REVIEW : Cotton Fantasy (PS5)
Cotton Fantasy not only continues a generations legacy that can be traced back with some of the most influential titles in gaming history, but it also comes to a series that helped to establish it in the East. Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, the first game in the series, was released in 1991 for arcades in Japan, and many more have followed since then, but only a handful have made it to these western bands. Cotton Fantasy, on the other hand, isn’t going to make a strong first impression when you load it up. The game’s main title screen only has two modes: the main mission and a training option, which allows you to relive stages you’ve already completed with settings you set. It just appears to be a little rudimentary. It would have been good if modes like Boss Rush or Score Attack had been included to complete out the experience. However, once you start playing Cotton Fantasy, you’ll start to forgive these absences. Fortunately, we have the chance to play this one, which is a legitimate example of what is commonly referred to as a cute ’em up, an adorable variant of more traditional shooters.
In any case, Studio Saizensen, best renowned for the Umihara Kawase titles, as well as Code of Princess and Blade Strangers, created this amusing shoot ’em up. Cotton Fantasy stays close to the oldies while integrating its own distinct features that do a wonderful job of supporting the fundamental gameplay, which I’m highly pleased with given they’re not generally shoot ’em up devs.
Cotton, the franchise’s title character, is nothing but a little witch who is absolutely enamoured with a particular form of candy known as Willows, which has special magical abilities that grant wishes. No additional motivation will be required for our protagonist to roll up her hands and jump atop her magnificent broom in pursuit of rescue when the fairy Silk gives the terrible news that these favourite treats have begun to vanish. It will be unstoppable by any monster, machine, or creature.
First and foremost, there are the characters. Cotton Fantasy offers more than just a new avatar and fire settings with these. Instead, each player has their own set of mechanics, making each game feel drastically different. When you play Cotton, for example, you’ll see that it’s much like any other Cotton game, with coloured gems that change your fire type and fairies to collect that you can use to launch special assaults. Cotton Fantasy begins with six unlockable characters, with a seventh to be unlocked later. With each person having their own mechanics, you can clearly see just how much immersive gameplay there is. It’s simply a bad the tale doesn’t change based on whatever character you play as. After one game, you’re probably going to skip the beautifully animated sections.
Cotton Fantasy is a cartoony game with over-the-top and simply ridiculous cutscenes. Cotton games are always amusing, but the animations and facial emotions in this one are so overdone that it’s difficult not to laugh out loud as you watch Cotton throw tantrums and become irritated with Silk. With eye-popping colourful images, super-upbeat songs, and exuberant vocalisations, things look and sound wonderful in-game. However, the visuals can get quite cluttered at times, with score items, crystals, monsters, explosions, and projectiles taking up the majority of the screen, making it difficult to see hazards when collecting goods or positioning your character. Cotton Fantasy’s playthroughs are kept interesting by the fact that the vast majority of stages can be played in any order. You’ll unlock new stages when you finish the game with each of the unlockable characters, which you can use in future playthroughs. There are even extra rounds wherein you soar into the screen, similar to Panorama Cotton, but instead of shooting enemies, you collect score-boosting pickups. Cotton Fantasy has a secret component that I wasn’t expecting. You have eight stages to finish in the main campaign, and you can do so in any order you want. Furthermore, if you play well enough, you may discover six additional stages. Even though all of this is fantastic, I wish Cotton Fantasy had more options outside story and practice since if you change your character, you’ll still be taking on same stages over and over, which becomes tedious quickly. Cotton Fantasy might feel limited in this aspect, especially when compared to shmups like Darius, which provide dynamic campaigns with many pathways and a plethora of memorable stages and bosses.
The game’s unique character designs are perfectly represented by the graphical style. While the background graphics is a tad on the plain side, the motion and illumination effects add enough flair. There are two action orders: the prevalent fire (which can be provisioned to continue to stay continuous when going to hold down the button or trigger) and the special (which, as previously stated, has specialized roles according to the needs to act), mapping that find that due both possibilities anywhere on the control. There are no intricate moves, multiple combinations, or anything of the sort. Essentially, it’s the purest form of the genre: go ahead and shoot innocent people while avoiding enemy fire. Aside from the lack of modes, Cotton Fantasy offers very little to complain about. You may argue that the screen gets a little too cluttered at times, making it difficult to see what’s going on. Perhaps the localization could have been improved as well. However, it is very easy to overlook these details. Cotton Fantasy is a simple and enjoyable game. It really doesn’t take long for the screen to turn into an actual downpour of things happening, which is a typical example of the bullet hell notion.
REVIEW : Divination: Console Edition (XBOX Series X)
