Danmaku Unlimited 3 Review (slatedawg)
DU3 & RefRain have some great energetic, yet chill vibes; despite, a thousand gawddamm laser bullets being sprayed in your face. Sure, I may be huffing and puffing and holding my breathe and exhaling and trying to stay focused all at the same time, but somehow in games like DU3 & RefRain... and maybe it's all the psychedelic colors... I become utterly aware of all movement and emotion, and when a bullet pattern completely overwhelms me, I exhale and let my mind try to navigate out of death knowing that it is coming whether that be now or tomorrow. These games allow me to tap into that self-aware mortality factor that I've experienced sliding down a mountain face, holding a newborn in my arms, and that one time I tripped as a young boy while holding a sharp walking stick that punctured my shirt collar and grazed my neck, slightly slitting it. (Disclaimer: a safer alternative to get to this state is 15 mins of meditation, if you can let your thoughts be).
So back to my review. This game does this for me.
Looking at the discussion board, the developer took the time to read the threads and improve a few aspects. One can practice the Bosses if one reaches said Boss. This is more logical e than having to beat a boss to practice the boss which never made sense to me in any shmup.
Music is great. Tho at times it may get a bit heavy and become too much background noise, (too forced one could say), to make a scene more dramatic and action-packed. But for 99% of my time I enjoyed the soundtrack.
Something I dislike about this bullet hell and a few others is a few of the bosses take forever to defeat due to the numerous phases they end up having. I am hoping the True Last Boss doesn't end up being a 20-30minute slog, but I get the feeling that's where this is heading.
Stage 5 enemies on Easy are the same enemies from previous stages but now they have more life. I would have preferred different enemy assets. It threw me for a loop on my first encounter wondering why the enemies were taking longer to kill, and it had me questioning if everything was invincible. There are also Fat Laser Beam enemies that are neigh impossible to kill. I've only killed one with using trance mode the whole time it was on screen, and it finally blew up at the very bottom of the screen.
Alright, that's all I got atm.