Sylphia (PC Engine)

 With this being a vertical shooter by Compile, you might be tempted to think that it's just a fantasy-skinned Aleste game (Though to be honest, that wouldn't really be a negative). But while there's some slight similarities to the Aleste series (there's a few different weapons to try out, and you gradually power up your shots by collecting multiple little P items), it's got enough stuff of its own to be considered its own unique entity.

 

It starts with a really nice pixel anmation intro, showing a female soldier in anceient greek times protecting some civilians from an invading demon army until she's mortally wounded. With her last breath, she crawls into a temple, where she's rewarded for her bravery by a glowing orb that turns her into a battle fairy, and sends her off to destroy the demon hoards. Of course, that fairy is you. After the great-looking intro, the rest of the game doesn't diappoint visually, either: the game itself is full of cool backgrounds, lots of varied monsters that are both well-animated and well-drawn, and the out-of-game presentation is really interesting. Between stages, there's these unique sepia-toned pieces of pixel art that show what the next stage's theme will be, and even the game over screen is cool! It has Sylphia floating above an open, ark of the covenant-style casket, and when you choose not to continue, she descends into it and the lid closes!

 

The game itself, luckily, is also pretty good. There are four different elemental weapons you can pick from (by collecting items, you can't just switch at any time), with wind being the best, fire second, and earth and water being totally useless. As well as the items for changing element, and the aforementioned P items for powering up your shot, another item that appears a lot is something that looks like a little winged CD. Collecting this fills up a meter, and when the meter's full, you get an extra bomb attack. As well as this, the game's pretty generous with the extra lives, giving you one for every seventy thousand points, and if you play well, you'll be getting more than one per stage on average. 

 

It only took me a few tries to get all the way to the final boss! The problem is, though, that after getting a game over, it's a little demoralising to try again straight away. The reason is one you might have predicted if you're familiar with Compile's other PC Engine shooting games: Sylphia is really long, like well over an hour. It flies by while you're playing, but after playing that long and dting, it's hard to get up the energy to start again right away. Still, if you want an easy 1CC, I can't imagine this taking most people more than a week at a rate of one or two attempts a day.

 

Something I'd also like to highlight is the excellent theming, with regard to the stages and enemies. There are no generic enemies in this game, or at least none that are generic enough to appear in every stage. This is because every stage has a theme, and all the enemies fit that theme and are unique to that stage. For example, the second stage has you going through an area full of statues of various stages, and all the enemies are mechanically-animated statues of various kinds: flying cherub heads, fire-breathing colossi, and more. An especially cool little touch in this stage is that when you beat the mid-boss, you see a tiny little pilot escape into the cave its guarding, and at the back of that cave, you see the pilot climb aboard the stage boss: a gigantic mechanical statue, only the top half of which is visible.

 

Every stage has cool moments like that in it to keep you engaged, too. The third stage takes place over a sea, with both archer-manned ships and marine monsters trying to kill you, and it's incredibly satisfying to sweep across the screen with your bomb attack (which takes the form of a big laser), destroying a whole fleet of ships, seeing them all break in half and sink. Then in the second half of the stage you go under the water, and Sylphia's flying animation is replaces with a swimming one! One strange point that's worth mentioning when it comes to the presentation is the music. Specifically, the music used for the boss fights at the end of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages. In this 1993 greek mythology-themed shooting game, you're suffenly fighting huge monsters to the sound of some Jock Jams dance track, complete with that little "woo!" sample. Bizarre!

 

I feel like I haven't spoken much about the game's actual mechanics, but at the same time, I think that like a lot of pre-1994 shooting games, it's mostly pretty simple. Furthermore, I have said a lot about how the game presents itself, and I think it does that so well, and it's such a large part of this game's appeal that it's the right decision to have taken. Anyway, Sylphia is a game that's has enough concessions for beginners to the genre, while being satisfying enough for existing fans, plus there's always lots of cool details and things to see. I definitely recommend playing it if you haven't already. With the Aleste series getting a small revival in recent times, I hope someone at some point decides to bring back Compile's other shooters (including this one) too, as it'd be nice to see them reach a wide audience, and I definitely don't recommend or even condone anyone paying the ludicrous prices legitimate copies of this game fetch.