However, instead of Fantasy being a linear series of stages, the first stage is instead a fixed stage, before the next batch of levels open up to be tackled in any order you wish, the only limits are your skill level! This adds some fun variety and routing to the mix, leading to some scorechasing potential right off the bat, and helping to make repeat playthroughs not so repetitive.Īfter every few stages, you get taken to a bonus stage that’s a behind the camera perspective, akin to Panorama and Rainbow Cotton, with the second of these being the prelude to the final stages. Still, you have a variety of shots you can obtain by picking up the colored crystals, and as per series tradition, yellow ones level up your shot over time, so you should be able to get the hang of this even if you haven’t played a previous Cotton title. Unlike the other Cotton titles however, Silk isn’t used for Magic, but is rather a screen clearing bomb, thus leaving Cotton’s magic to be charged attacks you have to conserve very wisely. Just like always, Cotton Fantasy tasks you with controlling Cotton, who uses her magic skills to progress through a variety of stages and shoot down every foe in her path. This is an absolute must-own soundtrack to purchase, if it ever becomes available as a CD or Digital Album. Even better, since this game has a variety of guest characters with tribute stages to unlock, said tributes include remixes from those respective games, so hearing some glorious songs from Psyvariar made even better, in this awesome soundtrack? Pure bliss, with not a single guest track to complain about. The Penultimate Boss theme might just very well be the best song in the entire Cotton franchise, it’s that amazing. Somehow, Fantasy managed to do so with ease, with a soundtrack consisting of mostly original songs! Shmup composer veterans took to working on this game’s soundtrack, and they nailed a high-energy, beautifully crafted set of songs to accompany each stage and boss. Until now, I considered the PCE version of the original Cotton to be the best the franchise has ever sounded, with those remixes being really damn hard to top. However, the biggest aspect of the presentation that absolutely shook me to my core was the game’s soundtrack. Some stages do slow the game down in handheld mode, especially the final stage, but in docked mode this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. You can even toggle your hitbox to see the exact spot where your character is vulnerable, making for some great strategy! All in all, the game looks great, and while some may lament the lack of sprites, I still find this style to be much better than some of the other styles Cotton has tried out, such as the ugly Rainbow Cotton.
The backgrounds look lovely and so do the stages, and whenever score items overflow the screen, they have a distinct outline that doesn’t make them too distracting, allowing for maintained focus on enemy projectiles. You have 3D models over a 2D perspective, making this a 2.5D horizontal shooter, and they animate surprisingly well, capturing a lot of the charm of the older games. Yet here with Fantasy, I feel they really nailed it and did a much better job at modernizing the look of a Cotton game. Still, the OG game was included as well, and in general Reboot served a good purpose. You can even disable the story sequences entirely to make things more seamless, if you wish.Ĭotton Fantasy follows up from last year’s Cotton Reboot, which was a sprite-based remake of the original Cotton game (the X6800 port) and brought everything to a gorgeous new coat of paint, with my main gripe with that style being that the flashy effects and multiplier pop-ups could get too obnoxious, so much to the point score chasing could became an eye-sore. In this brand new, original Cotton adventure, you take control of the witch Cotton once more, as she’s summoned on yet another adventure with the promise of Willows! This time around, there’s plenty of playable characters, though only Cotton is the focus of the story, with the other characters just being here for the sake of their gameplay, and thus not appearing in the cutscenes at all.
Thanks to ININ Games for the review code Title: Cotton Fantasy