This review was conducted on the freely available demo version of Soreyuke Burunyanman HARDCORE!!! (それゆけ!ぶるにゃんマン HARDCORE!!!) recently released by DigitalCute on the PC with a PSP release due sometime in the near future (それゆけ!ぶるにゃんマン Portable ~とりもどせ!あいとせいぎときぼうのつにゃ~). For the purposes of this review all three characters had their two stages played through once on normal difficulty. While there were brief moments of fanservice seen during my playthroughs, there was nothing that I would call eroge (Fanservice however is a big YES)…. but be warned that the full version may include content of this nature. This is the first of their releases that I have played, so any references to past games are purely through third party reference.
Provided the PSP version is released through the Playstation Network (for the PSP) and is confirmed all-ages, I will be picking up a full version of the game through that. For more information on its official release, see http://products.alchemist-net.co.jp/products/burunyanman/. The PSP release is being published by Alchemist (Thus why I picked this title up when I also picked up Umineko and Galgun) and therefore differences between versions may apply.
Originally it was my intention of reviewing this game upon the release of the Playstation Portable version, however after seeing that DigitalCute put up a trial on their site, I could not help but download it and see if it would just be a rehash of what they added to their previous game or they put effort into their development of this game. Let’s Go Burunyanman or Soreyuke! Burunyanman is a bullet hell game based almost directly off a side-game in their previous visual novel release of Musumaker and follows four “cats” over three plots who head out on an epic quest that will take them flying through many environments, facing many gigantic enemies and flying rats mostly for the purpose of the Canned Tuna! The storyline is not a strong part of the games demo which focuses more upon the design and gameplay rather than storyline, but at the same time does not leave you in the dark about why they are going on their quest…. sort of.
In the original Musumaker version, you were only limited to one cat (Burunyanman) however this game gives you the option of choosing from three, each with a slightly different attack style and visual appeal. Before getting into the other two let me quickly describe Burunyanman as a character: her gameplay is what I would consider the most balanced and easy to pick up from the get-go. The game has two primary attack styles – a strong attack that decreases your speed greatly and a weak attack that only slightly drops your speed. With Burunyanman both her attack types are of average strength and offer a much more closer field of attack – useful as you shoot three beams and can focus your attacks on one set of enemies. The first newcomer goes by the name of Sukunyan-man and is named as such due to hear wearing a swimsuit instead of a pair of bloomers. Her battle style differs to the other two in that her strong attack is sufficiently stronger but her weak attack is below average and the three beams cover a wider area not making it very practical for battle use. The second new character…s are Dark Burunyan-man (Pictured to the left) and Toraneko. These two are the more complex characters to play as due to a rather different playing style that isn’t just about attack strength. You are given two individual attack options – the first is to perform a strength attack which leaves Dark not doing any attack but gives Toraneko a homing mode which she goes up to the enemies and attacks them with a weak attack and the second option which is to have both of you perform normal attacks and no homing mode
But let me backtrack just slightly for those who might have not played a basic bullet hell game before. This game involves you selecting one of the above mentioned characters and then traversing left to right in a sidescrolling world shooting laser beams (I don’t recall them ever defining what they are) to clear your path of mice/rats, entire city buildings and other creatures who shoot out swarms of beams at a time. While these levels run for a couple of minutes at a time, provided you are playing on a higher difficulty setting it should provide ample challenges and a consistent stream of enemies to appeal to the tastes of all skill levels. The game does offer a few little added bonuses to make the level seem less linear. Upon completion of every stage, you are provided with a boss battle which pits you against one of (in the demo) two stage bosses which fill up the entire screen, shoot a greater number of beams at you and have multiple health bars. Upon defeating the boss, you are provided a piece of fanservice / borderline-eroge artwork respective to the character. The only issue I had with these two bosses were that their attack styles were very similar with only one or two differences in attack pattern (The second boss Colby occasionally rams into you while Process doesn’t).
The source of what I would consider “character fanservice” in the demo comes not by plot related story art, but by pressing the X button on your keyboard or right clicking on your mouse you can perform a powerful attack which clears most enemies on the screen or in the case of bosses – empties out half of their three HP bars. In doing so they also provide you with one of a selection of character CG artworks of your respective girl which varies between cutesyness and fanservicey. The demo only provides you with four out of the eight or so for each character, but it is something to distract you while everything in the game explodes around your character. Unfortunately the game doesn’t seem to provide the artwork with a normal background. To also aid you in your quest, you can also pick up (depending on character choice) extra cats which will attack alongside you only with the weak beams. Overall however, while I don’t have much experience with these sorts of games… with the only similar games being DeathSmiles on the XBox360 and (While it is fairly different) the bullet hell style battles in Nier, I thought it was a pretty fun game. I do however question how long one would be able to enjoy it – as there only seems to be a handful of levels in the final release.