Sol Cresta - demo out now!

[routeburn]

 

[Keyboard Koala]

Tldr; pretty good, but overpriced and the Switch port is to be avoided.

[routeburn]

Watching the video made me realise that many of my favourite games when I was a young (around 10) kid were Cresta games. I remember standing on a low stool to play Moon Cresta at the swimming baths every week. I absolutely loved it, and the fact that it was a modular ship you could build blew my mind. I then realised after seeing Terra Cresta that this was also one of my favourites a few years later, but I don't think I realised it was the same game series at the time. I think I played this one on holiday somewhere. I don't remember ever having them on console, but would have loved the PC Engine release.

[Keyboard Koala]

Same here. But I still won't pay full price for a game like that without even having a physical copy.

Maybe some UFO Robo Dangar DLC in the future would sway me.

[routeburn]

On 05/03/2022 at 00:25, Keyboard Koala said:

Same here. But I still won't pay full price for a game like that without even having a physical copy.

Maybe some UFO Robo Dangar DLC in the future would sway me.

 

100%. Not a chance I'm paying the full asking price for Sol Cresta. The RRP for nearly all shooters is ludicrous.

[ImmaculateClump]

I can't agree with that.
Sol Cresta isn't the norm. Most shmups are very fairly priced.
This is just a triple A developer assuming they can get away with taking the absolute piss.

 

Just search up a few high quality shmups at random on steam and the highest price is £10.99.

 

£7.19 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794300/BLUE_WISH_DESIRE/

£10.99 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/439490/BLUE_REVOLVER/

£8.29 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/592270/Neko_Navy/

£6.99 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/618070/Jet_Buster/

£4.79 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/207400/eXceed_3rd__Jade_Penetrate_Black_Package/

£10.99 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/378770/ESCHATOS/

£5.79 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1570500/Space_Moth_Lunar_Edition/

£5.19 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/463070/Mecha_Ritz_Steel_Rondo/

 

I've played games I'd happily pay way over 30 quid for, but Sol Cresta isn't one of them.
It's a 5-15 pound game. Definitely wait for a sale.

 

There is a huge problem with the scoring.
After you've beaten the game on your chosen difficulty, the game will loop to the next difficulty up, and then loop indefinitely after that.
That is a huge problem as it makes the scoring more about endurance than skill.

Jaimers said that he looped the game 7 times before it crashed.
If you want to go for the top spot on the normal leaderboard, you're gonna be sat there for hours and hours.

You should be asked if you want to loop the game when you beat it and there should be separate leaderboards for those that choose to.

 

The whole point of a shmup is that it's a 20-30 minute long dense, intense experience. You get your daily gaming fix in one quick blast, and hopefully there's a scoring system that's deep enough to make you want to keep coming back to play the same content again and again to improve your score.

 

The game is fun but it's very "console shmup", the main game is an hour long to begin with, and that's before it loops. The stages are very loose, and there are too many of them.

 

I honestly thought the game was going to be a disaster, so maybe I'm just pleasantly surprised, but it is surprisingly fun to play.

Some of the music is fantastic and I love that little fanfair they play when you get a bonus.

The hardest difficulty does ramp things up nicely, your special formations last a pitiful amount of time, there are a lot more bullets and it's a lot harder to recover from losing ships and you only have a slot for one shield as well.

 

It's good fun changing your guy to match the colour of the little bonus things, and switching your weapon, the yellow guy is good when there are rocks and stone obstacles. Red is good for those shield enemies taking down tanky enemies, and blue is a good all-rounder with homing missiles at least until the later loops where you really need the red weapon a lot of the time.

 

Trying out the different special formation on the bosses is fun as well. The red triangle makes you turn into a phoenix and you're invincible and you just go and sit on the bastard until he carks it.

I really like the green triangle one, that's my go to.

 

Even the combo's are well done. You have a rapid shot, shot, and formation button. So you're just holding rapid all the time, and when you want to pull off a combo, you keep the rapid shot held down, and for example, do a quick full circle and whack the shot button and you shoot a load of missiles out in a circle, or if an enemy is behind you you press up, down and then shot and it'll shoot a few bullet backwards.

It seems really forgiving with the timing and execution, like the game goes "aye, I know what you were going for there buddy".

You get these special moves to use as you play and once you've used it, it's gone until you earn another. It feels like something you don't have to engage with at all, but it's a fun little addition.

 

The final stage is an absolute bastard by the way, the first time you see it, it will gobble down all your remaining lives.

Once you've seen it, you'll be prepared. It's like the base is self destructing and you have to escape and it scrolls really fast and there are a lot of enviromental hazards that you can't really pick out from the background.

Once you've seen it and know what you have to dodge, it's better, but be prepared to have your 1cc thwarted by some cheap ass shit when you get to the end there at least on your first try.

 

TL;DR Game is aaaalright, needs a good kick up the arse and tightening up across the board.

Playing the harder difficulties for survival is where you're gonna have your fun. The scoring is a write off due to the game endlessly looping. You're not gonna sink 100s of hours into this.

Isn't worth the price. Buy blue wish desire to play now and wait for a deep discount.

[Keyboard Koala]

There's a demo for this now

[SMD]

i forgot this was even a thing. was it any good?

[Triple A]

5 minutes ago, SMD said:

i forgot this was even a thing. was it any good?

It's average - painfully so given it's from Platinum.  Get it on deep discount only.

[dvdx2]

Still hasn't had a price drop. Still £32.99

[Eighthours]

1 hour ago, dvdx2 said:

Still hasn't had a price drop. Still £32.99

 

Truly one of those mega-baffling pricing decisions.

[Keyboard Koala]

4 hours ago, dvdx2 said:

Still hasn't had a price drop. Still £32.99

 

Yeah, been checking that one almost daily, and it's never had a price drop since its release. But £32.99 is more than double of what I'd actually want to pay for it. Demo confirms that too.

[dvdx2]

3 hours ago, Keyboard Koala said:

 

Yeah, been checking that one almost daily, and it's never had a price drop since its release. But £32.99 is more than double of what I'd actually want to pay for it. Demo confirms that too.

Yeah - tried the demo and didn’t see anything to mind blowing to be honest. It’s pretty short though to be fair.

 

a solid £14.99

[PikaStu]

I downloaded the demo on PS4, wondering if it would be prettier “in the flesh”.

I still can’t understand the decision they made regarding the presentation?! It looks like badly scaled pixel art with terrible shimmering going on. Neither of the filters make a difference either. 
If it had a “perfect pixel match” mode, it would be quite a looker, but from what I understand it’s all done in 3D?!

[Keyboard Koala]

Now discounted 33% in order to push its first round of DLC:

 

Sol Cresta “Legendary Fighters” DLC Set:

The “Legendary Fighters” DLC bundles all 3 of the additional fighters into one specially priced DLC. Contains CR47 (from Moon Cresta), Wing Galiber (from Terra Cresta) and Wing Galiber II (from Terra Cresta II ). These additional fighters can be used in Caravan Mode, and the icon displayed in the Caravan Mode high-score rankings will be of the fighter used.

Not only can you combine with up to 5 fighters to perform formation attacks and bring out the familiar phoenix, but there are also new and improved attacks such as the Fire Formation Attack, Formation Shoot and Phoenix Rolling Bomber recreated for you to enjoy!

 

 

Dammit; where's my UFO Robo Dangar ship?! 😠

[PikaStu]

I tried the Switch demo again, the (new?) scanline filter really helps with the presentation IMO. I’m tempted by the sale price, but I think I’ll hold off for an under-£20 sale in the future…

[Keyboard Koala]

Same here. Twenty quid is a far fairer price I reckon.