I've finished the Story Mode, gave as good as I could for the Survival Mode, and played 7 of the challenges (mostly to get that "Rana-ldo" trophy--and, man, that one where you had to get 80 bugs through the goal for the gold medal, I got my 80th literally JUST as time ran out on that try; the gold requirement on that one was much harder than for the other two Striker challenges). I'll be hanging my hat up with 2 trophies still remaining, the one for 20 bugs in one super move (can't seem to get this at all) and the one for gold medals on all challenges.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience and the silliness in the ship's log and cutscenes, but I have a number of nitpicks about the gameplay, so I gave it a 4. What didn't I like about the game?
- Obstacles on the map had a tendency to blend into the ground. Too many times, I'd find myself getting attacked, seemingly unable to escape, and it would turn out to be because there was an object blocking the direction in which I was trying to go. I had to memorize the locations of obstacles because I couldn't actually see them distinctly. Also, obstacles constantly obscured the view of bugs which were about to attack me.
- I question the responsiveness of the controls, because every now and then, Rana would fail to turn before attacking, even though I was very sure I hadn't screwed up the order of button-pressing. I suppose I could just be poorly coordinated, but I don't think so. Also, even though double-tapping a direction makes Rana charge, and you can add X to the end of that to have her do a power attack, she won't do it unless you wait for a half second or so before pressing X. E.g., if you do "right, right, X" in quick succession, she'll just do a standard attack; it only works if you do "right, right, wait, X."
- Rana can hit all enemies before they are in range to physically attack her except one: the spinning guy, when coming in diagonally from below, cannot be hit before he hits Rana, if she's facing horizontally. Other enemies in that same range/position can be hit, so what's with his collision detection?
- Dodging is a very necessary maneuver, but did it really have to come with bouncing off obstacles, so that you end up right back in danger where you started? More terrible: dodge-bouncing by accident (like when you can't tell obstacles from ground) when you're at the edge of the island. . . .
- Rana's attack range curiously leaves a dead zone in her "personal space"; she can't hit bugs that are very close to her. To hit these, she has to walk a step away, turn around, and then strike--but, of course, she gets attacked before that can happen. The only way to attack someone very close safely is to dodge far away and then come back. Kind of weird for someone holding a melee weapon. Still, this seems to be common in beat 'em-ups.
- This was the most annoying: when recovering from a near-fatal fall off the edge, Rana will always do a 2-strike attack upon getting back on her feet. There is no way to prevent or abort this. During at least the second strike, she is vulnerable to attack. The worst part of this is if you're in a level with the teleporting enemies. I think it's more than 50% of the time that a cliff-edge recovery in those levels will result in a teleport starting right when she gets up, resulting in a guaranteed hit on Rana when she does the second strike. For certain, I know it happened to me 3 times in a row within a space of about 10 seconds once (the third time threw her off the edge).
Still, the above aside, my reaction to the gameplay wasn't as negative as it was for Who's That Flying?!, where it was almost entirely not fun for me. Getting a good multi-smash from an overturned large bug in this game was quite fun. :D I also enjoyed the game's boss fights, few though they were.
Oh, when I had only 3 more Story Mode levels to go, I discovered that I'd been playing the game "wrong" the whole time. I'd previously thought that the 3-strike combo attack didn't do anything special other than leave you open to attack as enemies got behind you, so I never used it. I just used single strikes repeatedly. Then I reread Ofaliss' post where he mentioned the final strike in the combo having more power and discovered that it really did work, though I still didn't use it that much. I also couldn't figure out for a while why she wasn't executing the combo (it was because you have to keep the direction key pressed, or else she just does single strikes).
