The shoot ‘em up genre is something that has not been in the mainstream spotlight in a long time. In decades past, top-down and side-scrolling shooter games were some of the most dominate forces in arcades and by proxy some of the most popular titles to be ported to consoles. Nowadays though, the arcade designs of “make games shorter, but also much harder” doesn’t work very well, and most shmups come from smaller independent developers at lower price points. It’s these things that make Caladrius Blaze all the more interesting though, as it’s a digital-only release that totes a slightly above budget price.
Caladrius Blaze is a bullet hell-style arcade shooter that was originally released on the Xbox 360 in Japan, later ported to arcades, and eventually the PlayStation 3 and 4. It was developed by MOSS, whose other shmup accomplishments include the later Raiden shooters. While bullet hell games are typically based around pixel perfect dodges and one-hit kills, Caladrius adds a few bells and whistles to its design to help it stand out. Most notably is its RPG-inspired upgrade system that allows players to level up their various special shot options. Each shot has its own resource gauge that goes down when fired and slowly refills. The only way to gain more experience to level up shots is to hit enemies with them though, creating an interesting dynamic of resource management with power gain. Experience is shared between all three shots rather being tied individually to each, as one of the three is a shield-spell that doesn’t always do damage.
The various levels in Caladrius Blaze are rather short, maybe 3-4 minutes max with a 2-3 minute boss fight at the end of each. With 5-8 levels, depending on what mode you chose, a single playthrough only takes about 30 to 40 minutes. What Caladrius Blaze lacks in time it makes up for in content, though. Like other bullet-hell games, Caladrius is ridiculously hard, and revolves around learning patterns. You can take 3 hits total before you game over, but you’re given unlimited continues. To offset this, your score is reset every time you choose to continue a game. It makes it so someone can casually finish the game, but offers incentive for those who want to rack up a high score through the game’s local or online leaderboards.
There’s also a few unlockable modes to help practice individuals parts of the game. Upon completing a mission in story mode it’s added to list of selectable missions in score attack mode, where you play through that single level from start to boss battle. There’s also a Boss Rush mode that is unlocked after fighting through every possible boss in the game’s story mode. Getting better at Caladrius is where most of the fun lies, and a lot of its features aim to make that climb more manageable. The game also offers other unlockables like music tracks and character art for playing through with each member of the cast.
Where Caladrius Blaze begins to fall short is in its presentation. While MOSS made an attempt to localize the game, neither they nor the publisher, H2 Interactive, did much to clean it up. The game’s script and character profiles have plenty of questionable word choices. Sentences feel clunky. There’s over use of repetition with certain words. Small grammatical mistakes, like putting spaces after apostrophes, also made it through to the final version. This is definitely a product that needed a good one-over from an editorial team.
The game’s art is also a bit of mixed bag. The in-game models are striking and interesting; in particular, each boss has a very unique design, as well as most of the player-character ships. Many of the backgrounds and basic enemies look dated. This is a port of a 360 title, but this was a game originally released in 2013 that looks like a late-era PlayStation2 title. Your focus won’t be on the background that much though, as beating the game with a good score requires focusing more on the locations of enemy bullets and dodging them. Thankfully, all the bullets are bright, and stand out well against the more hushed tones of the level backdrops.
Caladrius also has another gimmick tied into its art, the destruction of pilot clothing. Whenever a player dies, or when a boss loses a third of their health, part of their clothing rips off, for no actual purpose other than eye-candy. It’s tacky to say the least, and Caladrius doesn’t need a gimmick like this to sell itself. It is possible to turn the animations off in the game’s options, but there’s no middle-ground to it. You either have the clothes tearing on or two large blank spaces on the sides of your screen. The game is locked at a specific aspect ratio, like most shooters, to keep hitboxes and such accurate. It’s a shame too, as the character art is very well done, and it would have been nice to have an option of just seeing the character portraits along the side-bars without the striptease.
Caladrius Blaze does more than enough to make itself standout as top-scrolling shooter. It’s fast and concentration-intensive gameplay is exactly what one should expect from an arcade shmup title, but its awkward translation lacks and its graphics look rather dated, even for the time of its original release on the 360. It also feels laggy playing with the PlayStation 4’s dualshock controller. If you’re planning to seriously sit down with Caladrius, you might want to invest in an arcade stick. If you’re a bit of a bullet hell enthusiast, Caladrius is worth looking up, but for anyone else it might be a hard sell.