[Steam] Dezatopia - Normal Mode - Standard IV ALL Clear (Starting Rank 500)

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Dezatopia is a doujin shmup that came out on Steam about a week ago, with a Switch port planned.
It was made by HEY, who you might know for making Mecha Ritz and Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo.

Mecha Ritz was pretty unique in how it handled rank and Dezatopia is a lot like that as well. You can set your starting rank and you get more score from jacking up the rank as much as possible. The rank will eventually go into ludicrous levels.
Basically you can make the game as easy or hard as you want.

Some of the more observant people might notice that this game looks very similar to another game from the same maker called Momoiro Underground.
Momoiro Underground was a collaboration with HEY and former Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa that got released in 2017.
It was physical only though, which made it pretty hard for people to get their hands on it.
However something happened and now the game is being re-released under a different name and with different music.
From what I've been told, Dezatopia has a lot more content and some more subtle differences from Momoiro.
Extra and Hell mode were not in the original and I think the new version also has more routes and the rank can go higher as well.

Speaking of routes, this game has a crazy amount of content. There are 24 unique stages with 21 bosses arranged in 21 routes. There are also over 40 different music tracks and like a million different things you can unlock in the Museum.

Explanation of the HUD and game mechanics:
The game is pretty unique in that you have four different weapons that can all be charged. So it's all about juggling these weapons and charge levels to get maximum DPS.
There is also a shop system in real-time where you can buy weapon upgrades and upgrades to your HP and bombs, as well as bombs and various HP refills.

Like in Mecha Ritz, high rank gameplay is extremely chaotic and silly.
Though I feel like the guy maybe kinda overdid it with this game. High rank just kinda makes everything impossible and the only way to get through it is with excessive resource spamming. Turns the game into quite a battle of attrition.
The shop system also makes this more apparent because you constantly need to buy HP refills and bombs to live. What items you get in the shop seems random as well, so you also need really good shop luck in order to get the things you need to survive. Some shades of Euroshmup maybe.
Bombs are the most valuable resource in the game at high rank. A well placed bomb can destroy so many enemies that you get an instant shop, which in turn can give you another bomb.
Still kinda hard to tell how possible everything is at this stage though. I feel like this game has a much bigger emphasis on bullet cancelling than Mecha Ritz had, so who knows what might be possible after people have dug into this game more.

The game has great graphics and music and I like the chaotic nature of the game.
But I do think it has some pretty big flaws currently:
- At high rank all the animal items turn into revenge bullets if you don't pick them up in like a second. I really, really dislike this and I don't think this makes for a good mechanic at all.
This just makes it so you get constantly point-blanked by the items you're supposed to pick up. The animal items don't stand out at all either, which doesn't help.
- Water messes with your controls so much that you're almost uncontrollable. This is not a good mechanic in a precision shmup.
- Besides that the game is also kind of a visual mess. It's really hard to keep track of everything that's going on and the gameplay is often quite a clusterfuck. A lot of bullets are also really tiny and hard to see/differentiate from items.
- Your hitbox is insanely off-center. It's at the very back of your ship and I'm just kinda mind-boggled about this.
- There is no practice mode of any kind, which I'm really not a fan of.
So yeah I'm a bit on the fence whether I like this more than Mecha Ritz or not.

Buy the game on Steam here:


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