Vimana Reviews

Really Fun Plays well on Steam Deck

Fun old school arcade shoot 'em up. Works great on Steam Deck!

Volume 3's launch has largely proven an unmitigated disaster. An even bigger disaster than Volume 1's. This is probably the most stable release of this batch, but that's not saying much when the music suddenly cuts out, the shot stats aren't correctly calculated, and it feels like even the rare inclusion of healthbars...still only for enemies, by the way, despite complaints...isn't counting down HP right. It's still sloppily emulated and "enhanced". I'm starting to just give up on these bundles.

It's fun, it works. Emulation-wise it's a functioning product. Recommended! Vimana itself is certainly one of the easier Toaplan titles. Not the best, but to get used to Toaplan shmup tropes, this is an ideal game.

After many years this game is published in the home market. The game feels like a toaplan failed attempt , but is still interesting. It is a good entry point of toaplan library for begginers in the genre as it is the easiest shmup from them. The sound is great, the presentation is good but lacks the artistic vision and creativity of outzone, or doggyun. The main problem with the game is that lacks the chaotic nature of other toaplan titles. Here there is not a big variety of enemyes ship behaviors, the enemy density is lower than other toaplan. sometimes after you kill a enemy wave ou have moments that your ship will have to wait for a new wave. Once you fully power-up you will kill most of the enemyes on early levels before they shoot to you. The bullet patterns are not that interesting (except the guided ones) as normal enemyes snipe you with few bullets that have precision but lack speed to make things exciting as early toaplan (twin tiger for instance). Later stages become more interesting, but you will have to memorize the stage as the stronger enemyes will shoot you a curtain of bullets at close range that you will have more trouble evading not because of their speed, but because of the speed of your ship. therefore you have to predict their moves in advance. You have a button to fire and other for smart bomb. The bomb is different and original as it is a set of homing balls that will attack the the nearby enemyes on screen. It does not clean the screen of bullets, and therefore you will have to think in advance when to use it. The shoot has 2 variations: a normal shoot, and if you hold the button for a seconds you will fire a spread shoot that will cover most of the screen. Still i had fun, and in spite of not being so good as other topalan games , it is still a toaplan game and it is much better than most of the shmups of that era. I recommend unless you are a expert shmup gamer because of the challenge. Now about the port. As usual bitwave did a great job. They have perfect quality in all departments except sound emulation and tey give you plenty of assist options (size of hitbox, autofire,etc).

It's a pay to win arcade coin muncher vertical scroll shooter. The main gun can be upgraded a couple of times. The bomb wipes projectiles from the screen and launches seeking balls. And you can use the charge button to shoot in a cone in the upper part of the screen. But the enemies are very spongy, so one hit won't do anything. The ship is super slow and unresponsive. And the game turns into a bullet hell really fast. Your hitbox is small, but the bullets are very big. The game really, really wants you dead. But don't worry, just put in another coin and continue. More pay more win. This one is a great release. There are no baked-in envelopes so you can play it on your 4//3 screen without ~boxing. It offers virtual coins, rewinds, saves and not very quick saves. So you can play it any way you want. There's even an unnecessary super easy mode with hit points and smaller hitbox.

Please ignore that MusicalMinerDude clown who, for some bizarre reason, decided to purchase every Toaplan arcade port on Steam just so he could whine that they aren't good, followed by a bunch of woefully inaccurate and ridiculous complaints. These ports are great, and this game is great. Super fun classic shmup, smooth controls and fun as hell. There are literally articles holding up the Toaplan Shoot 'Em Up ports as the perfect example of how to do PC ports the right way, and this guy is claiming that all of them are terrible...lol.