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Liberation Maiden, originally part of a compilation known as Guild 101 in Japan for the 3Ds, was recently released as a standalone digital title in the west earlier this week a few weeks ago. It’s a  Grasshopper Manufacturer Suda 51 game involving the teenage second president of “New Japan” where she pilots a giant robot and purifies her country from an evil empire known only as the “Dominion.” As standard of every Suda 51 game, the premise is intriguing , but the game itself falls short.


Liberation Maiden was advertised as being a shmup and maybe I’ve been spoiled lately thanks to Cave’s Mushihimesama HD amd G. Rev’s Border Down and Under Defeat, but this game just doesn’t compare. Hell, it doesn’t even compare to Grasshopper’s other  shmup, Sine Mora. Liberation Maiden’s major fault is that Suda 51 has obviously never played a shmup before.

Why does this 30 minute long game constantly have to to pause in the middle of the action to impart me  with information I already know? The stages are scrolling, instead you have a huge open area to fly around and your mission is to destroy these corruptive spires laced around the map. One you destroy all of them in a given map, the boss area opens up. Its pretty straight forward but the game has to pause every time you uncover and destroy one, and notify you that this too is a spire that needs to be destroyed. Shmups are entirely designed not to have this time wasting bullshit–if there was one genre I would say was all about gameplay first and foremost, it would be shmups. They’re short and sweet chunks of gameplay bliss. The fact that Suda 51 entirely missed what makes a shmup so good is just so frustrating. Its not like this was his first attempt at shmups either; No More Heroes and Shadows of the Damned had shmup segments so I’m not entirely sure how he could screw this up so bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there was any positive thing I could say about this game it would be that it has a completely rockin’ soundtrack. The first stage just pumps you up so well and really does a good job of hyping you up, especially during the boss fight. The Final Boss was also pretty awesome–not to fight, it just looked really cool.

In the end, this is just another Suda 51 game that focuses more on a wacky premise than actually being a good game. I’m tired of falling for this.