[コットンリブート/Cotton Reboot] Arrange Normal Mode Cotton No Continue ALL CLEAR (Score: 617,836,900)

Описание: Cotton Reboot Arrange Normal Mode Cotton No Continue ALL CLEAR!

An amazingly fun game! This is a straight up must play!

The arrange mode is so new it feels like it's a shame that it's a reboot instead of a new title entirely. But I guess if it's not based on an existing title then there won't be much discussion online for those juicy free marketing. Anyway...

Enter bullet hell Cotton, where she is given small hitbox and broom thruster. It's not that accurate to call this game a bullet hell, though. The main threats are the enemies. Yes, the projectiles that can hurt you mostly can be shot down. It's more appropriate to call this game an enemy hell, I guess? Keep your trigger on!

The game has rapid fire built in. Like before, you can shoot, drop bomb shots, and use magic. But since this follow the x68000 version, not the arcade version, the option fairies become far less powerful and useful. They're intangible now. Heck, fairy throwing is very limited. To use this you must either have no magic stocks available or have a barrier and have the next magic be the blue thunder one. Charge the magic and there you go, fairy throwing. What a pain to use! So don't treat this like the arcade mode. Your experience with the x68000 version is more useful here.

Instead, the magics are very, very useful. It's very easy to stock them up and they're great for attacking. There are also 2 ways to use them: tap and charged. Tap is offensive, charge is defensive. Notable ones are purple charged and blue charged. Purple charged will convert all on screen jewels to black jewels and home them to Cotton, giving you immediate points, which honestly, not that worth it but worth nothing at least for simply discarding the purple magic. Then there is the blue charged: the holy motherscrewing barrier. Like x68000 version the barrier can withstand lots of hits and stays for a long time! And due to the way the scoring system works, barrier is the best magic to pursue high score so you can concentrate on scoring as you pay attention for blue jewels to restock.

As for the scoring system itself, the key method is the Jewel Fever. It serves 2 purpose: DPS boost, up to 2x(!) and scoring. At Lv. 5 you'll get x1024 multiplier! When you shoot the jewels, they won't bounce off, but your middle shot will get converged into v-split shots. Hitting stuff with it will charge the Jewel Fever gauge. The multiplier and damage boost also can only be gained by converting your shots into jewel shots. So it's more beneficial to keep the jewels around the screen instead of picking them up immediately! Which is why the barrier is essential to hold your position and seek for the best location to shoot instead of surviving. It's reminiscent to Deathsmiles' power up, which makes Cotton Reboot kind of a roundabout since there won't be Deathsmiles without Cotton yet Cotton Reboot borrowed many elements from Deathsmiles while still keeping its own identity really well. In fact, I think the mechanics are inspired by Gothic ha Mahou Otome's Death mode, where the title itself is directly related to Deathsmiles. The best location to rack up score is to go Jewel Fever on bosses. The bosses are durable, have large hitboxes and don't die easily. Perfect to milk!

Right. Learning how to score is a must in this game because by scoring you'll get extends! Sure, there is the barrier, but better even more safe than sorry! So far the extends can be gained at 20mil, 50mil, 100mil (it's possible to gain this high on stage 1!), 250mil, and 500mil. 5 extends in total. Your lives left also gets tallied when the game ends, so for scoring it's also important to not lose them!

To compensate Cotton's ridiculous moveset boost, the enemies especially the bosses also get boosted. More (shootable) bullets, larger bullet zones, etc. In a nutshell, very much based on the x68000 version but on steroids. Some are given new moves but most notably is the final boss, which now also can use Cotton's magics. Very, very scary. You'd be praying you still can farm the blue jewels for survival! I'm interested in at least fighting them with no magics, but without stage selects, that would be a pain...

It's a very refreshing shmup that is manageable yet very flashy and ridiculous. Certainly a must play and easily one of the best shmups ever made! Some heads up as a product, though... as of this video's upload, there is no stage select and replay. No replay can be forgiven, but how can people practice without stage select? Also the online rankings don't disqualify continue runs.

Oh, thank goodness there is no 2nd loop!

The game got 1cc-ed in under 2 hours after release.

#cottonreboot #コットンリブート #review