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  1. One part remake and one part sequel, Pocky & Rocky Remastered is a return/revival of the SNES original, retaining a lot of the old school gameplay while polishing up the visuals with some fresh sprite artwork. Bridging the old and the new leaves something to be desired though, especially for anyone not already a fan of the franchise. You play as Pocky, a shrine maiden who is just minding her own business when her pal Rocky, a tanuki, rushes in to tell her that monsters are attacking. You might assume that what follows is a straightforward quest for Pocky and Rocky to beat up some monsters and restore the peace, but Reshrined's story is oddly complicated with some jumps to wildly different scenarios. There are most likely references to the original games that I simply missed, but taken on its own I was a little confused by the plot here. The weirdest part is that there are some long, overly written cutscenes too, which again you'd not expect in an old-fashioned game and somehow still leave the narrative feeling under-explained. Reshrined is more or less a top-down shooter. It's not on rails and you can aim in eight directions, but the general idea is the same: you're running through levels blasting away at tons of enemies, ultimately taking on a big boss at the end of the stage. The basics do feel rather old-fashioned, i.e. the eight directions of aiming instead of a fluid twin-stick experience, and you can only shoot in the direction you're facing which often means you have to walk toward what you're shooting at. Without the nostalgia for the old-school experience it comes off as rather stiff and dated, especially when you frustratingly run into tougher enemies that move around a lot or just take a lot of hits. You've only got a couple of extra lives and new players will likely die a lot as you get acclimated to each level. Still, the old-school experience is the whole point here, plus the game is actually extremely forgiving when you game over. You'll restart at whatever checkpoint within the level that you've hit so you don't have to replay the entire stage, and you get endless continues. Sometimes it felt like all I was doing was clawing my way to the next checkpoint, but progress is progress and I did learn more about the mechanics with each new attempt. The key gameplay mechanic in Reshrined is the way power-ups work. You've got red, blue, and green orbs that improve your attack power in different ways. Picking up multiple orbs further increases your firepower, but only if it's the same color orb, i.e. you pick up two red orbs for a red level 2 attack, or you pick up a red and a green to ultimately just have a green level 1 attack. Sometimes it feels like a hassle trying to avoid the wrong color orb, but the neat thing is that since each type of attack has unique properties you'll want to strategize your approach around them. Is a homing attack useful on this stage, or do you want raw power? It does add a tiny bit of replay value at least. And replay value is sorely needed, since Reshrined is only about two or three hours long (even when you die/retry a lot). Aside from the standard normal and hard difficulties there are some baffling unlockables available. For one thing, you have to unlock easy mode by collecting a lot of coins in the game. I truly do not understand why easy mode is locked until you've either finished the game already or have driven yourself crazy by replaying the first few levels over and over, but the other odd choice is locking co-op behind Free Play mode. Again, you'll need to finish the game once to unlock Free Play, which just lets you replay the whole game with a friend and allows you to pick a character to play as. You don't even pick a specific level, you have to play the whole thing from the beginning with no way to make a hard save. To be fair, using a different character is a neat challenge, since each one has slightly different attack styles, but as a bonus mode Free Play is laughably lacking. The game's presentation also skirts the line between old and new, to much better results than the gameplay. You can definitely see the influence of the SNES original, but the redone sprite work is excellent and adds a lot of stylish flourishes that make for a best of both worlds situation. The soundtrack is pretty sharp as well, with fun, catchy tunes even if you don't have any nostalgia for the original game. Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is a fun window to the past. The old-school difficulty is a little tiresome by modern standards, but thankfully the infinite continues prevents the game from ever getting overwhelmingly tedious. What is odd though is the lack of bonus features and the baffling unlockables which are downright backwards. Ultimately it feels like Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is meant to give old fans a healthy dose of nostalgia, not to win over new players. Rating: 7 out of 10 Tanukis
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