XDR

I finally have it! Now I can talk about it!

As of right now on December 3, 2021, I have only played maybe 10 minutes of it so far. These are my initial thoughts.

It controls alright. I DO like how, when the ship changes speed, it does not cycle back down like in Whip Rush; it just resets to the slowest and always increases, like how it is in Thunder Force. However, I think that the best speed would be somewhere between 2 and 3, so I want to complain a bit about that. Of course, you can only increase from 1 to 4 in integer increments, so there is no 2.5 speed (that I am aware of anyway). 2 is alright, but it is a bit slow. 3 is also fine, but it is a bit fast.

The graphics so far are passable. I would not call any of them hideous. However, the first stage's theme is a bit hard to understand. In the background, there is a city, but the actual elements are a mix of natural and mechanical things. It just does not really make too much sense. Honestly, this does not really bother me at all, but it is a bit strange.

Where do I begin with the music? First, let me just say that most of my experience with the music is through watching the game on YouTube. This is where I will draw my experience from as I write this right now. I would not really call the music bad, but I certainly think it does not fit the game, at least for the first stage, anyway. Though, I can see how a cheerful-sounding song like that would be in the first stage of a SHMUP. Darius II does the same thing (I will always find a way to talk about Darius. This won't even be the last time I do that on this page.). However, the music kind of comes off as sounding kind of weak honestly. If this was a platformer, I think this music would make somewhat more sense. In a similar way, the sound effects are kind of weak as well, though I would not give praise to them if they were in a platformer. The explosions really do not sound like explosions, and they are kind of quiet. I would talk about the music for the first boss fight, but let me talk about that fight in general...

The first boss is an ABSOLUTE JOKE! Like I said, the majority of my "experience" in talking about this game is from watching one or two playthroughs of it on YouTube (nobody did a review; I tried finding them), but something I saw there on YouTube was identical to what I saw when I played it earlier. The first "boss" (Can we even call it a boss?) is stupendously easy! It was literally over in about 12 or 15 seconds. Now, again, Darius II on the Mega Drive also has a joke of a first boss (kind of.. if you can get the first part done quick, and then detonate the screen clearing bomb, the second phase is basically already done, as he will explode once he shows up), but this is kind of something else. On the playthroughs, most people just stayed near the middle of the screen (for most of the game actually), and they never really got hit. This is the same with the first boss. Again, like Darius II, the boss I guess had some kind of sea life theme? I mean, it had two "tentacles" that swirled in unison along a pattern. There is a boss like that in Darius Gaiden I believe. You know what? Just because of some vague similarity to something in the Darius series, I will not go too hard on it! Congratulations, XDR! Now, for the music during the first boss fight. I only remember the build-up to the music. Anything after that did not play long because the fight as basically almost over. I cannot comment on that.

Now, I did not buy this game just to hate on it. I mean, I kind of did (I definitely did it for the jokes), but I don't just want to make endless fun of this game. I really intend to beat it, and I will try to point out some good parts of it. Already, I have one good thing to say (I guess it's good): it at least functions, as in I can get into the game from boot without some sort of major crash or bug. Yes, this should be expected of every game that someone would intend to sell, but at least it fulfills that requirement. Is this a bad game? Probably it is. Does it deserve 100% hate? I don't know; I want to determine that for myself, but if I had to say right now, I would say no. Maybe it deserves a lot of criticism, but I doubt it is 100% bad.

At the very least, I intend to have the longest discussion of this game on the English-speaking internet.