JUDGEMENT SILVERSWORD - Resurrection - is the collection of two shmup games, released on the Japan exclusive WonderSwan Color portable console. Since they only released in limited quantities, they are quite rare and it's such a noble move from the devs and Degica to bring them to a wider audience and preserve them in a modern re-release. The collection includes two games: Judgement Silversword, which is a traditional shoot'em up game and Cardinal Sins, a WarioWare-esque take on the genre that gives you various tasks per level and grades you accordingly.
As there are lots of reviews on the store page talking about the details of each game in this collection (how is the gameplay, what are the general mechanics, et cetra), I will not go there. Instead I will go in-depth on other aspects of this collection and provide my own analysis on them.
Simply put, the quality of this re-release is praiseworthy as the devs did not do a rushed job. It transitions smoothly from menu to menu, and from menu to the games. There are no awkward pauses or sudden appearance of games' screens like in other retro collections; you choose an option and will be greeted with a smooth transitional animation to get what you want. It's also very nice that the devs have not forgot about the TATE mode and will let you turn the screen in any of the 4 main directions. As for the games, they hold up pretty well considering their age. However... are the games fun? While I very enjoy playing Cardinal Sins, I cannot say the same for the main game, Judgement Silversword.
Judgement Silversword is a brutal game and I do mean it literally. The starting waves are fine, but the more you go on, the more chaotic the game gets. It gets to the point where the game beats you down repeatedly, with sudden appearances of fast moving enemies or putting you in awkward (and rather unfair) situations such as enemies appearing from below the screen with no foreshadowing or warning. And that goes for all of the difficulty modes, as even easy is quite harder than a lot of other shmup games. But that's only a part of why the game is brutal, as the other part of it is because you will not be given enough tools to fight back properly.
First things first, it is nearly impossible to beat the game normally and you HAVE TO use the Double Shot. Double Shot is a glitch-ish technique that allows you to shoot both wide and forward shots at the same time, effectively doubling your firepower. That is done by holding forward shot while constantly tapping wide shot. If you don't mash buttons or use a Joy2Key script and play in a classic manner (changing between shots on demand), you will get destroyed by the enemies.
Second, the shield is not a good defensive tool. Instead of absorbing shots, the shield will just slow the projectiles down while gradually shrinking their size in order to disintegrate them. Not only that, but it also only covers the front of your ship and not all of it. Did I also mention the shield gets smaller when its power gets lower? Because of these traits, you are forced to use the shield as a last attempt to find a good way of getting out of the way, or use it in the way the devs intended and increase your multiplier by absorbing lots of small shots and dodging everything. The shield is so useless for defense that I preferred doing the double shot technique to increase the amount of projectiles on screen, make the game lag as a result and take advantage of the lag to navigate through projectiles rather than using it.
Now, these are not usually considered game breakers. You can totally deal with them and play the game to completion. But there are some things that sour the experience:
[b]1-[/b] Some achievements are locked to the default settings. That means using your default number of credits and lives (3), playing normal or hard difficulty, while starting from level 1. You can increase the number of credits you have by unlocking them, but...
[b]2-[/b] Extra stuff are locked behind the game's progression system which looks more suitable for handheld rather than desktop. As I have previously mentioned, this game was released for the WonderSwan portable console and therefore, uses a progression system that needs hours of playthroughs. Unlike games such as "The Tale of ALLTYNEX" trilogy where you get an extra credit upon failing or winning the game, Judgement Silversword keeps track of your total score (no matter if you win or lose, it will get recorded) and uses that to unlock extra stuff like the number of ships, the number of credits, the starting level number, BGM test, god mode, etc. Now that is not a problem on its own; but the problem is that you need an absurd amount of points to unlock most of the stuff in the game which requires you to play the game for hours, over and over again. Even then...
[b]3-[/b] Credits do not let you continue from where you died. If you choose to continue your game using a credit, you will restart from the beginning of the stage or boss fight. That means if you want to go for the achievements, you basically need to play almost perfectly and manage to deal with everything the game throws at you. Or if you have trouble with a boss, you're stuck there until you unlock more stuff or get good.
All of the points above make Judgement Silversword very unfriendly to the lesser experienced audience, or those with limited time available to them. Judgement Silversword is ultimately a game made for a specific crowd of shmup players: Those who are willing to dedicate a large amount of their time to play the game over and over again. Cardinal Sins however, is much more interesting in comparison and can be enjoyed by everyone. That is except for the unlockable boss which introduces the same weaknesses of Judgement Silversword.
[h1]TL;DR[/h1]
As I said at the beginning, this is a solid re-release with a noble intention. However, half of the package we have here fails to be accessible for the average player. If you can dedicate a large amount of time playing and perfecting your playstyle, or are interested in playing retro games that were nearly lost to time, then by all means get this collection.
