Dark Star is a 2D Action Platformer that sets us loose on an alien-infested planet. The reason we’re there and our motivation is unknown, as there is no story of any kind. What we can gather after a few quiet moments is that everything that moves is hostile, be it plant life or local creatures. Our blonde protagonist comes equipped with dual energy pistols which contain infinite ammo. She is less of a prey to this hostile world and more akin to a hunter. You’ll be blasting your way past countless creatures as you traverse the treacherous terrain.
It is a no-nonsense title. You will be in the thick of it within seconds and it won’t let up the pressure until the end. After defeating a foe, there is a random chance they’ll drop an item. It can be either health or a weapon modification. The latter is a very interesting aspect of the game. Your dual pistols are the only weapon throughout, yet you can modify how it shoots projectiles. From a scattershot, a laser, and a serpentine stream of bullets, your combat options are quite varied. Each are highly situational, so it rewards the player for properly making use of them instead of sticking to your favorite.
There are four different weapon mods in total. All of them can be upgraded up to three times to vastly increase their destructive potential. Those upgrades will be permanent. Whether you die or restart the game, you’ll always have your current gear. I found that odd as you’ll max out everything in no time, and before you’d likely learn how to use everything properly. Even after that, the game keeps spawning in weapon upgrades, despite not being able to upgrade them over three times. I could not find a way to lower weapon levels, so this entire system just felt kind of bizarre. It does not negatively impact the experience besides making some collectibles pointless to risk jumping over a death pit for.
Dark Star is a surprisingly punishing game. There are no checkpoints throughout a stage. One slip up and it’s back to the beginning. Your primary danger is falling down into a pit, as that is an instant death. It is far wiser to simply take a hit from an enemy projectile. Our character has a pretty high amount of health, and enemies dropping healing items is a common occasion. A side effect of taking damage is that our heroine’s clothes will rip right off. She’ll then be fighting her way past aliens in nothing but black lingerie. This is just a visual change and doesn’t affect gameplay. It could conceivably distract the player, though. If you’re into tall, busty blondes, a single hit could be crippling to your ability to focus on the action.
As you can see from this review’s pictures, Dark Star has an amazingly high-quality artstyle. It is really reminiscent of Vanillaware’s visual presentation, who are most well known for Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown. Of particular note are the enemy designs. They are quite detailed and well thought out. Each of them looks very different, yet contain enough similarities that they look as if they’re from the same species or planet. It isn’t just random alien features thrown in to make distinct enemies. With the background itself, there is less to look at, but it does set the dreary tone well. You’ll notice the ever-increasing lack of scenery and light as you progress, until eventually reaching the heart of darkness itself with the final foe.
When it comes to the hentai, there are 17 unique animations overall. These occur when an enemy enters melee range. If you let them get that close, you’ll quickly get grappled and taken advantage of until you break free. It will cost you a hefty amount of health, which will continue draining the longer you allow the forced sex to occur. This means that you can’t sit around and watch. The only time you’ll likely see a monster climax is if you lose all health and are now defenseless to resist. You will need to mash the action button repeatedly to break free if your character still has fight left in her. Remember, there are no checkpoints, so a game-over will set you back to the very start of that stage.
Returning to the topic of gameplay, Dark Star’s hentai aspect can cause this experience to get tiring. This is mainly due to enemies being consistently spawned in for the sole purpose of attempting to undermine your plans. At times, it legitimately feels like you can’t take more than a couple of steps before enemies completely surround you out of thin air. The kicker here is that we cannot damage them until they fully spawn in. You can see them just sitting there and becoming less transparent, yet there is nothing you can do in the meantime. It’s not like you can see them from a distance, either. Their ghostly forms suddenly appear in an incredibly short range near you. All you can really do is flee backwards in the few seconds before they bum rush you and are forced to mash the action key to escape the H animation.
That loop of taking a few steps forward and being forced to give up more ground than you just gained kills any sense of flow. As tempting as it can be to just tank the damage, having to repeatedly mash the action key like crazy gets unpleasant quickly. By the third stage, they start spawning in Serious Sam amount of foes your way. Your weaponry can’t output damage fast enough to handle that. Neither does it ease up on the number of death pits to support quick repositioning of your character. The environments give a sense of atmosphere and function for platforming, but are not suitable for the combat situations they put you in. Be prepared to give your action button/key a serious workout, as it is often better to let yourself get grappled than make a risky jump.
Not every foe will be spawned out of thin air. Some are actually placed throughout the level. That comes with its own set of problems. The first is that the AI doesn’t detect you until you get significantly close, allowing the players to effortlessly snipe them off with the longer-reaching weapon projectiles. Another issue is the bad placement itself. The huge melee-based enemies were never any kind of a threat until the fourth level, where you can only stand on a narrow hovercraft throughout the duration of that stage. Once again, the environments are solely designed for platforming and not combat. They were not built around the foes placed there or to create unique combat encounters. I imagine that’s why they threw in the enemies that spawn around you without allowing a way to counter it, in which case, the cure was worse than the illness.
There are five stages overall. While combat encounters are poorly designed, I wouldn’t call Dark Star particularly difficult until its last level. That was a pretty big jump in difficulty which demands your full attention. It was a tough fought battle that took me several tries to get through. The hentai aspect once again diminished the gameplay, though. If you thought you were mashing the action key a lot before, this final stage gave me flashbacks of playing Mario Party and coming out of it with blistered hands. While a bit of an exaggeration, the fact that your final foe can grapple you near instantly wherever you are undoubtedly decreased the enjoyment to be had. It’s one thing to take damage and another entirely to constantly be forced into escaping these lengthy grapple sequences.
After you finish the campaign, you are free to replay any of the stages again. The Gallery mode was unlocked from the get-go, which lets you view any unlocked hentai animations. Most of the H is fairly vanilla and predominantly involves vaginal sex. I do believe that the visuals and good sex animations manage to carry this game. While the gameplay is mostly unenjoyable, it incorporates snippets of good ideas and is in no way unplayable. I absolutely relished how situational each weapon was, leading to none of them ever feeling useless. You can blast some enemies under you with the curve shoot, use your powerful laser for close range, and bring in the scattershot when facing many weak foes. The potential was more than there, but it just didn’t pan out.
When it comes to glitches, I experienced none. It supports modern resolutions like 4k, has controller support, and includes cheat codes if you just want to unlock everything right away. This is a quality product in all minus the gameplay. You may notice that on its store page it only has the Japanese language tag, though it is fully in English. You will not suffer from any language barrier issues. For the first product of a single dev, this was quite the undertaking. During 2016, they dropped the price to 1100 Yen or $10.20 in the west. I would say this is a journey worth taking at that price if you want a half-hour-long feast for the eyes and are more interested in the spectacle than the gameplay. Beautiful, ambitious, and flawed is how I would ultimately sum up Dark Star.
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