Caladrius Blaze is new to the Switch, but didn’t just pop up overnight. The top-down shooter launched as plain old Caladrius on Xbox 360 in Japan in 2013, before progressing through arcade, PS3, PS4 and Windows on the way to Switch. Looking further back, it’s descended from 1990s Japanese arcade favourite Raiden, which was among the early vertical shooters that set the scene for the bullet hell genre. When Seibu Kaihatsu, the makers of Raiden, went bankrupt, its former developers founded a studio called MOSS and purchased the Raiden IP. In between Raidens IV and V, MOSS gave us Caladrius. So here we are; a classic scrolling shooter with big-hitter heritage.
Caladrius doesn't go to a great deal of trouble to tell a story, but it seems MOSS felt obliged to at least come up with something. They reached for the lowest-hanging post-war Japanese trope: a forbidden technology so powerful it must never be used; the folly of deploying such power in an attempt to eradicate evil. Therefore, you fly a spaceship and shoot baddies, apparently.
Each of the eight playable characters has a contrived motivation to fight their way to the game’s antagonist, whose wicked name must never be spoken. Actually, it’s fine: he’s called Graham. Let’s be honest: there’s no story to be had here. You shoot stuff and – much more frequently – get shot by stuff. And they all lived happily ever after.
We get three game types in Caladrius Blaze on the Switch, corresponding to the original Caladrius, the arcade game Caladrius AC and the additional Evolution Mode. Evolution adds a new stage (for six total) and three new characters (for eight total).
Each mode has a tutorial video setting out the fundaments of its gameplay. However, since the videos are tiny, repetitive and without playback controls, you would need to be half-saint-half-hawk to have the patience and eyesight to identify the differences. To our knowledge, there has never been an offspring of a saint and a hawk. In fact, breeding with a hawk probably precludes you from sainthood. So the gameplay differences remain obscure.
The distinguishing mechanic of Caladrius is its elemental shot system. Your ship has a standard, unlimited shot, fired with B, and three elemental shots fired with A, X and Y. Elementals offer benefits like higher power, wider spread or shielding from enemy bullets. However, they are limited by gauges at the bottom-left of the screen, which will recharge slowly over time. When all three elementals are charged over 50 percent, a screen-swiping combined shot is available that drains everything to zero. On top of that, you have bombs that deal heavy damage across the whole playfield. It’s interesting to learn the ins and outs of each attack and it’s a complication of the genre formula that holds together nicely. Each character has distinct shots types, too, providing a lot to explore.
And you’ll be grateful for six different ways to wreck stuff – because this game is hard. This is focused, white-knuckle, lean-forward gaming. The bullet patterns are almost indecipherably intricate. At 'peak bullet', they surely couldn’t be deconstructed by conscious thought. Only a deeper psychic engagement with the game, directly steering thumbs and bypassing the ego, could possibly shiver through the maelstrom. When you pull it off, it feels great, but you’ll need to work at it.
So what gentle mercy it is for the game to offer a “Very Easy” difficulty setting! The mad genius smash of bullet patterns can be toned down to a more relaxing level. Throw in a second player and it can be as chilled as you want. Without this concession, the difficulty curve is more of a difficulty wall – a flaming, spiked, overhanging difficulty wall, crunching in at you from front and back.
The gameplay is challenging but, unfortunately, so is the game’s presentation. Video games used to have to work hard: they had to squeeze onto giant disks that held almost no data and they had to run on hulking machines that had almost no memory. If they looked a bit dishevelled for it, no one would think any less of them. They did well just to turn up, frankly.
Not true these days. A modern game comes from an affluent background of miniature solid-state trinkets with acres of storage inside consoles whose power would have started religions if we’d seen them in the 1980s. If a game like that can’t muster the common courtesy to greet its players politely, then what exactly is the world coming to? Caladrius, sadly, is just such a spoilt ragamuffin. One symptom of this is some absurdly minuscule text, which is almost illegible when the Switch is in handheld mode. Make us work at the game and we will respect you: make us work at the menu screen and we will doubt you: make us work at just seeing the flipping text and we will throw you across the room.
In fact, even beyond the lazy, ugly text presentation and maddeningly tiny tutorial videos, Caladrius Blaze soon becomes an intensive visual acuity regimen. The first levels are chaotic and noisy in a fun way, but some later graphical choices have not come off. Bullet hell is called bullet hell because there's a hell of a lot of bullets. Reading the playing field is always going to be hard, but the 3D backdrops are sometimes complicated, smudgy and fast-moving, making it unnecessarily painful to parse the bedlam. An unexperienced bystander might wonder whether this is a game or some kind of mean eye test.
There’s one last feature of Caladrius Blaze that needs attention: the “Shame Break”. On our first go, seeing the same old gratuitously over-sexualised roster of player characters, we chose the least pornographic option. They were the most respectably dressed of everyone, with a coolly androgynous vibe: prim, slick, stylish. The opening cutscene immediately told me “She dresses like a man”, then the first few minutes of gameplay saw her retro sci-fi leotard rent to slivers, her heretofore absent embonpoint suddenly lunging forth like a hungry dog slavering against its leash.
How did that happen? Well, when a character receives intense damage, their clothes get exploded off by the violence and their semi-nude image flashed giant across the screen. The publisher’s website explains: “Shoot-down bonus for sexy CG cuts and images!”
What message are MOSS sending with the “Shame Break”? Thrash her clothes off! Gawp for thrills! Shame on her! It seems that when it comes to female characters, the overbearing point of interest is the constant, tantalising possibility that they might be seen naked, combined with disgust at their low moral standards should that ever happen. It's a damning truth about gaming that we are so desensitised to it all that we will readily shrug off this kind of obsessive sexist behaviour. In any other medium, Caladrius Blaze would be coldly disowned by the establishment for this irrelevant, gratuitous misogyny. But in video games? It's fine, honest!
Conclusion
So, throw away the dud story, the awful presentation and the violence-and-shame-based soft porn and haven’t we got a great little shoot-em-up here? The fact is that this mechanically competent shooter in a classic style from a proven team comes with all those crummy decorations attached. It’s up to you if it’s worth overlooking all the ugliness for the sake of a good game that isn’t particularly world-changing.
Comments 77
God its really called the 'shame break'? Yikes
I'm sure the 'its art' and 'it should be a 10/10 because other websites gave it a 8 or 9/10' crew will be here soon to once again complain about a reviewer doing their job seen as they only ever seem to take issue with reviews about this stuff in particular
Edit: god the comments are even worse than usual.
Looks like fun, but I don't get the need for the sexuality. In fact, I would be embarrassed if my kids or anyone else saw me playing this game.
Thus, I will not be buying this game, even at a deep discount. There are so many other good shmups on Switch. I don't need this one.
Does the light sourcing glowy effects get any more intense than screen shot 4? They can make everything so unclear to me.
How many times must we go through the same circus?
Don't give these kind of games to these kind of reviewers
Here's a protip to Nintendolife: If there's fanservice, and you hate fanservice, then do everyone a favor and don't play the game and don't review it
Not my type of Shooter, but it's getting kinda annoying that Nintendolife complains about Fanservice in Games at every opportunity and seems to reduce the overall Review Score because of it.
I played it on the PS4, I don't ever recall the game being particularly aggressive about the clothes ripping thing as the review makes it seem but w/e.
I though it was a fun shmup with some nice tunes even if the fanservice aspect of it is a little bit questionable (but ultimately pretty tame considering I think).
Yeaaa this sort of woman shaming while sexualizing bs shouldn’t fly. Thanks for the honest and relevant review.
side note: are the “joys” and “cons” going to be standard for reviews moving forward? I dig the addition!
I always roll my eyes when people whine about female characters getting sexualised, you people have clearly never read shoujo manga, where the MEN are the ones getting sexualised. Both sides do it, but only one side is ever talked about... which is pretty unfair to men. If you're going to be against sexualising characters, you should be annoyed when it happens to both genders, not just one.
Let's not forget FFXV, where there was a LOT of Gladiolus fanservice (he runs around half naked throughout the game).
Another thing, the character designer wasn't mentioned - it's Suzuhito Yasuda, manga artist of Yozakura Quartet. It's full of fanservice. So, really, what did anyone expect when they hired him to do the character designs? He specializes in this stuff.
"Waaaaahhhh, over-sexualization, waaaaahhhh!!!"
Gimme a break. Westerners are such prudes, I just don't get it.
Oh no, so that mean we are damned?
Uh oh, looks like the libs are at it again. First they’re coming for our boobs, next they’re coming for our guns!
@neogyo thanks for the comment – glad you liked the review. I knew it would bother some people but all you can do is be honest, I suppose.
The joys and cons were news to me as well, actually! (I.e. not in the copy I submitted) I like them and hope they’ll be required in reviews from now on.
This is where we put that GIF of Smithers trying to look away in horror from the strippers in front of him.
Get over yourselves, prudes. Women prance around half naked at comic cons all the time yet people choose to be angry or horrified when fictional, animated females who aren't even real show some skin in a fantasy game? It's both amusing and ridiculous.
Keep doing you, Japan.
I got this game on the PS4 and I totally agree with the reviewer. The game can be fun but there is definitely better shoot-em-ups out there, especially on the Switch where we have seen a recent wave of beloved classics in the genre.
Eh, Caladrius Blaze is a lot better then Raiden V.
I have both games on Switch AND on Steam, and the scores should really be swapped - Caladrius Blaze is a solid 8 while Raiden V is a 7 at best and would still be rated fairly at a 6.
Fanservice? Is that what it's called when animators create characters with the face of a little girl and body of a voluptuous woman? If that's something you enjoy, have at it creep. And maybe stay away from schoolyards.
I ain't no prude. I enjoy porn, but with adult actors. Not childish looking cartoon characters. On top of that, why throw these kinds of distractions into a shmup? Makes a lot more sense for an RPG.
And to defend it because it's "normal" in Japan is a cop out. There are things that are "normal" in the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. that are viewed as pretty damn abnormal by others.
@Peterjr1 So true. I am very open when it comes to video games, I have a number of games with "pervy" elements simply because the games interested me. It isn't the type of thing where I am going to be immediately critical of that in particular, but there needs to be some sort of purpose in it. For example I can understand it in some JRPG or dating sim where there is a big emphasis on developing relationships with people, but in a game like this the sexual content just feels unnecessary and forced.
To me it's the difference between a movie depicting sex in story about a relationship vs a movie that is just straight up using sex scenes as softcore porn that is there for the audience to get off at. The sexual content in this game falls into the latter category. It just feels completely unnecessary in this game and it obviously exists as a gimmick.
I've never understood the revival of western puritanism. Violence is glorified but the human body and concept of sexuality are shamed. How odd
@SolarJetman what’s a better euphemism, “fan service” or “shame break”? Asking for a friend.
@Aquamine-Amarine thanks for taking the time to comment. You’ll see from my other reviews that I don’t criticise “fan service” universally or just for the fun of it.
For example, if it actually goes against the characterisation in the game (like in Worldend Syndrome) then that’s a bad artistic choice. (But not enough to drop the score in that case.)
Here, it’s completely gratuitous and adds nothing, then risks being extremely offensive in the way it associates female sexuality with violence and shame. I won’t mark something down just because it’s not the kind of thing I like, but I will explain my thinking then I see an element of a game that isn’t working.
If you like the art in Yozakura Quartet (don’t know it myself), I advise reading that and playing Ikaruga between chapters. That would beat this game hands down.
Both of the cons make no sense! It's a bullet hell game, since when could you really make out what's actually going on in one? And seriously stop docking points for fanservice, you didn't dock points for excessive blood, gore and violence in Doom afterall!
I have no problem with the content, I'm a big fan of 'fanservice' and I think anyone should be able to put whatever kind of content they want in a game (within reason of course) and let the market decide what they want. It just seems like an odd design decision as far as gameplay goes. If the characters were flying like super heroes instead of in ships, I'd be all for clothing damage. As it stands, it makes no logical sense that the ship getting damage results in the clothing of the pilot being shredded.
That being said, I don't see it as something that's so offensive that it hurts the quality of the game. I'd be supporting it if I didn't already have it for PS4.
I naturally ignore any criticism that cries of sexism or objectification of fictional female characters anyway, since we live in a world where real women rather enjoy wearing very little and being ogled. One needs only scroll through Instagram to see it.
@GrailUK yes, the visuals get more intense when the bullets are really flying – it was hard to take a screenshot at those times!
@JayJ I'm not sure if the movie analogy quite works when fanservice is one of the major appeals of games like this. A better analogy would be to compare it to films like Magic Mike, where a large part of the appeal is the fanservice.
@Arcade_Tokyo solid review, and just stumbled on your Tokyo Arcades blog and that’s another big thumbs up.
So did you submit copy and someone else wrote the joys and cons? Because I also need to give a tip of the old hat to that good sir, because any comments section where the term “fan service” gets used liberally makes me giggle like a teenager.
@commentlife Thank you! Look me up on Twitter and Instagram to follow along (or get my email newsletter!)
The editor added the joys and cons as that wasn’t part of my brief. Perhaps it will be for future reviews or perhaps the editors will continue to look after it. Either way, good stuff I think.
@PerishSong I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accuse that movie of "shaming" men lol I mean, it's also not like we have tons of movies where some buff man will take off his shirt for no reason on camera and wear tight clothes, whether he's a superhero or not. Totally not going for any sexual attention there.
Good for me, not for thee, and all that.
Great review, @Arcade_Tokyo. I had no interest in this game whatsoever and would never have even if you had slapped it with a 10. However, your review was smart, hilarious, and informative, and reading it for fun was just as worthwhile as it would have been if I had read it for a recommendation. This is how you write a great review.
I also appreciate how you and @JayJ described how to best critique sexual content in media. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
@cool_boy_mew I think it's when fan service comes at the COST of solid gameplay and a quality product that Nintendo Life gets upset.
@PerishSong I am not sure if that’s a great analogy actually. Magic Mike is a great story written/directed by an Academy Award-winner that just happens to have male strippers as a major narrative element. It’s not a science fiction movie where the male actors are all just strippers for some unexplained reason totally unrelated to the plot.
@DsheroX It sounds like there is violence depicted in the sexual content of this game.
Why is sexual violence called fan service?!
Great review, by the way. Thank you for a well written explanation and commentary on the game! Oh, does it run at 60fps?! Just kidding
Hey! That's the artist who worked on Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor series and some of the more recent Digimon games, isn't it?!
Will order the game sometime later.
Curious, if the overt sexualization is such an impactful experience to the reviews, why do some put themselves through it?
That's like me reviewing Fortnite or Halo while despising FPS genre.
This is a good shmups, one of the better ones on the system. There is a lot of variety on the characters and fun to figure out how to use them and how to upgrade the weapons during the run. It's hard for sure, but I don't find it out of the ordinary hard compared to the other traditional shmups (for me, I find R-Type style harder)
The graphics are fine, IMO I like them better than on Raiden V, more colourful and more varied.
The fan service / shame breaker aspect is something I find just stupid, totally unnecessary and I don't blame anybody who would be offended of that. I wish it could be turned off for those who don't like that aspect. Ignoring that part, I think it's solid 8/10 shmup.
@Arcade_Tokyo Great review! It’s not often I scroll back up to the top to see who the author was, but I did in this case. Kudos, Mr Ingram.
@AngelFox they shouldnt let their bias towards these type of games get in the way of giving a proper review without deducting points over too much skin being shown which is ridiculous.
@commentlife dont start bringing politics into game articles man.
@Retron Yeah, and even aside from the horrific cruelty and racism of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were how many cities in Japan that were firebombed? War is always jam packed with rape, terrorism, and slaughter, and WW2 was no exception.
@RiasGremory haha if you’re referencing my clearly satirical joke comment about libs coming for your boobs, then no. I will not stop bringing joke politics into games articles.
@commentlife look i dont agree with sjws keep on trying to force censorship on everyone but making something into political doesnt help man.
@RiasGremory Haha you’re the one talking censorship and using the term SJWs without a shred of irony. It certainly wasn’t my stupid joke that turned this comment section political.
While I enjoyed reading this - go check out the author's Arcade Tokyo blog for some of the best writing on the internet! - I do feel there are some pretty glaring inaccuracies / omissions here.
First, for its genre, this game is not notably hard. In fact, with its multiple difficulty levels, no hit option and stage select, it's actually remarkable for its accessibility. This isn't my opinion - the game IS in arguably the most notoriously difficult genre on earth and HAS these options.
Second, while the story is pretty dumb, it's far more developed than in most shmups and comes complete with multiple nicely rendered stills that can be viewed in an extensive gallery.
Third, I find it incredible that someone could review this game and not make mention of the scoring systems. These involve using only elemental weapons and offsetting the desire to up your multiplier against keeping your elementals charged adds an important layer to the gameplay. There are also extensive online and local leaderboards that put most shmups to shame (no pun intended).
Finally, as for the shame breaks...well, each to their own. I won't argue about them being unnecessary (although I will say that's an oddly utilitarian argument that would seem absurd in other contexts eg the comedy sketches in Gunbird), but I think the criticisn goes a little too far. Remember, there are two males who also get their clothes shredded and the 'shame' aspect is clearly referring less to the characters being shameless and more to their own embarrassment at being stripped, which is far more natural. Also, the game features an option allowing you to turn them off.
I'm fine with people having different opinions, but a lot of the above are not things that are up for debate - the game HAS these features and they're not mentioned or seemingly taken account of.
I disagree that if this were made in for any other medium it would be derided. This game was made for Japan, if it were made for another medium in Japan it would be viewed the same way the game is. This is the type of game that just never would have been released in the west back in the day. People used to cry foul and ask for everything from Japan uncensored, and when that happens we get this kind of hand wringing. It is what it is. If you don’t like it you’re going to have to change Japanese culture.
@Shmupsnstuff appreciate the informed comment. To be fair, I did note the difficulty setting and say the game can be “as chilled as you want”. Difficulty is a badge of honour in the genre so I wouldn’t take “hard” as a criticism. (And personally I thought it got really hard, really fast. Maybe it’s the yoko playfield but I found the patterns /really/ complex.)
For some people, your points will be very useful information so I hope they read the comments.
Finally, thanks for mentioning the blog!
(https://arcade.tokyo)
@Arcade_Tokyo Difficulty's an odd one when reviewing shmups, isn't it? They're basically all hard so, if your audience is purely shmup fans, that's not worth mentioning, whereas if your audience is more general gamers, they will almost definitely need that information brought up.
Hard to find a way to suit everyone, but for Caladrius I'd still say (talking about normal difficulty here) it's a hard game overall, but not hard for its genre - if that makes sense.
This has got to be the same character designer from the Devil Survivor series right?
I dunno. Throwing up naked women in an already challenging shmup seems kind of counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
"In any other medium, Caladrius Blaze would be coldly disowned by the establishment for this irrelevant, gratuitous misogyny. But in video games? It's fine, honest!"
I find this bit of the review curious, though.
1) What the hell is "the establishment?"
2) What makes you think "the establishment" doesn't already disapprove of the game?
3) Why should any free-thinking person care what "the establishment" approves or disapproves of in the first place?
@commentlife this is a British web site. Nobody has guns.
For you to arrive in Tokyo with your smug white male ideas about art and sexuality and demand that the natives change to suit your tastes reeks of imperialism — and it’s more than a little racist. That’s the headline here. I’ve no doubt that the developers will garner a few extra revenge sales off the back of your poorly considered hit piece, but please: take your ideas about how to improve Japan and fly back to your home country as soon as you get your next eikaiwa check.
wtf? Who did this review?
It's an amazing bullet hell game. If you like Bullet Hells, you will love it.
Oh, and btw. This is probably the easiest bullet hell i have ever played. It's hard? For a casual gamer, yes. For someone who plays lots of this genre? Nope.
@farcry007 I think you're overthinking things a bit
@New-Moonbeam
You’re wrong — and when Japan has the level of censorship that makes it the perfect white male safe space, it will have as much character as a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Then it will be time to move on to the next country and “improve” it as well.
Review’s spot on to me. It’s not a great shooter by any means, the fan service is about the only way to buoy it.
@commentlife I guess my point is more that one of the major appeals of Magic Mike was the eyecandy. Caladrius Blaze is clearly meant to appeal to people who enjoy both shmups and fanservice. It just feels odd to claim that the fanservice brings the game down when it's clearly meant as a selling point. It'd be like someone saying, " Magic Mike was a good film, but the amount of ripped shirtless guys in it really brings it down."
@Nagi There's a big difference between an acceptable level of fan service and fan service that goes too far or is included for no real purpose
@BulbasaurusRex The level of fanservice is acceptable to the Japanese artists who made the game, the Japanese women who chose to act in it, and the people who choose to buy and enjoy it. And it most certainly has a purpose in the game — it distracts you from the action at key points, creating a unique additional challenge at certain points. The game isn’t being reviewed fairly on its merits, it’s being panned by white males based on their cultural preferences.
Perhaps the author will take the black community to task next about the violence in hip-hop culture, or authors of women’s erotica about dubious consent. (P.S. Nobody is going to stuff you in a locker if you leave the thesaurus on the shelf next time.)
@BulbasaurusRex "fanservice that...is included for no real purpose"
Included for no real purpose is essentially the definition of fan service.
@commentlife Haha, shame break, most definitely.
@LuckyErika nice dubs
@farcry007 wait, the fanservice is there to distract you from the game that requires you to have no distractions to do well?
@LuckyErika rawr
@Kalmaro It’s a small but real gameplay element that adds to the game beyond eroticism (which it also adds)
@farcry007 That sounds like a yes then. Kinda feels like it's just making the game harder, if it's as distracting as people say.
This is a fantastic game, it's as simple as that. Easily an 8/10. My mind boggles at the ridiculous comments in this thread.
An entire paragraph on why the author is against fanservice. Its just unprofessional to put that in a review.
@Taarna 1000 virtue points can be exchanged for an arm touch from a girl and a free bottle of Fabreeze
@YANDMAN It really is a gem. My major criticisms would be that text could be sharper and the font they use for the characters’ subtitles isn’t a great choice. It really is a tight little shooter tho
NintendoLife reviewers in a nutshell- Oh no, a game has fan service! SHAME ON YOU FOR RELEASING AN UN-HOLY PRODUCT ON SWITCH! NOT ON MY CHRISTIAN CONSOLE!
Like seriously, if you hate fan service, you are the WRONG person to be reviewing them. You're just wasting your time, and everyone else's. Lol.
It's not just about fan service, what if a reviewer on here hated first person shooters, but rated one? It would seem like a bad idea right? That's my point.
@Morrow He had to set the game to Very Easy too
@farcry007 It's just hilariously sad to see this, lol. How to look unprofessional in 3 seconds.
Please consider that messy and confusing gameplay, stemming jumbled background designs is a real con to the gameplay, while oversexualized character art might not be.
@farcry007 It really is. I have it on 360, PS3 and now PS4. Its a shame that people here take offence to utter nonsense and then give a totally undeserving review score to a game whichj will then cause lots of people to overlook it. I don't recall seeing so much outrage at the Senran Kagura game.
@Josh2396 100%. This site and many of its writers are very unprofessional.
This is a great game ignore the reviewer. Yes the shame break is silly and unnecessary but it's hardly offensive and you see a lot worse in a 15 rated film. 8/10 easily, you can probably pick it up cheaper on steam/xbox/ps3 but you couldn't play it on the go.
@GameOtaku "It's a bullet hell game, since when could you really make out what's actually going on in one?" I don't agree with this statement. I've played dozens of bullet hell games. In most of the good ones it's not hard to distinguish the bullets from the background. It may be hard to tell what's happening because of the speed and complexity of the bullet patterns themselves, but that's a separate issue from not being able to distinguish the bullets from the backgrounds. The latter is what the reviewer is talking about, and I agree that's a flaw. I haven't played this game, but I've played some other shooter that have that issue, and I consider it a mistake when I encounter that. I want the challenge to come from the speed and complexity of the game, not from challenging my eyesight.
I understand taking issue with the fanservice, but the game itself is in the same ballpark as Raiden IV and quite a bit better than Raiden V. You can disable the imagery and it's still one of the stronger shmups on the Switch.
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