Psyvariar Delta

weird shmup that plays like nothing i've really experienced in my life? i am not going to lie, i bought it, played it and almost hit the refund after one run. unique mechanics, a weird ui, a lot of frustrating death and i was ready to just give up and get my money back. it uses a bullet grazing system (nothing really new) but layered with a leveling system (okay...) that asks you to use the best of both. that means, grazing, killing, and using level ups (sometimes chaining them) to get invincibility, extend it, score, and get through the harder patterns. and you cannot ignore the whole system, because it feeds both into scoring and pathing your run. after a couple more runs, i kind of got into it and see the vision. there's something special here, i think. a weird game, one i've not spent a ton of time on (yet) but assuredly would like to play more down the line. banger soundtrack, too.

Those days i was younger. I sat down and turned on my ps2 and played Psyvariar. I still have the game to this day. Even though it is not alot of gameplay. But boy its challenging and fun and Re-experience the childhood. The music. The robots. The airplane. The warnings. The deaths. It will never disappear from my memories

(NOTE, in review i primarily focus on technical side. Game itself is amazing, and while at first it may seem a bit too short, it reveals it's true colors with great soundtrack the moment you dare staying with it for just a bit more.) UPDATE: Usage of Special K can reduce input lag in this game! Good things about the port: 4:3 support is... Somewhat here? While game's UI can't fit on my 1024x768 monitor, it's possible to fit play area ALLmost fully on 4:3 monitor. Despite release being from CITY CONNECTION, latency is pretty minimal. The Delta extras. remixed soundtrack is not really my thing, however delta mode amplifies all action from revision mode even further, alongside giving you ship with shield that can fire in 8 ways, all while being capabled of grazing bullets multiple times. As again, extras. You can switch between ships/modes/BGM freely, allowing you to play medium unit's stages with ship and soundtrack from revision. You also get gadgets similar to M2 ports! if CITY CONNECTION actually made them, then props to them. Now, time for bad things: Controller issues. My 8bitdo m30 2.4G managed to work with this game, but vertical movement was inverted, which not even the steam input's controller config fixed, probably because i *** with launcher that i can't now reset to defaults. Solution? use steam input to map controller's inputs to keyboard. Framerate issues. Unless you got a really slow computer (which actually may come in handy there), your game will randomly jump in framerate, and since framerate affect timescale, this means that your game is running at increased speed. Solution is limiting framerate either via software, or in my case, GPU driver software. Launcher. It's options are way too minimal for it's existence to make sense and easily could've been crammed into game with minimal effort. Visible hitbox options. Why i can't still see my hitbox on some ships when turning on "player hitbox display"? grazebox also makes it way too hard to see your hitbox, wish i had option to disable it. Couldn't you make it like in Mushihimesama/Touhou/Castle Shikigami, where there's an entire small dot texture representing your hitbox position instead of this weird transparent circle that blends in with grazebox? Lack of proper replay feature. WE AREN'T LIVING IN EARLY 2000S, AND YOU'RE NOT SOME INDIE DEVELOPER THAT WOULD RUN INTO DIFFICULTIES IMPLEMENTING REPLAYS! All flaws aside, i recommend purchasing Psyvariar Delta, for simple fact that this game didn't really left PS2, so at least you may get lower latency than on emulator. Overall package is pretty bland though, and you may need to manually fix some issues though.