nullsolaris

It's a Virtual On clone (down to the control layout and game mechanics lifted directly from Virtual On Oratorio Tangram on the Dreamcast)... but with only 4 characters. The graphics are pretty decent, but again, there's only 4 characters. The controls are... well, they're Oratorio Tangram's pad controls. They're not intuitive at all, but since I've played a bunch of VOOT on the DC, it was really easy to get into the groove of things. Seriously though, there's so little content here. It's a painfully barebones clone of a better game. It's really easy, too. I cranked all the settings up, max rounds, max difficulty, and still cleared the game without too much trouble, trying to eke out a little more worth. Alternate characters with slightly different moves, a boss, missions, more than four fights... pretty much anything more than what we got would have made this a bit worth picking up. It's so barebones. The graphics are okay, at least. That's it.

It's a rough port with a relatively low framerate compared to the original games on DC, all the branding is gone, the music is changed, there's some weirdness with some of the graphics here and there, etc... but it's still Crazy Taxi and plays okay. And that's the important part. Zoom around the city, pick up customers, make mad money. Try to get a Crazy ranking by getting more than $20k (which I still can't do, even if I do consistently hit $10k). That sort of thing. Starting out is pretty tricky, but once you can a handle on drifting (while turning, shift to reverse, then shift back to drive), doing the Crazy Dash (either from a standstill or while moving, shift to reverse, shift to drive, wait the briefest moment, then accelerate), and stopping properly (don't drift into walls, you'll stick to 'em), you'll be getting high scores like nothing. The physics are a bit jank in Crazy Taxi, but you get used to it. The handling feels unchanged from the various other releases on other machines, all the modes and features are still present like the wonderful Crazy Box, and if all you had was a PSP or Vita (or you wanted to try out Crazy Taxi 2, a game that would otherwise be a Dreamcast exclusive), this is what you want. Speaking of CT2, I do wish it was a better game. It's a decent expansion on the original, it adds some cool features, and the Crazy Pyramid is amazing fun... but the maps leave much to be desired. They're a bit rough, like the console exclusive map in CT1, if not quite as messy with navigation. It's solid, if not amazing like the original arcade game and arcade map. Also, the handling feels a bit weird compared to CT1. The game has custom music support... but as far as I can tell, it doesn't find files located in folders. Still, if you drop the original soundtrack onto your PSP, you can forget the (largely mediocre) tunes they replaced it with. There are also some other little bonus extras that you can unlock and toggle. I leave 'em off, though. There's even multiplayer, but I've never been able to try it out. Ultimately though, here in 2018, I'd actually recommend the Android version of Crazy Taxi over this for an on-the-go experience, assuming you had a controller to play that version with, since it has the original soundtrack and runs at a higher framerate and resolution, although you don't get CT2 in that package.

Cool game with some major flaws. tl;dr: It's very fast, looks good, sounds good, handles nicely, but it has poor level design, getting into special stages ****, and a lot of unlock requirements are awful. For the most part, the game is a straight upgrade from Sonic Advance 1, with more speed, better graphics, better music, better presentation, it's just an impressive game all around. It's a very slick game. The controls are pretty solid. Sonic's physics aren't quite as good as Advance 1's, but the increased speed and R-button trick system really help smooth things out. It's a shame that the B-button attacks are still basically useless... beyond Cream's, which I'll get to in a bit. The sense of speed the game provides is its biggest highlight, with a "mach barrier" speed boost that happens when each character runs at their normal top speed for an extended period of time. The trick system gives Sonic and friends way more air control after springs and other launchers, and it's brilliant. Unfortunately, the stage design is really rough at best. Blind launches over pits, enemies placed directly in the way, lots of little "react or get hit" sections, etc. It's rough. Still, when the game flows, it's brilliant, and you can feel all the little additions made to the game to keep it feeling fast just click. When it doesn't... yikes. Sky Canyon is a terrible stage that exemplifies all of the issues with the level design in this game. Music Plant is fun, but it has a few parts that just kill your flow completely. Egg Utopia is pretty good, except sometimes you're just flung into the void and you've got no idea why you just died. Getting into the special stages is obnoxious too. You have to find seven special rings in each stage, and the stages are not designed for exploration or backtracking, you need a pre-planned route to get to them. At least the Mode-7 style special stages themselves aren't too hard. Some of the unlock requirements are maddening. You need all emeralds to enable the Chao Garden (which was available at the start in Advance 1). Two emeralds to enable sound test (seriously, what was going on here?). Boss attack is unlocked after getting all the emeralds with three characters (at least you can just play XX, since it's just a boss rush anyway). Getting all of the emeralds with all four starting characters unlocks Amy (it's not worth the effort, she's a pink Sonic here that's slightly worse -- as many issues as Advance 1 Amy had, she was still interesting to play as, although I probably wouldn't be so hard on her here if the unlock requirements weren't so onerous). Running bosses are a mess. Sonic's double-tap forward dash almost makes them tolerable, since it makes it much easier to catch back up to the bosses, although some are still a bit obnoxious. Cream trivializes every single boss, up to and including the final boss, just by pressing B. Her B-attack targets any single enemy on screen and hits it. Repeat until the boss is dead. The rest of the characters have to slowly approach each boss, desperately hope they don't get hit, and try not to miss. Whatever happens, you're probably going to have to slowly run up again. Also, if you did get hit, your rings fly off. The stage loops around after a point too, so you'll probably run out of rings to collect if you take too long. Running bosses are a cool idea, but they're marred by the rough execution. In conclusion, the game is fast and sleek, but has a bunch of issues. It flows quite well, except when it doesn't, and it often doesn't. It looks and sounds great, and it's really polished... except for the actual stage design being really rough.

This game should be decent. It's not. It's slow to the point of agony and attacks are a lot lamer and it just feels like a dramatic step back from the previous game. Almost all of the wild intensity of the first two games is gone. The big issue is that he missions largely ****. VO wasn't designed for the larger, more action game style stages, and the slower pace and worse weapons make the 2v2 and 1v1 matches you encounter much, much worse. The VR selection is a bit lame. There's like a half dozen clones of Temjin, none of them interesting. The leader/partner system is poorly thought out, a hold over from VO:Force in the arcade, which this game takes its mechanics from. Faster VRs like Fei-Yen are much more enjoyable to play as... except unlocking any of the machines you want is a slog, and all of the interesting units are rare. For the most part, you have to defeat a certain amount **** VR to obtain it. There is the hidden Guarayakha, who requires you to beat the story on hard mode. The music is okay... except the menu tune is this lifelessly cheery thing that blares out in an almost tuneless way. It's hard to describe just how bad it is. You're going to hear a lot of it. There's an arcade-like mode that's basically Virtual On: Force but not quite. The nice thing is that you can pick a fast VR right out of the gate and almost enjoy yourself. The not-so-nice thing is the hideously annoying mid boss, that was originally the final boss of Force. It's pretty hard and is pretty heavy on memorization of what attacks you have hit hardest for when it's vulnerable, what attack it's going to do at the given amount of health it has, and if you try to keep it in your view, you're dramatically more likely to get hit. That last one's an issue with bosses in the series in general, but it's particularly bad here. There are some different control options -- one more optimized for newcomers that's designed more around the larger environments and the lot. I'm not a fan. There's another other option, which is more like the previous game, Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram on the Dreamcast. It works pretty well for me, but it's not a great option for a game like this. It's not a fundamental issue, with some changes (like improving manual turning), it could work, but Marz insists on following the poor mechanics used in Force and way overextending them to missions that they don't work in. The story is kinda dumb. At least Hatter is hilarious. A fair bit of the plot is unintentionally funny, too. Otherwise, it's just not well written at all. Load times are garbage. Selecting a VR to use requires the game loading the model, which takes FOREVER. Loading each match takes forever too. It's just a mess. The graphics are nice, at least. A lot of people have complained about them, but the game is a fair bit more detailed than Oratorio Tangram. They're not amazing, but they're a solid improvement from the series' previous console outing. Shame there's no 480p mode. I also like the mech designs a lot. Overall, it kinda ****. Newcomers will hate it. Series fans will be disappointed in it. It's a worse version of Virtual On: Force, and that game already has issues.

tl;dr: it's really just Virtual-On (and I mean this literally, the mechanics are lifted straight from it) but kinda jank. If you don't know what Virtual-On is, this isn't going to be the best introduction. It looks nothing like Sega's mech arena game, but after a quick and easy control remap, there's no mistaking it, and most of the characters have movesets ripped straight from Sega's giant robot series anyway. There's a story. It's just okay. It's not terribly good. There's a Yukkuri boss that's basically Virtual-On's Z-Gradt but not really. The writing is pretty amatuerish, but this was originally just a doujin game, so that's par for the course, and maybe I'll blame the localization team for how some of the personalities are. There are extra modes like score attack and arcade. They're the same thing, except score attack ranks you on more than how many enemies you've defeated. There's music. It's just okay. Nothing special, which is disappointing for a Touhou game. There are graphics. They're largely mediocre. Environments look decent, but the player models are kinda lame. They're in this weird mix of not quite chibi and not quite regularly proportioned. There are also some framerate issues here and there. There are controls. After quickly remapping the controls to the very familiar VO:OT layout, I was dashing around and enjoying myself. The default layout kinda **** and seems largely unsuited for what the game is. If you're a-okay with VO on pad, you can make everything be as it should be. The standard VO:OT layout for this game would be L for main attack, R for secondary attack (L+R will do your third weapon like in VO), Square for turbo, Triangle to jump, X to land/block CC attacks. Circle can be the third weapon (you need to map it to something, since your super is done by pressing all three attack buttons). It works like a charm. You can even curve dash with the right stick. Once remapped to something familiar, it was all very nice and everything felt smooth, except for the fact that you automatically face the opponent most of the time -- which is admittedly quite convenient, except when it's not. You can jump cancel and all of that, but that's more useful for getting into close-combat range or dodging CC attacks. Unlike VO proper, there's way less pause after attacks or landing or dashing, which is probably the reason the stamina gauge was included in the first place. Some reviews say the game is slow paced, but those reviewers are wrong, the game's almost (if not quite) as fast as the twitchy VO:OT. A lot of stages don't have any walls. This seems kinda lame, until you play the stages that do have 'em, which are really poorly laid out, and the auto-aim camera makes navigating around them a bit trickier than in actual Virtual-On, which only re-aims the player when they jump or attack. There's a stamina gauge to keep you from dashing too much, and you're stuck vulnerable when you run out. If you're doing a dash attack, stamina won't keep draining. All the standard VO attack types exist (normal, crouching, turbo, dashing in each direction, air). You can also hit someone after knockdown, just like VO:OT. In conclusion, It's not a miserable game at all, but it should really be better considering the series it takes its mechanics from.