Developer: Drillimation Systems
Publisher: Drillimation Systems
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Chuhou Joutai – Review
Bullet Hell has always been a popular genre for games, certainly for retro lovers. There is also the popular series that most bullet hell lovers have heard about, Touhou Project. Many developers have tried to create games as good as the Touhou series but not many have succeeded. Chuhou Joutai seems to be a project to try and show the developers’ love for the genre. Sadly, love for the genre isn’t the only thing you need to make a high-quality game.
Story
The story of Chuhou Joutai is very confusing. During the intro, it says the world is in a civil war against a left-extremist group called SPASDOT. You will have to stop them as either The Real Driller or Princess Kagami, depending on who you pick, the story will also be slightly different. Once the game starts, the story becomes even more confusing because it seems like there is a backstory that you don’t know. It sometimes even feels like reading someone’s fanfiction which integrated their love for the Bullet Hell genre. Even though some backstory does get explained, it is confusing how two high school students, who don’t have anywhere to go, suddenly end up going against a left-extremist group.
What also doesn’t help the story, is that the enemies, which are probably members of SPASDOT, use nicknames and somehow already know the main characters. Most of the extremist group are also pretty young. The so-called backstory made it seem like a dramatic war had happened while the in-game story seems like a weird battle between neighborhood cliques.
Graphics
The pixel art in Chuhou Joutai looks quite nostalgic and is quite pleasant to look at, sadly this isn’t the case for the other illustrations in the game. The regular art of the enemies and characters looks like it has been drawn by a beginner artist who isn’t quite up to game quality yet. It might have been a better idea for the developers to just stick to pixel art only. The poor quality of the graphics also really doesn’t help the story, as they make it even more confusing.
There are many different unique enemies that will occasionally reappear in other levels. The bosses also have their own looks combined with their spectacular attacks. All the bosses have unique patterns they will use to try and defeat you. It seems that the developers didn’t always think the design of the bullets through, since some enemies have bullets of the same color as the environment, they are in; making it incredibly hard to spot and giving them an unfair advantage over the player. This problem mostly occurs with bosses but does also occasionally happen with other enemies. The drops you get from enemies also often have the same color as bullets which can be quite annoying when you want to pick them up.
Sound
If there is somewhere Chuhou Joutai deserves some amount of praise, it’s the sound department. Here is another place where nostalgia comes in strong. The soundtrack is pretty decent, including different songs for each level. All the tracks feature a delightful 8bit tone which fits quite well with the gameplay and isn’t too distracting.
The same can’t be said about the SFX though, most of them are excessively loud and incredibly similar. Even though the music sounds so smooth, the rough sound effects bring it down. Luckily you can turn off the effects and just listen to the music, even though this isn’t the best solution since you need to know if bullets are being shot.
Gameplay
Chuhou Joutai’s is a Danmaku shoot’em up, and more specifically a vertically scrolling bullet hell. In each level, the player is thrown directly into the fight, with enemies appearing on both sides of the player. When you don’t kill an enemy, it passes behind you, but this doesn’t seem to hurt you, only your high score.
As is standard on this game genre, the objective is to dodge as many bullets as possible while still hitting the enemies, to rack up higher scores. There is also the typical bullet graze where if a bullet grazes but misses your character, you get an even higher score. As previously mentioned you can play either as The Real Driller or Princess Kagami. Both have two special attacks that you can choose between, these special attacks temporarily give you invincibility and hit hard.
On each stage, there is both a miniboss and a boss, the first appearing after defeating all normal enemies. The mini-boss is actually the boss itself but on some sort of first stage with less health that you must defeat in the regular environment. After you defeat the first stage you get transferred to the actual boss stage. The bosses have multiple phases and each time you deplete enough of their health, they will move on to the next phase. These phases feature different bullet patterns and at the end of each stage, you get some drops. For some reason there is barely any chance to go pick up these drops, once they appear, the boss barely stops shooting for a second.
As far as bullet hell games go, Chuhou Joutai is a fairly easy one. It offers a lot of health to the player in the form of apples and several lives. You don’t even have to start over when you die, being able to just continue right where you were. On the Steam page, it also says it is targeted towards beginners of the genre, which might be the reason for it being “easier”.
Conclusion
Overall, the gameplay is fine, it offers what it promises, a bullet hell. The game doesn’t innovate or do anything unique, but at least it works. However, the illustrations of the game are very poor, to say the least. The story is confusing and often isn’t up to par with what you’d expect. Even though the game isn’t that expensive, it does feel like too much for something that seems to lack in some departments.
Chuhou Joutai - Review,
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