Fray CD: Xak Gaiden for PCE CD
Review #11037
Fray CD: Xak Gaiden
I'm a Fray'd
Gameplay
The core gameplay is simple but enjoyable. You can fire a gun and jump. Start toggles between three weapon slots that can be filled in between-stage shops. Most enemies require numerous hits - too many - and aggressively attack you. Its borderline bullet hell if you allow more than a couple of enemies on screen. Its basically Pocky and Rocky-lite.
Level Design
Terrible level design. They are only vertical scrolling - one screen wide. Enemies spawn at certain spots and love to come behind for cheap shots. So the best approach is to move very slowly and kill enemies off screen. This creates a terrible pacing for what should be a fun run-n-gun experience. The between-stage towns all have a similar feel, with an Inn to the right, a Weapon shop to the top-left, and a few NPCs you.must talk to to open the gate to the next stage.
Boring design overall.
Theme
Very silly modern fantasy setting. It's a bit all over the place thematically, but I appreciate the weirdness. The language barrier is a problem given how much dialogue there is, but it's still enjoyable and the cartoony characters are expressive enough that you can get the gist of what's happening.
Art Style
Lovely pixel artwork and a free good effects like the rushing water. Great animations throughout.
Audio
The music is...a choice. The songs are deliberately weird, like using slide whistle noises and other off eat, silly sounds. It's like an entire soundtrack like the song from Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy stage from Yoshi's Island. It's trippy.
Tons of audio and voice acting, but it's all on Japanese, and weirdly unbalanced. In so.e areas the voices are barely audible and in others they're yelling.
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