Average chops for a side-scrolling shoot 'em up.

User Rating: 6 | Kiaidan 00 TCD
Kiaidan 00 has a bit of charm if your into giant-mech-filled-anime-teenagers-conquering-evil or whatever. Its a fairly average, if at least very functional shooter, it has a pleasant soundtrack that doesn't border on annoying and lots of Japanese dialogue for the characters that you won't understand or care about. Action-wise, you start as a giant mechanized guy floating over and through what is likely some sort of city scrolling away behind you. The first thing you'll realize is that you have five different weapons to switch between. This immediately makes combat not only frustrating, but the control scheme just doesn't work. Having one button to switch to five different weapon types sequentially is a terrible choice if the player is not ready or aware of what section of the level he/ she will need to use what. The levels rely heavily on memorization of enemy layout, as this is "one of those" kinda shoot 'em ups. Horizontal shooters get a lot of flak for being a little too rambunctious in terms of enemy placement and hit-boxes. Kiaidan is "good," but their are much better games on the PC engine CD. However, the sound on a lot of these older games holds up really well, so the sound effects don't get annoying either.