Rising Sun - Iron Aces

The game feels half baked. The theme is supposed to be post WW2, but you will face helicopter, rocket launcher with targeting missiles and lasers. It has 2 player co op, but if you play solo you still see the interface for the 2nd player. You dont have an indicator of how many respawns you have during the mission. The balancing is definitely off, I picked a high health, above average damage, low speed plane and it takes me forever to destroy land targets, the screen is then flooded with enemies and nowhere to dodge. Some air enemies seem too tanky as well. I was playing on regular. There are supposedly upgrades, but when I went to my chosen character she was already max upgraded. And the other upgrades are just a couple of alternative weapon upgrades. Not even good ones. The shield system is weird and seems out of place for this game. The balancing for it isnt always good either. There are a couple of alternative game angles/modes during the campaign, they dont seem that well developed and that time would have been better spent balancing. The soundtrack is pretty nice, though. Now, it could be Im bad at bullet hells and if I pick a different plane, lower the difficulty and quit …

This is a game that at first glance seems focus-grouped for me: we have a shmup with WW2 era planes, bosses that are technologically advanced far beyond this era for inexplicable reasons, and cute anime girls who speak Japanese as they protect the US fleet during...the Battle of Pearl Harbor. So we have just the right level of absurdity, and then that gets combined with great graphics, great sound (both in terms of soundtrack and satisfying FX), really smooth controls and shooting action (everything moves at the right speed, right amount of bullets on screen, enemies die after the right amount of damage). And the stages are cool too, providing nice backgrounds to fly over with the occasional cinematic rail-shooter segment thrown in. So how do we get from there, to a game that's just alright? Well, a lack of in-stage power-ups leaves the action feeling pretty dry. You're stuck with the ship shooting the exact same way at the end of the stage as it did at the start. You could counter and say "Well, that wasn't the game they wanted to make." Fair enough, but the other games following that format (like say... Sky Force), give you an upgrade shop and money to collect during the levels…

If you are a fan of shoot-em ups that feature alternate histories and aircraft inspired by their historical counterparts, the Rising Sun is absolutely recommended. The game is tough, fair, and the art is a great touch. I feel the niche this game fills in the genre is underrepresented and this one is definitely worth a try. The translation has some minor errors, but the narrative still comes through just fine, so far. I recommend the game!!

Rather disappointing Shoot 'em Up experience :-/ I finished the story mode (on easy difficulty) in about 2 hours, with probably ~1/4 of it being uninteresting comic-like sequences. Besides the story mode, which you can do with several different characters and different airplane types and 3 different difficulty levels, there is an aracde mode and a boss mode: - arcade mode is identical to story mode minus the comic sequences in-between and - boss mode is all the boss enemies in a sequence without the normal levels in-between. The upgrade system of the planes is a bad joke - there are only 3 different upgrades available throughout the entire story, of which I found 2 not very helpful. And in the levels there are absolutely zero collectibles. That's why overall after having finished the disappointingly short story mode I found not really any replay value in the arcade or boss modes.

I really enjoyed the game! You can tell the developers put love into this project The gameplay is very fun and each level presents something new, which prevents the game from becoming repetitive. The soundtrack is excellent! The story is simple, but decent for what it sets out to be. The graphics are beautiful too, it's a really cool 2.5D look. The biggest problem is some bugs, like in the upgrade system where I earned points every time I restarted the game..., and some spelling errors in the Portuguese version, but nothing serious that would spoil the experience.

Awesome modern shut-'em-up