eXceed the Addiction

Yesterday night I was looking at a video showing the Top 20 Best Doujin games, hoping to see Touhou make it's way in there. Unsurprisingly, it sure did find a place within the 20 games and while this blog was primarly meant for this franchise, I stumbled upon another great Doujin in the video, one I had yet to discover so far which got me addicted.

To begin with and in short, a Doujin game is a piece of Japanese work created by one person, one amateur. Many games are out there and out of these stands one of my favorite franchise ever: Touhou, created by ZUN. Doujins aren't necessarely always based off of the same genre of games, but since it's part of ym favorite types of games, that's the only ones I do play. Danmakus (bullet hell shooters) are what I'd consider the most popular types of games in the Doujin area, or perhaps it might only be my vision of things.

Now, with that being said, let's concentrate on this new game I've been playing: eXceed.

Unfortunately, I cannot unfold any plot wise details as the game is entirely made in Japanese, put aside the English user interface. I have tried finding an English patch with no luck, so I'm completely in the darkness concerning what's happening while playing. eXceed is a Bullet Hell type of game which, to me, mixes Touhou and Ikaruga together for one great experience. It has the bullet patterns, controls and cute Gensyoko girls of Touhou (Gensyoko is actually where the TH girls live and is in no way related to eXceed) while having the Special attack meter of Ikaruga, as well as the color absorbing feature made popular by the latter.

The series consist of 5 games: eXceed, eXceed 2nd: Vampire, eXceed 2nd: Vampire REX, eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate and eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate ~ Black Package. What is the exact difference between both versions of 2nd and 3rd? I'm not quite sure actually, but I would say they are only re-releases or something of the sort. I currently play Vampire REX and Jade Penetrate ~ Black Package. The first title, while I have tried it, I do not play because the controls act strangely. I can shoot and move without any issues, though the other buttons pauses the game as well, such as when I bomb the area. This strange occurence happens whether I reset the default settings or map my own controls, therefore I do not play it.

Vampire REX is the one in the series that borrows the most familiarities with Ikaruga, as it is the title that has the "color absorbing" feature. This means that you can change the color of the character according to how you play. For example, the game has two main bullet colors: Blue and Red (it looks more purple than red in eXceed). When your character is blue, you can absorb the blue bullets and the same applies to red bullets when the character is red. This can be changed at will upon pressing a single button. It also defines the weaknesses of enemies as the ones shooting red bullets will be weak to blue colors and vice versa. It almost makes the game feel as a puzzle as you try to define the best method and best color pattern to be used for each section of the game. Below is a video showing my own self playing Vampire REX, Stage 1 on Normal difficulty. Note that during the boss fight, I gain a difficulty rank which changes the difficulty to Hard. I'm not sure yet how this is calculated, but I'd guess the higher your chains are and the less often you die would be a good way of determining whether or not the player has the skills required to jump up a level.


Vampire REX - Skyscraper. It is also available in HD. I truly love the boss fight for this level as the girls remind me a lot of the scarlet sisters in Touhou: Remilia and Flandre.

Jade Penetrate plays a bit differently and more like Touhou. The special attack meter is still there, though you cannot absorb any of the bullets. In order to build up the meter, you either need to collect the power-ups dropped by defeating enemies (they are automatically attracted to the character) or you can graze the bullets. Grazing the bullets is when you stay close to them, which not only helps in building up points, but in this game it builds up the meter as well. You can hear when I graze bullets and see a purpleish flash on the back of my character when it happens. No more absorbing, crazy bullet patterns, grazing bullets and a focus mode allowing you to move slower and see your hitpoint are the differences in this game. Once again, here is a video of me playing the first stage. Don't mind the ridiculous death that occured as I flew to the right directly into a bullet, that was a mistake on my part. Nobody's perfect, right? Both videos were in my first times of playing the games. In eXceed 3rd, I notice that FPS drops terribly low at times and during the majority of the level, sorry for this but FRAPS requires a lot of memory and what not, thus lowering my FPS. The game runs normally at 60FPS.


Jade Penetrate ~ Black Package - Little Witch. It is also available in HD.

Well, these are the two games that have created a new addiction in my life. I'll definitely be looking forward to a new game if they ever release one, and I'll be quick to jump on it.