EARTHION - No Death Clear (Normal)

Yuzo Koshiro, who's best known for his work on Streets of Rage 2, along with his development studio Ancient, have finally released their latest game: the 2D horizontal shooter, Earthion. Aesthetically, it's meant to be a call back to the Mega Drive, where shooters were plentiful. And Earthion is as good as anything the Mega Drive has to offer. I did not expect to like it so much, but it's a great game! It's available now on Steam for $19.99, so if you're a fan of the genre, it's an easy recommendation from me. I think it's coming to console later, as a physical release? I googled it just now and I couldn't find it on any system's digital storefront. I'm surprised.

Normal mode is the 'default' difficulty, and it's what's going to get by far the most play, so I wanted to do a quick no death run through it.
If you're just going for a one credit clear, this game isn't hard at all, but a no miss can be a little tricky. At first I was having trouble on stage 7, because I wasn't sure what weapon to use and I was trying out everything that dropped, but ultimately the good ol' Darius twin bombs make the stage portion much easier than anything else you can grab. Then the giant robot wall boss in stage 8 killed me a couple times. He can be tricky with bullets flying in all kinds of directions in the bottom portion of the screen, but the pattern seems consistent, so if you play it enough you should be able to get a feel for it. Unfortunately, there's no practice mode or stage select, so you just have to keep playing full credits to learn it. Hopefully they add that in later.

Overall, this is a pretty straight forward old-school shooter. You'll want to grab a wide shot for the stage, pick up the capsule that drops before the boss (which lets you upgrade your ship between stages), and hold on to the laser for the boss fights. There are various weapons in the game, but ultimately the V-shot, R-Type pod spread shot thing, and the laser seem to trounce everything else. The Darius twin bombs are good at the right points as well. After you get the clear, you can move on to Hard mode, which I only tried once, and it seems much more arcade-like in terms of difficulty, or you can play Normal a bit more and aim for a better score. At first I was disappointed because the scoring seemed like an afterthought, but once you understand how to optimize it, it's actually pretty fun to go for. Tonight I was able to get 10.7 million, but I can do a lot better. So maybe I'll play more tomorrow, but I might just start up Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound... why did they have to release both games on the same day?

Honestly, this run was pretty bad in a lot of areas - I even lost one of the upgrade capsules at one point. I blame it on sleep deprivation.

0:00 Intro
2:59 Stage 1
6:14 Stage 2
10:16 Stage 3
14:06 Stage 4
18:33 Stage 5
22:26 Stage 6
27:04 Stage 7
33:18 Stage 8
37:44 Ending & Credits
-----
Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71

Видео EARTHION - No Death Clear (Normal) канала iconoclast