Title: Soreyuke! Burunyanman Portable
Alternate Title: Let’s Go! Burunyanman
Japanese Title: それゆけ！ぶるにゃんマン Portable
Developed By: DigitalCute
Published By: Alchemist / Wirehead
Based On: A Mini-Game from the DigitalCute Eroge Visual Novel Musumaker
Console: Playstation Portable
Genre: Bullet-Hell Shmup
Classification: This title has been classified CERO D in Japan
Review Conditions: Japanese Edition, Playstation Portable, Physical Copy
While I have no idea the justification or storyline reasons for their Musumaker visual novel to feature a side-game like Soreyuke! Burunyanman in the first place, it proved popular enough for DigitalCute to give it its own separate release. This release came as part of two editions – the original Windows PC “Hardcore” edition and on the Playstation Portable a more all-ages friendly edition.
Back in January 2012 I picked up a demo copy of the PC Edition which you can read up more on HERE and despite a few issues it come out with a solid B+ grade. But with edits made by Wirehead and Alchemist to bring it over to the Playstation Portable and the demo itself only covering a small fraction of the game – it is now time to see if this game still holds such a score.
Storyline
When you begin the game you get to choose one of three “cats” to play as – the buruma wearing Burunyan-man, the one-piece swimsuit wearing Sukunyan-man, and the maid outfit wearing Meinyan-man. Joined by their faithful cat companions (Kuro-Neko, Shiro-Neko and Mike-Neko), they set out on a journey in a bid to find canned tuna as they are set upon by waves of mice and giant humanoid-personifications of them at the end of each level.
As with most of my other Japanese game reviews, I won’t go into many more specifics. However I can say that there is nothing overly remarkable about the storyline of this game, and while snippets of dialogue and plot are intertwined throughout the game there is however no weight to it overall. It is made clear that the storyline has been included to justify the gameplay and the inclusion of fanservice scenes at the end of every stage – and if you look at it from that perspective it still is a simple albeit enjoyable at times storyline.
However whereas in the Hardcore Edition took to including a slightly altered “18+” route for Dark Burunyan-man, as he was replaced by Meinyan-man there was little other than altered dialogue to set the three routes apart from one another. Irrespective of the character you choose you will end up pretty much following the same stages in the same order.
Design
Soreyuke! Burunyanman Portable is spread over nine individual areas, each of which have their own particular theme from the carried over cityscape environment to a theme park and volcano. In terms of the backdrop environment designs they do loop however are visually stimulating while not necessarily detracting you from the task at hand. Several of the environment props such as towers can also be destroyed… seems like these cats don’t let anything stand in their way. They have however evidently gone for the bright and colourful look and in that respect they have succeeded.
The character / enemy designs both in-game and portrait are fine, with most of the games dialogue taking place in a visual novel style interaction system. One slight peeve however was that when going up against one of the mice at the end of the stage, they were overly large and gameplay wise I think they could have thrown a bit more challenge in by having them in the same visual style as your chosen character during play rather than an enlarged character portrait. Unfortunately, especially when there were many enemies or events happening on screen the visuals did tend to lag considerably.
You may have caught your eye on the special attack imagery such as the examples shown above. Each of the three characters have a total of six pieces of special attack art which generally increase in fanservicey-ness as you unleash a barrage of these attacks without losing a life. While I wouldn’t have minded more for each character to be showcased at random, they are overall solid pieces of character artwork that generally follow the pattern of the characters in-game appearance to cosplay attire to finally a bath scene. Unlike the image above however, there are no backdrops either in-game or in the games Gallery.
The other CG artwork is pretty good, although with only a couple of additions for this game (Eg. A Gal*Gun related piece of artwork), the number of art pieces have dropped considerably from the PC version with all three characters unlocking the same artwork as you progress through the stages.
Music / Voice Acting
From the games upbeat opening sequence, you are welcomed into Soreyuke! Burunyanman Portable in a way that catches your attention with both your eyes and ears. The background music during the stages do vary in quality, however after a few stages you are treated to quite a few lyrical tracks. Unfortunately without headphones I thought some of the quality was lost with the built-in Playstation Portable speakers.
Another thing that was impressive was the inclusion of the games dub track. While the dub track was overall of an acceptable quality, I was left impressed that pretty much every piece of dialogue in the game was dubbed – from the shot bits of dialogue before a stage to the games lengthy in-game tutorial. While some of the sound effects and small snippets of dialogue played during the game can become repetitive fast, I am glad that especially in delivering an experience such as this they haven’t skimped on the dubbing.
Gameplay
While there have been amendments made to this release in comparison to the PC edition – this is more in regards to storyline and visual elements rather than anything gameplay related. All three of the characters also handle slightly different from one another although make use of three different attack styles – a strong attack that condenses your attack and decreases your speed greatly, a weaker attack that only slightly drops your speed and spreads the attack over a slightly wider range and finally an attack usable when under attack which grants you a more individualized attack skill for each character. While each character have different attack styles (For example, Sukunyan-man’s weaker attack is more spaced out than the other two characters) it never really favors one character over the others.
This game involves you selecting one of the aforementioned characters and then traversing left to right in a sidescrolling “bullet hell shooter” world shooting beams 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. At the end of the stage you are pitted against a boss that takes up almost the entire right hand side of the screen while you are left to take care of their three health bars. While difficulty increases with the bosses each stage, I think they could have done much more to diversity their attack styles – to the point where I found standard enemies at times harder than the bosses.
Depending on your skill and difficulty level, the games nine stage total may or may not impress you in quantity. But especially as I reached the later stages I found that they offered quite a sizable degree of challenge. As you complete these stages you can also unlock achievements through the games rudimentary achievement system. Given this is on the Playstation Portable it doesn’t equate to actual trophies or anything, but is a nice system anyway. Other notable extras includes the freedom to play any unlocked stage with any character, a ranking system and your standard Gallery / Scene Select menu options.
As a reward for completing the story mode for any one of the three characters, you will unlock their respective character in Nyanko to Gohan – a sort of side game where you can select either Burunyan-man, Sukunyan-man or Meinyan-man (or their cat companions) and have either a meal, birthday, valentines or Christmas with them. It is a simple system that may or may not appeal to the individual gamer.
Final Word + Review
There are a couple of issues with this edition including a considerable downsize in the number of available CG images available across all three characters or the fact that the game does tend to lag up even with only a moderate number of foes in the field. That being said, while Soreyuke! Burunyanman Portable doesn’t really test the genre too much, it does the basics right and makes for a pretty fun game that has been designed to be a light-hearted experience with the option of further challenging yourself if desired.
Unfortunately given this is on the Playstation Portable, unless a company such as Gaijinworks who are still publishing / localizing PSP games pick this up I would say that chances of seeing this title on international store shelves remains slim. However it has recently been released in Japan as a “PSP the Best” collection by Alchemist at a reduced price from the original release last year. You can check it out on Play-Asia HERE.
If you are after cute catgirls, a relatively challenging bullet-hell shooter or some degree of fanservice in a portable game without having to worry about it toeing the line into “18+ eroge” territory – then Soreyuke! Burunyanman Portable may just be up your alley.
