Gradius Gaiden (Playstation, 1997)

 

This game is hands-down the best Gradius series game I've ever played, and at this point I've played pretty much all of them. It was only released in Japan, making it basically the Rondo of Blood of this series, and for some inexplicable reason it has never been put on any of the Gradius collections since then (besides the now-obscure PSP one). Hardly anyone seems to know about it; I sure didn't until very recently.

Be warned though: As good as this game is, it can also be so hard that it makes Dark Souls look like Kirby's Dream Land. Then again, a lot of things make Dark Souls look like Kirby's Dream Land. Dark Souls really isn't that bad, especially compared to its own sequels. I should rank Fromsoft games by difficulty one of these days. Regardless. if Dark Souls moved any more slowly, it'd be turn-based.

Huge hit of nostalgia here. I haven't heard the PS1 startup sound in ages.

We get an FMV with ships firing lasers. It's a rudimentary, early-PS1 FMV, and probably the one thing that kept this game from existing on the N64 or maybe even the SNES. No arcade version either, so this was a PS1-exclusive deal at launch.

There are four different ships in this game and you can choose any of them at the start (or upon continuing). Each has their own color scheme (which extends to Options and weapons) and slightly different set of powerups. There's Vic Viper from the classic games, Lord British from Salamander, Jade Knight which was an alternate ship in later games, and Falchion Beta which is entirely new for this game as far as I know.

1997 was a huge year for the PS1. Huge. Gigantic. Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy VII, and this, just for starters.

Let the game sit on the title screen and it'll start demonstrating all the different ships/weapons. Vic Viper's laser covers the entire length of the screen when it's upgraded to the second level.

The options menu is important in this game, because there are a bunch of changes worth making right off the bat: There are seven (!!) difficulty levels, and there's no shame in turning it down to Easiest because this game is super-hard even on that level.

Other things worth doing: Turn up your extra lives to 7, change the controller settings to put Shot+Missile on the same button (preferably the rapid fire of both). The default controls (separate button for both and not rapid fire) will give you carpal tunnel.

Also, damn, the menu/select music is a banger...as are most of the tunes in this game.

Vic Viper

++Blue color scheme

++Has missiles that fly down and follow the terrain

++Double now has a Tail Gun included, making it actually worth using over the Laser finally

++Laser travels with your ship, meaning the laser moves up and down as your ship does, which helps for sweeping

--Downside is, it's the same ol' ship we've played as a zillion times already

Lord British

++Red color scheme

++Missiles travel upwards and downwards, covering more area

++Ripple is the usual wide-area beam that works great; I'm a big fan of Ripple

--Laser doesn't move with your ship the way Vic Viper's does, and just bolts across the screen at your current level. This is more appealing on the surface but much less useful in practice; you can't use it to sweep, and instead have to aim it, and with the laser being as narrow as it is, this makes it difficult to work with

--Has no way to attack backwards, unlike the other ships, so you're pretty much left to try and dodge anything behind you

Jade Knight

+Green color scheme, like Yoda - This looks very nice on the Twin Lasers

++Round Laser pulses a circular laser out from your ship. It's a boring weapon, but it'll keep you well protected by wiping out everything that gets near you or your Options. Might be the easiest way to get through the game.

++Twin Laser, the other weapon, is the awesome Twin Laser from Gradius III (except green) and has a fast fire rate while doing a ton of damage.

--Missiles just drop straight down like a chain of heavy bombs; with no explosions or rolling along terrain, it's kind of difficult to actually hit anything with them

Falchion Beta

++Purple color scheme, like Mace Windu - This might be the most gorgeous out of the four colors in action, though the green was really nice too

++Aiming Laser is almost a homing weapon, firing rapid shots that track enemies anywhere above you on the screen. Great for taking out foes approaching from behind or at odd angles. Only issue is they don't target anything below you, so a reliance on missiles is needed.

++Gravity Bomb, the other laser, is probably the strongest weapon in the game. Fires shots that explode into large void-explosions that linger for a moment and do heavy damage. It's a bit of an acquired taste as far as weapons go, though.

++Missiles fire straight down and then explode sideways in either direction. Most of the time the missiles of the first two ships are better, but sometimes this one has very good situational use against oddly-placed foes

--There's an issue with the Gravity Bomb where your void-explosions will trigger your other shots to blow up, which means you end up with a chain of void-explosions slowly moving back towards your ship when you're trying to fire beyond them to hit enemies

--The ship is also a, and I quote, "Beta Cuck"

After choosing a ship, there's a choice of four shield types. None of the shields last particularly long in this game so it isn't a huge choice or anything.

Shield: The standard shield, blocks shots from the front. Tends to dissolve quickly because it increases your hit box a lot and gets obliterated by contact with any surfaces (like while flying along a floor or ceiling to take out turrets)

Force Field: Is probably still the best, like previous games. Just blocks a couple of shots that would have killed you, without really increasing your hit box by that much

Rotating Shield: Similar to the first one, just more protection above and below the ship rather than in front

Limit: A sphere appears around the ship that makes it completely invulnerable for about 3 seconds. This is a weird one and I feel like I'm missing something here. Seems incredibly situational

Level 1 has some sweet ice-falls in the background that don't damage you or anything, but look cool in motion. There are also colorful nebulae in the background which is pretty sick.

Not sure which ship to run with so I'm trying them all. Lord British's Ripple Laser is still a major favorite of mine, though the inability of this ship to attack backwards is going to bring it down to probably last place status overall.

This ship's Laser may be a stationary shot rather than a sweep, but at least it makes up for it by having the laser be a robust, damaging bolt.

However, this series is more about area-coverage than damage output. The R-Type ship with the Force Pod and Reflecting Laser would dominate these games.

An ice-themed level was an inspired choice for a first level, given how this series has been pretty short on ice levels. Things get tricky towards the end, with these large enemies firing icicles all over the place.

First boss is a MASSIVE ICE WORM and it's time to mention how banging this soundtrack is. Boss theme is great, every stage theme is great.

Levels have titles in this game, and it's incredibly stylish the way they just fade onto the screen as a level begins. They picked the right font, too. Everything about this game feels fresh, even though it's similar to what we've seen before multiple times over.

Falchion Beta unleashes Gravity Bombs as I take on Level 2, the junkyard. Mentioned this as being the game's strongest weapon; well, it sure does damage and covers a lot of area, but it's got the odd quirk of the explosions triggering other explosions. So your shots can and will block each other from reaching distant enemies.

This game does beams super-well. Like they absolutely mastered the art of beams by the time this game rolled around.

One really cool thing about this junkyard level is that you see what are essentially the "corpses" of some old bosses from earlier in the series, now just laying around ineffectually. Some of them still launch attacks and can be further blown-up.

Boss of level 2 is the first really nasty thing in this game, a junk-mech that swings around and pulls in metal pieces to armor itself up. This thing is deadly because it sometimes stabs forward with a bunch of metal tentacles and it's difficult to dodge if you're boxed-in on the side here.

Here's the Falchion Beta's other main weapon in action, the Aiming Laser. It isn't as damaging or cool-looking as the Gravity Bomb, but it's probably a better weapon overall, zeroing in on everything it can. Only above though.

Next level is a crystal cavern that has this Mini Big Core lurking about. This is merely a portent for the real boss:

A legit Big Core that harkens back to the really cool one in Gradius III, complete with...

Massive beams that box you in. No reflecting laser here though.

Level 4 is the requisite Moai level, and it might be the hippest Moai level in this series.

It has medium-sized Moai, and...

Giant Moai

Multiple Moai

This level has two bosses. The first (and MUCH easier) boss is beloved children's muppet Tapey the Tapeworm, voted "worst new Sesame Street character" two years in a row.

This thing zips around, smashing up Moai statues. At this point I've fully committed to the Jade Knight and the Twin Laser, which turns into a Spazer when upgraded.

Then there's the real boss, which is vastly harder than anything else up to this point. Two Moai faces with an insane amount of HP.

Here's the Big Core and Level 4, which has one of the best music tracks in the game. Really brings the Moai to life. That twin Moai head boss is so tough.

Level 5 is a weird organic level, and where the game starts to slide a bit on fun factor. Lots of projectiles here and foes sneaking up from behind. Yeah, it's getting difficult now. A lesser game in the series would be coming to an end right about now, but not this one.

The boss of Level 5 is... The Clitoris. "I am the Clitoris" it says while glowing.

Level 6 is a plant level where things get even weirder. Interesting level, but unfortunately the last one I really had a lot of fun with. The last three levels are all excessively brutal.

Boss here is a deadly plant with 3 forms, like the Erdtree Avatar. First it waves its stamen around in your face!

Then it turns into a Not-Xenomorph for round 2. Was wondering when a Xeno would show up in this game.

Then the third form is a legitimately unsettling monstrosity that fires tentacle lasers at erratic times, like that crystalline boss in previous Gradiuses.

Level 7 is called "On the Event Horizon". Uh oh. Luckily this isn't a ship that has been to Hell... it's just a level on the outskirts of a black hole. Check out the stars in the background shifting.

After a frustrating level, we get an extremely frustrating boss that fires erratic lasers at random intervals.

Get through that and we get the ridiculous nightmare that is level 8:

This level is a boss rush where you fight boss after boss...after boss.

WHOA! Hold up there Konami!

Next boss is a ship that swings two other ships around. Defeat it and...

...the other two ships break off and become their own boss fight, complete with sick laser beams.

Next boss is another frustrating one. They occasionally form an electric triangle, and if you're outside the triangle you're basically guaranteed to die. Inside, you get to dodge all kinds of projectiles. This fight goes on and on, too. All of these bosses have way too much health, and it doesn't help that I lose all of my Options somewhere in here, every time, for some unknown reason. I think on the second boss of the rush.

Next boss is this bullet hell bastard. The lack of Options is REALLY getting annoying here and probably what tanks this boss rush into just not being fun. It'd be rocky enough even at full power, why gimp the player too?

Remember, this is on Easiest difficulty

ANOTHER boss? Seriously? Keep in mind that without save states, there are no checkpoints in this level, so you're back to the first boss if you lose to any of them. It takes an age and a half to get through them, too. Well, this has got to be the last one...

...NOPE, there's yet another one, and this one has more health than any of them. That makes seven bosses. SEVEN BOSSES with no checkpoint. Well, the game was at least somewhat fair up through level 6, but after that it just went into full "kill the player" mode for the last couple of levels. I can't see very many people getting through this boss rush, especially with the way it jacks your Options.

Level 9, the final level, manages to actually top it in obnoxious difficulty by being a fast-scrolling level with tons of walls. So it's the usual Gradius game final level after the boss rush, just worse than usual.

Lots of this sort of thing as it zips along. At least it has checkpoints.

Miniboss! This...really could have been the final boss and the game would have been fine for it. But nope, it continues:

The next section is super-cheap, with walls closing in everywhere.

This one in particular is incredibly annoying, giving you almost no time to get beyond it before it locks you into an unavoidable death.

THIS is how much room you have to clear the wall before it closes. Guarantee that almost no players got through here the first time, and there goes all your powerups.

At the end we get a mini boss rush, with a mechanical wall!

A walking mech with an awesome laser cannon!

An indestructible object that rolls around slowly while you avoid getting crushed by it until it eventually paths away!

And finally, the final boss from Salamander, which doesn't fight back at all. After all of this ridiculousness, the final boss isn't going to fight back?

It turns into the brain from Life Force, then after a few seconds it gets sucked into a black hole. Not sure if you can actually defeat this thing yourself before that happens. Probably not without Options, and mine got stolen again.

The enemy base blows up, and your ship sails away.

Great game, probably the highest-quality game out of all of the Gradius series if I had to pick one. Not bad for a Japan-only game that few really know existed. However, the difficulty is off the wall high, and the game actually stopped being fun in the last few levels. Level 1 through 4 were amazing though, just fantastic to play through. Take just that portion of the game and it might be the best this series has to offer. From there it gets less fun and more tedious with every level, and finally Levels 8 and 9 are both borderline impossible. Your mileage may vary.