With a brightly colored setting, fairly well detailed enemies and gargantuan attack patterns, DonPachi is a fun fast pac
You assume the role of a nameless, genderless pilot (I'm sure Atlus meant it to be this way, this way it's all up to you) who is one of many squadron fighters for the world's strongest military organization; the ranks and fighters practically inundate their facilities. A new program was recently put into action by the organization's number-one official - known only as The Commander - called the DonPachi Project: of the large military, two sides were to wage war with each other and their only goal was to defeat the weaker side. As the pilot, it is your mission to accomplish this goal for the side you represent and ultimately discover the truth behind Project DonPachi.
Players choose one of three different fighter craft types organized by weapon strength and ship-speed. Type A is a florescent orange/yellow, futuristic fighter jet known for its great speed, but has the weakest weapons, Type B is a green/purple technologically advanced helicopter with moderate speed and weapons while Type C is a blue/black futuristic stealth bomber with the slowest speed, but the strongest weapon. The weaponry for each craft are actually stunning to say the least as the weapons vary by craft.
Each craft has different firing patterns and styled weapons. For instance, despite having main machine guns, each craft is fitted with hovering side guns that accompany the craft and are pointed in different directions: Type A's guns rotate at the jet's nose, Type B has two mini-chopper guns at its side that shoot in the direction the craft veers toward and Type C has two rotating side guns set at the tip of its wings that fire diagonal shots (forming a wide V pattern). Each fighter craft also has a beam weapon: when joining the side guns together, a large beam can be wielded so as to take out bigger enemies. This beam power has no limitation, but it is so powerful its recoil slows the craft's speed down. Each fighter is also fitted with a bomb supply that can be restocked and most of the bombs are devastating to say the least. However, players can combine the strength of both beam weapons and bombs to unleash a massive beam weapon that practically takes up 25% of the screen.
Although this all may sound cheap, the enemy forces are evened out: the enemy waves and bullets are immense. In some levels, enemy squadrons kamikaze from multiple directions and vary in attack pattern as some enemies will stop mid flight, spin and fire in random circles while other enemies will follow your craft while firing and will continue following you even after successfully destroying your ship. Even the mini-bosses offer a unique challenge both in their great strength, weapons and varied attack patterns. Survival is not guaranteed in DonPachi as even on Easy mode the enormous amount of enemies will offer a continuous challenge; it all depends on your fighter craft's skills. Though the challenge is thwarted a little by the game's use of unlimited Continues, though doing so enables a rather fun multi-player experience as most home conversion shoot em' ups force two players to share Credits, making the experience short lived while playing with a friend like in classic vertical scrolling shooters such as Galactic Attack and Shienryu.
The game also has a score attack mode in which you aim to get the best score on every level, more than often without resorting to the use of bombs or dying, all of which is a true challenge with DonPachi's difficulty. The game also features the famous looped game play with extra hard difficulty after the game's end, only this time around it's tied to the story: in order to fully beat the game, you MUST beat the game on its extra difficulty level which quickly precedes the first part of the game. This is actually rather good as there are five levels to begin with and the extra difficulty simply adds to the game's intensity, yet the feature isn't executed in a unique light as the only difference is the increased difficulty; You literally go through that previous five levels again, fight the same colored enemies, fly over the same backgrounds, all of which sort of waters-down the experience until the final boss fight.
The graphics are a little dated as they are a few steps above Super Nintendo graphics. Though most of the 2D sprites, ships and fighter craft are well detailed and brightly colored, the detail is dwarfed by the almost cartoon-like colorization of the enemy ships and bright pink shots (even though they're supposed to be red). Thankfully the backgrounds are very well detailed and they often demonstrate just how high your jet/chopper's altitude is. There are particular effects that are nice such as the slow motion boss explosions, bits of flying shrapnel and of course the player's massive beam weapons, yet the light flashing fire effects on damaged enemies and areas as well as the massive lack of damage detail on the bosses once destroyed are almost too weak to look past. Every time a boss is destroyed by the player, the boss' weak point is completely eviscerated, but rather than showing the chewy mechanical center of the damaged vehicle, there is instead a giant colored hole; what, were all of the boss vehicles completely hollow?? There also seems to be a slight problem in collision detection in that some of the many small scattered shots fired at you won't hit you as you attempt dodging them, but such isn't a real compliant as it is a mere graphical observation.
The sound effects in DonPachi are a mixed bag: some of the sound effects fit like a glove, but most of them are weakly made and don't offer much in variety. The player's machine guns, bombs and beam weapons all sound perfect as they suck you into the game's intensity, but the sound of a destroyed fleet of enemy fighters and mini-bosses just sound... flatulent. Seriously, a mini-boss vehicle exploding sounds like a series of farts and standard one-shot/'popcorn' enemies exploding sound like popcorn kernels being liquidated then squished.
The same can actually be said about the music as the first part of the soundtrack captures the intense feel of the game and is composed just right to make the action feel driven, yet the rest of the soundtrack starts to falter in composition, even though they all carry the right feeling. For example, the first few songs in the beginning of the game are perfect: from the 'select your battle fighter' theme all the way up to the fast paced sound of the second level, the soundtrack adds to the intensity of game play with intricate songs. From level three practically to the game's end however, the composition of the song just loses its power and starts to slow down. They carry the right idea to all of the levels, they just don't sound good, mostly due to the faux trumpet sounds which are over-used to the point where they sound like the voice of a common cartoon animal character and the sort of whimsical adventure tone it brings which sounded appropriate for a long walking sequence in a Super Nintendo RPG.
Surprisingly enough, the game does have some brief voice acting that actually sort of adds to the game's feel; the whole time the player goes through the action, they are accompanied by the voice of the main character's 'Wing Leader,' a sort of goofy sounding captain who informs the players of their destination and new boss attacks. The voice acting is actually pretty good as his lines are spoken lucidly (and loudly) and he isn't too annoying as he only has lines at the beginning and end of every level, nor are any of his lines pretentious one-liners or jokes. If anything the quality of the recording sounds a little grainy as the height of every one of his exclamations are a bit grating, but he's still a lot more comforting and better to listen to than some shoot em' up voice overs (the weapon/item voices of Blazing Lazers and the Thunder Force series comes to mind). When the Wing Leader congratulates you it's like you're getting a big pat on the back by a cheerful father figure; it's the vocal company you kinda look forward to.
Overall, DonPachi is a fun little shoot em' up experience. If anything, the soundtrack and second loop could've used some re-working, but the fact that the game itself is a near-perfect conversion of the arcade original is fantastic. Besides, even with its technical problems it manages to maintain what's important for a game of its genre and that's fun. The pin-point perfect game play and challenges will keep you on your toes, so if you can stand the heat nab yourself a copy of DonPachi wherever possible.
And in closing, I wish to qoute the following: "Don't you just LOVE the sweet taste of victory!"