BULLET SOUL / バレットソウル - 弾魂 - Reviews

I rate Bullet Soul 3.5/5. Pretty good. (If you are in a big hurry you can stop reading here) However, the main TL;DR section begins right here: This is a pretty good vertical scrolling, arcade-style shmup game. While fairly short, this game doesn’t really do anything seriously wrong (other than make it apparently impossible to rebind the keys if you are using a keyboard (but the default keys are fairly intuitive once you figure out what they are)). Bullet Soul has good features (except when it comes to menus related to controls), responsive controls (once you figure out what they are), adequate graphics with a good sense of speed, adequate (though bland) music/sound, good (but somewhat bland) enemies and (asides from not being able to bind keyboard keys to a custom configuration) doesn’t do anything really irritating (it doesn’t force you to unlock characters, grind anything or give you a limited number of ‘continues’ when you die). This is a good little game for casual and serious arcade game players alike. The TL;DR section is now over. If you are in a hurry you can stop reading now. (Haven’t you ever seen any official government reports or technical scientific papers? They are laid out in pretty much the same way. That’s why the above paragraph is located at the top of the document; so you can access it even more quickly. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, you should already know this by default. This is really basic stuff. Sheesh). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + Very challenging but with the ability to ‘continue’ an infinite number of times after dying to get more lives (at the cost of resetting your score each time you ‘continue’). The enemy fire/bullet patterns can be quite numerous and challenging while the infinite ‘continues’ helps the game feel laid back for beginners and people like me who aren’t really that great at games like this. + Wonderful sense of speed with some nifty (if fairly standard) environments. One of the areas is an outer-space battle with big ships in the background which you will face later on in that level. While not totally unique, including this kind of environment is a nice touch. + Nice variety of game modes (access the different overall game modes by pressing the left or right arrow keys once you get to the main menu and alternate main menus will appear). I prefer Bullet Soul B (it’s easiest and lets you select from all 4 characters). + 3 or 4 (depending on which mode you play) characters/spacecraft to use which are accessible from the outset of the game each with their strengths and weaknesses and unique firing patterns. They are in different colors (blue, red, yellow and pink) and so are easy to distinguish during multiplayer matches. Each character is fun to use. + Nice variety of lower enemies. Boss fights seem fairly normal for this type of game but are somewhat bland. +/- This game has only 5 levels making it a fairly short game but each of the 5 levels are good. However, I have no idea what the game’s story is and I don’t think it even matters in this case. I think the blue spacecraft might be some sort of police ship because it has little rotating red and blue lights on it and the lady is in some sort of uniform…I GUESS, so from how she’s dressed, she’s either a police officer or a stripper…or maybe both. Maybe the red ship pilot is a crazy ninja pirate with bandaged ribs and the yellow ship pilot is some sort of old guy. I got kind of an ‘old ninja master teacher’ vibe from him but I really have no idea. The pink ship pilot might be an android lady in a swimsuit and her spacecraft has giant hands floating next to it. Maybe she needs to be an android to control the giant hands. Not really sure since the hands have no fingers though, or maybe the firepower the finger stumps shoot ARE the fingers. I guess players could make up explanations for themselves if they want to but then the game is only 5 levels long anyhow so why bother? Anyway, I had fun, and that’s the most important thing, right? - This game has obtuse control menus which assume you are playing the game with some sort of console controller. The game appears to have no menu support for keyboards or for rebinding keys on keyboards. That’s OK though because the default keyboard control scheme is fairly simple and intuitive once you figure out what it is (which you will probably figure out only after pressing random keys while playing the game). The controls are very responsive though. It can get slightly irritating that the escape key is for exiting the entire game rather than just whatever menu you’re on. - This game has the typical frenetic Japanese arcade-style, somewhat bland, heroic music which this type of game is apparently prone to having. The music doesn’t stand out as being particularly good or interesting and gets boring fast. - The sound effects are similarly bland and forgettable and all spoken dialogue (mostly just repetitive phrases when you activate special weapons or die) is in Japanese with no subtitles; but this is also fairly typical for the genre. (I sometimes wonder about the voice actors who get hired to do games like this: Director: “Okay, first we want you to shout “I’m Dying!” Actor: “I’m Dying!” Director: Now say “Ahahaha! Actor: Ahahaha! Director: “Okay we got it, we’re done here. Thanks for coming into the studio, have a good day! We’ll mail you a check. Sorry about the traffic.” More realistically, my guess is for games like this, designers probably just use various voices from people who happen to work in their office or happen to be nearby. That way they wouldn’t have to pay the voice actors anything extra at all).

Very recommended: PROS: Play for mechanics (point-blank, platinums etc) fun and very challenging, total eye-candy, TATE, 2 player, awesome soundtrack, giant bosses, fun for beginners and challenging for more advanced if playing for score. CONS: None. Yes game can be "easy", try for 1cc, no deaths, no auto-bomb and play it like its meant to be played, you'll have fun regardless of your skill level! OTHER: Would pay extra for Infinite Burst DLC/addon or whatever, so what are you waiting for?

Yeah it's a really good shmup- even if you're not into bullet hell games like me. Being able to cancel enemy bullets does make the game easier, but I really liked this aspect. Plus, if youre a pro shmup player that amis to shoot for high scores and more score multipliers this game tailors to that crowd too- the further up the screen you are, the faster your multiplier goes. Pretty simple but it's a nice touch. Graphics are sharp and crisp, good soundtrack, fun achievements and plenty of different gameplay modes to try which are all fun for both casual and hardcore shmup fans. They did a really good job balancing that aspect I think.

Note: Bullet Soul Infinite Burst basically this game with more. So, this recommendation is more of stand alone of this game's merits. I recommend more to pick up Bullet Soul Infinite Burst instead of picking this game up. Bullet Soul is perhaps one of the oddest, mostly gimmick free shoot 'em ups I've played. You see, the thing about this game is when an enemy is destroyed it always cancels their bullets. So, it's less about dodging and more about destroying enemies before they even get a chance to fire. Get too far behind on destroying enemies and godlike skills in dodging aren't going to help you. Which is easy enough in the early game save the bosses. Enemies are weak and spares enough to destroy them all, even with sloppy play. However, as the game progresses, this mechanic has to be supplemented more and more along with point blanking enemies. Which in turn wants a lot of level memorization to know where these enemies are going to be to better point blank them. I'm always a fan of shooters that reward aggressive play. I often tie my run success on just how close I am to where the majority of enemies enter the play area. The top of the screen in this case. And the further I have to fall back an indication of me being out of position and needing to recover back to a more aggressive position. I like that Bullet Soul seems to want me to play that way. I don't know if I am as much of a fan of the all destroyed enemy bullet cancel feature. Because a well made bullet hell shooter to me guides the observant player to the best routes. Here, the player seems to carve their own route once the game stops making it easy to cancel all enemy projectiles. And this easy bullet canceling in the early levels does allow boredom to start to creep in a tad after several repeat playings. This is nitpicky and more of personal preference, but I find the boss fights drag on just a little too much for my taste. Maybe my favorite ship (the policewoman ship) is the weakest for bigger enemies. Makes sense, as she seems the best at area control. And maybe I'm just not point blanking the bosses enough. The bosses I have reach still feel like there about 5-10 seconds too long of a fight for me to enjoy. Which doesn't sound like much time, but in a shmup 10 minutes often feel like an hour of other video game genres due to the sheer amount of play density. Even personal preferences aside, I really enjoy playing Bullet Soul. It a solid upper mid-tier shooter in my opinion. A game that likely won't make best of lists, but still holds its own in a sea of STGs.

Bullet Soul is agreat shmup with brilliant graphics, music and stages. It features a bullet cancelling mechanic which basicly means when you blow up a ship the bullets it fired at you turn into harmless grey ghost bullets. This has led people to say bullet soul is easy as a result. Anyone who says its too easy is completely missing the point though. Its not about beating the stages, its a score chasing shmup with leaderboards, and when you see some of the scores on there (at least for the 360 version) you will see how good or bad you are. The game encourages you to point blank for the best score (if you are brave enough) and the later srtages get very very diffiicult in regard to this scoring mechanic. Its risk vs reward. Brilliant game and so glad its on steam.

[b][i]This game is like candy[/i][/b] This is a rockin' and rollin' BulletHell. Try to remain at the top and score high. Plus there's some cool content that was DLC on the 360 that comes bundled in. Way easier here than setting a dummy Japanese account and buying digital yen to get at it. Plus a B run for the more tryhards to give the game a little extra punch, where they add a boxing like the 4th ship, with another hot wifu for those that have blood to spare after a pulse-pounding mission. Plus the Caravan mode which is an awesome addition, and a great SHUMP trainer/added challenge, can you last more than 30 seconds? The bullets are colorful, the music is jammin' and the numbers are gonna fly up. I know some hardcore fans of the genre mark this game down for being too easy, well try the B run. I always have a blast when I play. More focus on flash than weird secrets it would seem. This game is like candy, so much of the sound and art design just pops. The enemies explode and their bullets turn gray often right before they hit you, giving you that sweet hit of dopamine. The bosses have patterns and movement unlike what I've seen in similar games. There's so many little bits in the level to shoot, or thrilling scoring opportunities tied to a little reward sound. You may have so much fun your sweatband will be dripping after a run. Pick this sucker up and have a blast blasting away.

Everything about the game just screams FUN! The graphics are bright and gorgeous, the music is really joyous and the game rewards you a lot for playing aggressively with proximity scoring and the enemies taking more damage the closer you are to them. Some see the excessive bullet cancelling as a negative but I don't, it encourages you to get up close and personal and play for score rather than survival and lets you keep one eye on the secret bonuses which this game has in abundance. Definitely worth a tenner, it cost me something silly for the 360 version at launch and this version has all the dlc.

There's not much point to this version anymore since Bullet Soul Infinite Burst released later and is basically an expanded version with an almost identical original mode as vanilla Bullet Soul plus more content.

"Bullet Soup for the Soul!" In what seems like forever, it has finally come to steam! 5pb/Mages 2011 release from the Xbox 360 of Bullet Soul is here! The game's mechanics is simple, yet satisfying, though for high risk and reward. Shoot them before they shoot you. As you defeat enemies, the bullets they shoot back will dissapear, which makes the game seem easy by comparison, but not by the faint of heart. You can also earn high scores by getting close to enemies which fill the "soul gauge", though as mentioned, its high risk, but high reward. (You'll have both your straight shot and wide shot, along with the typical bomb stocks, and the option to use either autobomb or not.) In Bullet Soul, 4 companions (Zenichi, Yun, Sadahl, [and in Ver.B] Loop) journey though all 5 stages (and a harder second loop if you not use a continue during the first loop) to stop Mecha-Warl and the forces you'll have to comprehend with. There are also 4 modes of play as well. Normal - Standard game with 3 ships to choose. Bancho - Score Attack on a single stage. Caravan - 2 minute mayhem of scoring. Version B - Easier/Balanced mode of play along with an extra ship to play. Also includes Bancho Ver. B. Either way, closing off, the PC/Steam port runs rather well, with varying options to set your preference. Recommended for STG fans! Bullet Soul Infinite Burst is also out on Steam.

[h1] Decent shmup with great soundtrack and lots of different enemies. Amazing visuals and engaging wave patterns. 3 characters to choose from. Challenging bosses that will make you scratch your head and think - what the heck is that? One of the key elements in gameplay is that enemy's bullets disappear when you take them down. Make sure to check out the sequel. Japanese vibes inbound! [/h1]