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Since I got in on the Shmup Club so late into the month of April, I only had about 4 hours to spend with VRITRA. So I'll share some of my thoughts about the game.
First off, I greatly enjoyed the look and music of this game. It was not only very visually appealing to me and my chat who watched me stream the game, but we were all diggin the tunes as well. Especially stage 3's music, so funky! A lot of us felt a lot of Dragon Spirit vibes from the look, and it turns out that it had the same artist, so that was pretty cool to find out. Also I guess this game was based on a lot of Hindu folklore, as far as Indra and Vritra go, which I found to be pretty interesting to read about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VritraMost of my time was spent with the Normal mode, which I was able to get a 1CC of and set a high score of 9,680,330.
I thought the enemy design and bosses were really cool, and the bosses were a fun challenge to fight against. And while a lot of the game wasn't too challenging on Normal mode, there were definitely some frustratingly difficult sections (lookin at you stage 4). Also stage 4 had my favorite boss, the Hornet/Killer Bee looking boss. Really enjoyed this fight and found it to be challenging yet fair and fun.
I definitely got a little bit of a Euroshmup vibe from this game, although I don't say that in a bad way. Being able to take 3 hits per life was especially useful considering how big Indra's hitbox is. I originally thought the boss of stage 5 had an unavoidable attack, where he rushes you and basically sits on top of you, but I found that a well placed Boost shot will get him off of you. I will post my 1CC link below where you can see this.
The weapon choices in the game were very hit or miss for me. From the Type A selections, I really only liked the blue "Gradius-like" weapon that gave you the 2 options. The others felt very lack-luster and only situationally useful. From Type B I preferred the Emerald weapon that shot the rings out, it worked fantastically for clearing the screen in front of you. I found towards the end of my play through that the purple Type B weapon also was very strong, wish I would have had more time to play with that one.
I did briefly try out the hardest difficulty, which is QUITE HARD lol. The amount of revenge bullets on screen along with normal bullets and the size of Indra's hitbox made it feel nigh impossible for me, I managed to make if through stage 1, but that was about it. I also briefly played around with both the Mugen and Setsuna modes, which also both had their own quirks and were fun in their own rights.
Overall I enjoyed the game, I don't know that I enjoyed it enough to come back to it though, at least not anytime soon. I have to say though, I was not a fan of the fact that you could only fight the true final boss by playing the hardest difficulties. It would have been great to allow you to fight it on lower difficulties if you made it there on 1 credit like other games have done. It did very much feel like a breath of fresh air though, and a nice break from the other shmups I've been playing. I wish I had more time to put into this one this month, but coming in halfway through the month and my busy schedule don't really allow for it. I only really started to grasp the scoring mechanics after MetalFRO came into my stream and taught me how it works. But I'm happy ending this on a 1CC and half decent score.
You can check out the VOD of my playthrough, as well as see me play other shmups live at
https://www.twitch.tv/bdot_realityAnd here is the highlight of my 1CC of VRITRA -
https://youtu.be/iL9j3fHJuQQLooking forward to joining in on future Shmup Club Play Throughs!
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