Game:

Lords of Thunder (1993)

Duration: 1:28:43

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Originally recorded: December 3, 2023
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Well, now I feel like an idiot for waiting to play this one. I've been a big fan of shoot-'em-ups -- or "shmups" for short -- since I was a wee Icepicklet. The problem is that I've *always* sucked at them. Like, really sucked at them. So when Lords of Thunder was finally nominated as a proper bonus game this year, I was worried. I honestly figured that beating the game would've taken me multiple attempts to get through it. So, in my infinite wisdom, I pushed the game back (twice), in order to get Space Channel 5, a game that I thought was going to be much easier than it ended up being. Because I was worried that Lords of Thunder would take two streams to beat.

Spoiler alert: I ended up beating the game on Normal and Hard difficulty by midnight.

Yeah, needless to say, I'm literally kicking myself for being such a colossal baby about this one. I didn't even get a Game Over on either playthrough. I did consider doing the final difficulty as well, but at that point, I kinda proved my point. Honestly, the low difficulty is really only the downside to this one. From what I've heard, the Turbo CD version is harder... though from what I can tell, that just boils down to the Sega CD's hard mode being equivalent to the TCD's normal difficulty. I might wanna track down that other version someday -- KI said that if they ever play this game, that's definitely the version they'll play.

I like the melee attack in this game, even if it absolutely destroys enemies and even bosses. Honestly, it probably would've felt like more of a risk/reward mechanic if you died in one hit like you usually do in shmups. That being said, I did like the health and weapon level mechanics though. I'm just not really sure how to rebalance the game's difficulty without just turning it into a pure bullet hell -- which just would've work with the game's old-school hitboxes. I'm also a really big fan of the game's presentation. It's like one of those hair metal albums with the high fantasy cover art that your boomer uncle swore by during college. I absolutely love that aesthetic.

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