 3 HP again. Extends are also abundant, so if you're new to shmups, it's a recommendation.
The shot types is rather finicky though, but they're fun to use, at least. There is fire, water, wind and earth. Fire is homing but low fire rate unless you point blank, water is aimable and high fire rate, wind is a 5-way that has some piercing boomerangs, and earth that has very weird hurtbox, which is not recommended. Though it seems to have very high DPS? I don't bother testing it.
It is fun and the visual designs is unique, but the achilles heel of the game is its stage design. It's overall still fun, but the difficulty curve is spiky. One moment the indestructible bullets are fast, other times not. Sometimes the destructible bullets are abundant, other times not. It's also hard to judge which one is a stage hazard or not. The challenge of the bosses fluctuate too. Stage 2 boss is pretty hard while the next ones are piece of cakes. Keep that in mind and you'll be less annoyed about the game.
It's not great, but it's a humbly good shmup worth your time. By the way, at least do the game justice by using decent speakers.