Silhouette Mirage

[(-_-)]

How exactly has it been ruined? And what are the differences between the japanese and english versions other than the obvious?

[weasels]

i own it and i have to say that i enjoy it alot. its hard as hell though and working designs did mess with it. but its still fun.

[butanebob]

The only thing about this similar to Ikaruga (as previously mentioned) is the fact you can change your colour and enemies are colour coded so you have to be the right colour to inflict damage on them etc. Apart from that it's nothing like Ikaruga or any other shmups - it's a platform action shooter type game.

Working Designs tend to ad their own dialogue and change a lot of stuff when localizing games. With Silhouette Mirage they censored stuff out and even made it harder the crazy fuckers, it's got a decent challenge already. So i'd stick to the saturn version. It's completely playable even if you don't know japanese anyway, plus it plays faster and has better graphics (extra background layers and nicer effects etc).

[Anapan]

I really wanted to give it a good run through after reading some glowing reviews, but after about an hour playing it on the Saturn I still didn't like it. It's on my list of games to retry harder to see if it can be enjoyable after the first mediocre experience, but after trying both versions for a about 1/2 hour again the second time I still couldn't get hooked enough to keep going. I like it's system, graphics and and the castleroid/metroidvania feel it has, but it got too grindy and repetitive. Maybe I didn't understand the system enough (no instruction manual) but I'd much rather give Castlevania SOTN another play through since I know every enemy has 2 drops rather than a point-system.

[dlmvii]

As to the saturn vs playstation, I'd also like to point ou the huge price difference...playstation 1 looks like about $10...saturn import goes for $60. There may be a reason for this as pointed out above, but it's much easier for me to spend $10 on a game than $60. I'd also like to understand what's going on in it :\

[crux]

Working Designs made enemies do more damage, caused firing the weapons to deplete spirit energy (introducing the ability to draw spirit energy from enemies), and raised the cost of the weapons. The changes work together to completely unbalance the game and turn it into a frustrating experience, with the added monotony of grinding. The depleting weapons ramp up the difficulty (causing much needed weapons to be useless), causing an added importance in upgrading the weapons. This means in order to succeed, the player must rob and drain every enemy in the game in order to buy new weapons and keep them powerful. It's tedious at best and completely ruins the pacing of the game.

The game isn't a masterpiece regardless. It wouldn't rank among any list of my favorite Treasure games. But it is enjoyable in its original form, so it's a shame Working Designs felt the need to tamper with other people's work.