Rysen

A love letter to the PC Engine shooting game classics, looking at Compile games such as Blazing Lazers and the Zanac series in its weapon variety and ultra fast paced action. But also to the Star Soldiers series, with some masterfully designed multi scrolling layouts full of scoring opportunities, in the best tradition of Caravan STG games. And even to Toaplan proto-bullet hell games such as Batsugun, giving the bullet density and creative patterns in some sections. While other times it's able to put us in the zone like a modern revision of Fire Shark or Truxton, forcing us to constantly dodge bullets coming from big enemies, taking a lot of time to destroy. The feeling of desperately trying to clear a ship that is filling the screen with diabolic and hard to dodge patterns, and the satisfaction of finally destroying it. But with bullets that thankfully, most of the times, are not as fast as those on Toaplan games. With a subtle and elegant difficulty curve, feeling close to a hard 16 bits era console game, but without the frustration of losing lives with too damn fast bullets coming from nowhere, reducing the necessity of memorization. This baby only has the fun and brilliant part…

Rysen is the game that I would like to say that “Thunder Force, is that you?”. The game could be a small love letter to the Thunder Force fans and other shump fans. I bought it on sales (because it was very cheap) and it has potential to improve even more. I really like the current state of the game though it still need more balance and improvements. Here are the pros and cons for the game: The Pros: + Has many references from the other STG games likes Thunder Force (especially Thunder Force 2), RayForce, Alltynex Second, Raiden, Zanac,... etc. + Beautiful pixel graphic with tons of explonsions, small details and parallax to make the game more enjoyable. + Coooooool musics. + Fully-supported keyboard mapping and controller with no input lags, NOICE!! + The gameplay is simple, likes the old-school shumps: Shoot & Dodge. With the lengthy 7 stages with 2 loops without any special conditions to unlock the 2nd loop so just chill out and play it to your heart contains, because get ready to...DIE...ALOT. Yes, literally!! + For the weapon systems, you have 6 weapons in total: Straight, Shotgun, Shield, 2 types of 4-ways (“x” shape and “+” shape) and the signiture weapon from the Thunder …

Infinite looping shmup that (probably?) plays like the old games it's inspired by. Has some weapon loadouts choice where you either shoot a strong version of one or a weak version of both types equipped.

Definitely worth checking out if you wanna scratch a bullet hell itch with something short and sweet. Really solid, a fun way to spend an hour or so.

Why this game don't have more reviews is beyond me. A great shooting game of the more caravan enemy spawns with maybe a bit of bullet-hell. Mayhaps Dark_BMX or ShmoopJunky could help this gem of a game out by giving it some exposure? Who knows. I don't. Rocking soundtrack, killer visuals, tons of things. Customizable keys, flashes, everything. You've got your shot button, your second shot button and a change of SPEED button. This is a minor gripe because it cycles through 1 to 5 by 1 step. So for instance if your at speed 3 and want to dodge some tight patters you got to press the SPEED button 3 times to go from 3 to 4 to 5 and finally to 1 which is the slowest speed. Thank you, dev. Wish you got more buys... But such is the unpopularity of this genre, I guess. What a life!

Rysen is a fun shmup, and it deserves more attention. One thing I want to address first - the store description says "no bullet-hell", but personally I would classify this as a bullet hell shmup. Whatever you call it, it gets very intense and there are a lot of bullets on screen. But the difficulty is reasonable, and it always feels fair. In terms of overall game flow, Rysen feels fast paced. It reminds me of something along the lines of Judgement Silversword or Eschatos. Like those games, you don't get a focus button or a full screen bomb. The action feels fast, but bullets are clearly visible and never move at an unfair speed. Extends are given out pretty generously, which is part of the reason why the difficulty is reasonable. When you die, you'll respawn in place and won't get sent back. At the start of the game, you'll choose a primary weapon and secondary weapon. You lose the secondary weapon when you die, but it's not a big deal because these weapons are dropped pretty often. For my secondary weapon, I always chose Shield. It absorbs up to 3 shots, and it was good for me as a beginner. One interesting thing to note is that you don't take damage when colliding w…