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[SmiteOfHand]

Developer . . . . . . . . . CAVE Interactive CO.
Publisher . . . . . . . . . Degica
Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . Shmup / STG
Platform . . . . . . . . . . PC (Steam)
Release Date . . . . . . . Oct 13, 2016
Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . $30 ($25.49 until Oct 24th)
​

DoDonPachi Resurrection (aka. DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu) is a vertical bullet hell shooter by Japanese developer CAVE. First released in arcades in 2008, then ported to Xbox 360 in 2010. Now available on the personal computer for the first time. This is, however, not the first game in the series. In fact it is the fifth, but don't let that trouble you. Story continuity is not the main draw of the series. This is a perfectly good title to jump into one of the greatest shmup series of all time.

DDP is good for survival play, that is just trying to survive until the end using a single credit (1CC), but also contains very deep scoring systems. If you've been out of the shmup game for a while you might be surprised how deep the well goes. This can appear intimidating at first pass, but similar to fighting games there is a lot of range in the skill of these systems and what you personally want to get out of them. Unlike fighting games there is no anxiety about getting stomped from other players of much higher skill levels.

Chains, counters, rank, loops and the likes are all present, not to mention the many variations and additions that the different modes provide on these systems. It may be tempting to credit feed to get to the end of the game and not see what the big deal is, but if you hang out and get familiar with how these things are working beyond the surface you will find some of the most challenging and addictive stuff in gaming.

Hyper Counter
Destroying enemies fills up the Hyper Counter. When full you can unleash a hyper attack which is very powerful and cancels bullets. Activating hyper increases rank (see below) so use with care.

Rank
Rank systems are a sort of dynamic difficulty slider. The better you are doing the harder the game will become. Don't forget these are arcade games and were made to be hard as nails. The important thing is Cave is good at balancing incredible difficulty with fair game play. The game will not 'eat your quarters' in an unfair way. Skill is rewarded and challenges can be overcome.

Chaining
The rainbow gauge in the top left is your chaining guide. Keep an eye on it. When you kill an enemy there will be a small window of time where if you kill another enemy the chain will be extended, filling up the gauge. If you wait too long, or destroy everything too quickly leaving you nothing to chain with, you will drop the chain, the gauge will empty, and any benefits of chaining will be lost. Below that you will see the giant HIT with numbers. That tells you how many enemies you have killed as part of the chain. This is one of the biggest ways to gain score as it feeds into the game in various ways including multipliers, and much more in other modes.

BEES!
Every stage has hidden bees. Flying near their location will reveal them temporarily. When you see one switch to laser to release the bee and grab it. Bees are very important. Bees are life. ❤ Bees.

The three ships, that are a staple to anyone familiar to the series, are represented.

Deltasword (Red) - Type A, Fighter
Narrow Shot - Fast Movement

Biaxe (Green) - Type B, Helicopter
Medium Shot - Medium Movement

Spearhead (Blue) - Type C, Bomber
Wide Shot - Slow Movement

STYLES
Styles act as a way to modify your style, or properties of the ships and how to play them. This allows a lot of variety in each mode. Similar in spirit to the dolls in DOJ.

- Bomb Style
Bombs, which are nice, with the sacrifice of a weaker shot/laser. Auto-Bomb is also available where if the player has a bomb and takes a hit the bomb will drop rather than losing a life.

- Power Style
No bombs, but you can toggle between Normal/Boost. When in Normal mode you move more quickly but have a weaker shot. In Boost mode you move slower and have a stronger shot.

- Strong Style
A balance of Bomb and Power styles.

The game has a lot of modes. If the price tag puts you off there is a whole lot of video game here. Including the ketsuipachi mode, which was DLC in the 360 release.

Normal - ver 1.5
Closest to the original arcade release, though as the 1.5 denotes a few changes were made such as balance and the inclusion of the Type B Helicopter.

Normal - ver 1.51
Varient on 1.5 that until ports was only available to play at Cave Matsuri.

Arrange A - ver L
An arrange mode where ship and style selection has been removed.

Arrange B - ver B
One of the stranger and more interesting modes. Arrange B is single stage runs that gets harder the more it is played.

Novice - ver 1.5
Similar to standard ver 1.5 except the bullet counts have been greatly reduced. A useful perk is that bee locations are visible by default. Can be a good learning tool for those new and trying to locate them and build scoring paths.


Black Label - Black Label
Includes the Red Mode system, via a change to how shooting works. When Red Mode is activated the game is much harder, but the rewards are much greater. Not for the faint of heart.

Arrange - Black Label
aka. 'Ketsuipachi' due to its mixing of ideas from Ketsui, another shmup by Cave. The mode itself is similar to standard Black Label in terms of stages and gameplay, however much has been layered on top such as the lock shot system from Ketsui. The Tigerschwert fighter from Ketsui is also available exclusively to this mode.

Novice - Black Label
Similar to Novice 1.5, reduced bullets and overall much easier than standard Black Label.


TRAILER

 

[ElNarez]

it's got 1.51 and Ketsuipachi?

hot dang, okay, that's a seriously good port

 

[Tain]

Great game. Good for newcomers to Cave games, though the harder modes are kinda buried. I need to play more!

 

[davidwhangchoi]

OT looks great!

 

[preta]

I'm torn. I absolutely want to support Cave's Steam releases, but I know I'm way out of my depth with DDP.

 

[Tain]

naaa, play Strong style and this 1.5 is easy stuff after a few legit 1CC attempts

 

[Remembrance]

I'm torn. I absolutely want to support Cave's Steam releases, but I know I'm way out of my depth with DDP.

With Resurrection, it's not as bad as you might think. I'm going to copy my post from another thread here. Note that this only applies to 1.5, but that's where most people should start anyway.

For everyone who's intimidated by bullet hell games: Dodonpachi Resurrection is pretty much the Cave game for people who are bad at Cave games.

You can pick Strong Style to combine the benefits of bombs and powerful guns. There is almost no reason not to.
Autobombing is on, and there is no penalty except for your chain and for the bomb being a little weaker. You can take as many hits as you would bombing manually.
You get so many bombs. You get even more bombs every time you die. (Which has its drawbacks, but don't worry about that now.) That's like having well over 20 lives instead of 3.
The hyper charges at a good pace, and the hyper's shot mode cancels all bullets, meaning even more free survival tools.
You can get extends and even an outright 1-up drop without really trying.

Basically, it's not surprising to accidentally find yourself at stage 5 with more lives and more bombs than you started with.

Spoiler

And it's not surprising to then get completely destroyed by stage 5... but cross that bridge when you come to it.

Secret routes are as wide open as you can get. Want to fight secret bosses? (The stage 4 secret mid-boss is a must-see.) Want to play the second loop? I somehow got in on my first run on novice without remembering what the requirements were.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Strong Style >> *

 

[Momentary]

What is the preferred play style for scoring?

 

[SmiteOfHand]

What is the preferred play style for scoring?

Most, if not all, the modes maintain separate leader boards for every style so you don't have to worry about advantages of one style overriding others when it comes to score tracking. Each style also has their own routing and approaches. If you just want to know which style will give the highest score potential overall... I believe Type-C STRONG has the highest overall scores, but you might interpret that due to being the easiest to approach?

Worth mentioning it depends greatly on the mode, as well, since scoring systems change dramatically from mode to mode.

 

[Tizoc]

I don't like bullet hells so I played this on Novice and...yeah later stages were tough @_@
This is currently my least fav. of the Cave games on Steam but I'll keep playing it to see if I end up liking it more over time.

 

[n051de]

Felt like forever since we've been waiting for this. Just add the whole Cave library already. Would like me some Epsgaluda action.

 

[Zia]

Felt like forever since we've been waiting for this. Just add the whole Cave library already. Would like me some Epsgaluda action.

I pray the first three have sold enough to warrant continued PC support. This has been my favorite of the Cave releases so far but sales seem pretty low (approximately 3,300).

 

[preta]

With Resurrection, it's not as bad as you might think. I'm going to copy my post from another thread here. Note that this only applies to 1.5, but that's where most people should start anyway.

Yeah, I've played the mobile version a little bit, so I'm aware of most of this... but I was under the impression that Strong Style increased the difficulty as well.

Really, it's the second loop and especially Hibachi/Zatsuza that I'm most worried about. I can't really feel like I've beaten the game unless I've beaten the true final boss. I know shmups are about scoring well and all, but I'd feel weird buying the game knowing I'm never even getting that far.

 

[Brian_FETO]

Not loving the base game thus far compared to original DDP or DOJ. At early impressions, I'm enjoying Blue Revolver a lot more.

Ketsui arrange mode is super rad though, worth getting for I'd say. Hopefully Ketsui finds its way onto Steam someday

 

[epmode]

Not loving the base game thus far compared to original DDP or DOJ. At early impressions, I'm enjoying Blue Revolver a lot more.

Ketsui arrange mode is super rad though, worth getting for I'd say. Hopefully Ketsui finds its way onto Steam someday

Ketsui is so goddamned good. Not easy though.

By the way, what's the best way to play Ketsui these days? Without having to drag out my J360. I'd think MAME but I've noticed some input lag with Cave games that may be handled better by other emulators.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Ketsui is so goddamned good. Not easy though.

By the way, what's the best way to play Ketsui these days? Without having to drag out my J360. I'd think MAME but I've noticed some input lag with Cave games that may be handled better by other emulators.

Have you tried Shmupmame? It has less lag than regular MAME builds.

The PS3 port of Ketsui (f you have that system on hand) is good too.

 

[epmode]

Have you tried Shmupmame? It has less lag than regular MAME builds.

I'll try it, thanks!

The PS3 port of Ketsui (f you have that system on hand) is good too.

I no longer have an easy way to play in tate mode on my consoles. I have a rotating PC monitor though (DisplayPort)!

 

[ghibli99]

The screen tearing is unfortunate, so if it bothers you, be sure to enable VSync in your GPU control panel or whatnot. So much content in this though... I'll be chipping away at this thing for months, I'm sure!

I bought Blue Revolver at the same time. Still getting used to it, but it seems pretty damn solid, and I love the soundtrack.

 

[PantsuJo]

I fucking love this gamepad, thanks Cave&Degica <3

 

[Momentary]

Been playing this and Blue Revolver pretty heavily. I'm loving both of them.

I was experiencing screen tearing on DDP when my monitor was set to 60hz. I upped it to 120hz and GSYNC seems to have taken care of it. Seems like this is a reoccurring issue with most of the Degica Cave releases during the first week before they patch it.

 

[Justinh]

Oh! I had no idea this was coming to steam. I guess I'll buy it again. I mean I suck at these games, but I still think it's fun to go in and play for a little while every now and then.

 

[jonjonaug]

Went through Novice mode after a few attempts at clearing the first loop of Normal mode. Only died twice, but I ended up dying in the same spots on stage 5 that I do when I played it on regular mode. I got a kick out of original DDP bosses replacing the mid-stage bosses if you're doing well. I also found Novice mode pretty enjoyable this time around. It's easy, but not so easy that it's insulting.

Stage 5 in particular seems like a huge jump in difficulty from the rest of the game, you need to move around in a lot of weird ways that you usually don't have to do in DDP games.

 

[PantsuJo]

I pray the first three have sold enough to warrant continued PC support. This has been my favorite of the Cave releases so far but sales seem pretty low (approximately 3,300).

Sales are low indeed but they will increase with future deals, don't worry.

 

[Dash Kappei]

Awesome OT.
$30 tho... that's more than what I paid at launch for my 360 PAL disc... does include all the DLC?

Still, going to grab it but probably not day1.
This is one of the best dainmaku releases ever guys, get on it!

 

[@MUWANdo]

Awesome OT.
$30 tho... that's more than what I paid at launch for my 360 PAL disc... does include all the DLC?

Yes, and that includes the Black Label Ketsui arrange mode that is not available for the English X360 port.

 

[Possumowner]

How'd I miss this,another shooter to add to my ever growing library,though that price is a little steep

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It's not one of my favorite Cave games, but still great, and definitely a good option for those new to the genre... despite how chaotic it looks.

 

[danmaku]

Played for a few hours and... yes, Ketsuipachi is way too slow. Hopefully they'll fix it, a patch for the OST was released already.

Aside from that, the port looks solid. There's a ton of modes and the game looks amazing. I love the deluge of bright colors, lasers, bullets, explosions, everything is cranked up to 11 in DFK. Also, the idea of a hidden path with alternative minibosses is super cool. Too bad they abandoned it in SDOJ.

I'm not a big fan of the autobombing. Sure, stage 5 will destroy you anyway and there's a second loop, but it still feels wrong to be breezing through bosses in a DDP game. At least you can disable it in Black Label.

 

[Nags]

Oh so this came out?
Nice. Haven't had a good reason to buy anything from Steam or turn on my PC for awhile now.

EDIT: Ouch at that price though. I'll wait for a sale.

 

[chrismohan]

I really wish I was better at bullet hell shooters. I've no excuse really. They were one of the staples of gaming when I was growing up so I got a ton of practice but in much the same ways as say a Dark Souls game, the lack of progress at times just starts to gnaw away at me :/

Really glad there are enough people buying these to keep them flowing onto PC.

Oh, and amazing OP.

 

[deadscreensky]

I had the DLC on 360 too so it's not new to me, but just want to state that the Black Label soundtrack is awesome. Very warm sound, very high energy, great stuff. (Example #2)

In general I enjoy Black Label a lot more than 1.5 (though with this release I'm giving 1.5 more of a chance). So if you aren't clicking with the normal game, give BL a shot before giving up. It's a great revision.

I disagree that this game is best for Cave newbies, though. It might be somewhat easy by DDP standards, but it's still systems-heavy, and most criminally very little of that is explained in-game or obvious through play. You play their previous Steam releases like Deathsmiles and it mostly makes sense after a couple plays, even if the scoring mechanics remain opaque, but in DDPR just choosing your ship style remains confusing until you research it outside of the game. It's an excellent game, but I've never felt it's aimed at anybody but existing series fans. It's a fun game, and I don't mean to oversell its complexity (it's no ESPGALUDA 2), but if you're leery about jumping in go with something like Deathsmiles first.

 

[HyperZone<3]

first week buyers get 15% off and the OST. Still got till Thursday, folks.

that's a great way to treat your customers. In fact the launch discount goes till the 24th. Swell people, those nice dudes and dudettes at Degica / Cave.

 

[PantsuJo]

first week buyers get 15% off and the OST. Still got till Thursday, folks.

that's a great way to treat your customers. In fact the launch discount goes till the 24th. Swell people, those nice dudes and dudettes at Degica / Cave.

I fucking love Degica guys :3

 

[tomwhite2004]

I was experiencing screen tearing on DDP when my monitor was set to 60hz. I upped it to 120hz and GSYNC seems to have taken care of it. Seems like this is a reoccurring issue with most of the Degica Cave releases during the first week before they patch it.

Just add Vsync=1 to the games config ini in the steam folder to stop the tearing, works for mushi and deathsmiles too. No idea why it isnt a manual option within the game itself.

As for shmupmame, I know lot of people dont use it as it uses hacks to reduce the lag which can cause things like sprite shifting on background layers and general innacuracy.

As for the port, bought it for Ketsupachi and its just way too slow when firing with a+c, actually makes the bosses and patterns pretty trivial when they clearly shouldnt be based on videos available of the xbox version.
I would hope for a fix but I cant think of a single instance where Cave has fixed any slowdown issues in any of the pc ports.

 

[StarCreator]

Oh so this came out?
Nice. Haven't had a good reason to buy anything from Steam or turn on my PC for awhile now.

EDIT: Ouch at that price though. I'll wait for a sale.

It's on sale right now. 15% off and bonus soundtrack.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

I disagree that this game is best for Cave newbies, though. It might be somewhat easy by DDP standards, but it's still systems-heavy, and most criminally very little of that is explained in-game or obvious through play. You play their previous Steam releases like Deathsmiles and it mostly makes sense after a couple plays, even if the scoring mechanics remain opaque, but in DDPR just choosing your ship style remains confusing until you research it outside of the game. It's an excellent game, but I've never felt it's aimed at anybody but existing series fans. It's a fun game, and I don't mean to oversell its complexity (it's no ESPGALUDA 2), but if you're leery about jumping in go with something like Deathsmiles first.

That is fair. I've been struggling to get across what exactly I mean when it comes to DFK. It clearly is not an easy game. It is a bullet hell shooter, after all. And even saying it is easy by DDP standards doesn't get anything meaningful across if you are dying endlessly every time you hit the stage 3 ramp.

It is a really curious thing to watch with these games. You will see people, reviewers in particular, deride the complexity, the density, the opaqueness. At best they will respect it, but put no real effort in trying to understand it. And at the same time you will see complaints such as "is this it?" It is clear the gaming audience at large struggles to see what these games have to offer because getting past that immediate, overwhelming nature is too much.

I think if you can find a foothold it gives you something to chew on while tackling that complexity. And DFK has a lot of footholds. The bees, for example, are really nice sort of discovery mechanism to help ease early pattern fatigue. I've debated how much of that sort of thing to put in the OP because I think discoveries like that are big when they happen naturally. But people don't know what they don't know and "is that it?" is an easy way to move on to the next thing.

 

[Soltype]

Really wish we could get a new release of DOJ, but I'll still pick this up.

 

[magnetic]

Here's a long episode of STG Weekly:

https://youtu.be/UkIg8bQ7C68

I never really got into the scoring of DFK vanilla, like all DDP games really (O just don't enjoy chaining systems and vastly prefer simpler stuff like Dangun Feveron or Armed Police Batrider) , but they're great even if I just wanna jump into training mode for some simple survival fun.

BL and BL Arrange look like tons of fun, though, more aggressive.

The Ketsui remixes are absolutely amazing! Between this and Crimzon Clover (with the brilliant alternative soundtrack DLC) I'm really starting to love the genre again.

It's also fun to hear that nobody has any idea how Arrange B works. Single stage runs with leveling mechanics?

 

[Spiral Insanity]

They released an update that fixes the invisible boss issue.

 

[Dantooine]

I think this is one of Cave's weakest games. For me if there's no challenge to clearing a game then there's no desire to score. The auto-bomb in 1.5 is garbage, plus all the hypering...

Black label is an improvement, auto-bomb off, single loop and a great rank system. From what I remember if you select Power mode you automatically go the secret route ( I might be wrong about that though... One of the modes does this). Ketsuipachi is a bit of a mess.

On the 360 the mode I liked the most was Arrange A. It's got a completely different scoring system, really addictive. It a much simpler game, no auto-bomb (but lots if bullet cancelling).

It's great there's another Cave game out there, but SDOJ would've been better.

 

[Momentary]

Man... Novice is too hard for me. Crazy how some people think this is easy. I need to get better. I'm enjoying scoring in Arrange A ( Ver L). I've got really high on the leaderboards just from learning how to score in the first 2 stages, then Stage 3 shows me I have a ways to go. BLA is my favorite, but I'm going to wait for theme to fix the speed before I play it again.

Blue Revolver is rough to me also. I was able to make it to the boss in stage 4 on Hyper mode then I got destroyed.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

They released an update that fixes the invisible boss issue.

Small, but welcome fix. Hopefully they can work out some of the other issues. It would be a real shame if this is the version of Ketsuipachi that is available at large.

It's also fun to hear that nobody has any idea how Arrange B works. Single stage runs with leveling mechanics?

My descriptions of the modes are terrible. I'd like to take another pass on them but had to settle with a one or two line description. In the meantime I will defer to HG101's excellent breakdown. Very much more at the link.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dodonpachi/dodonpachi4.htm

Arrange B Gameplay

Daifukkatsu's Arrange B Mode is radically different from every other mode on this disc, in fact, Arrange B is almost like an entirely new game. Most shmups will always play the same every single time, even after thousands of playthroughs. Power-ups will always be in the same spot, enemies will always appear in a certain order, fire a specific pattern, and will always take a certain amount of shots to destroy. Arrange B changes that formula up completely by making the game harder (or easier) with each subsequent play through. Essentially, the more the mode is played, the more difficult it becomes. Enemies will adapt, getting stronger or weaker according to how the game is played. It forces players to push forward and exceed their own limitations with each run. Arrange B forgoes any sort of standard "Arcade Mode", instead opting for a more "score attack" feel. Each run consists of only a single stage, with each one having its own score table. There is a total score made up the best score from each individual stage, but there are no leaderboards for that specific number. Because Arrange B is a stage-based mode, it does not have its own separate training mode.

 

[-Gozer-]

first week buyers get 15% off and the OST. Still got till Thursday, folks.

that's a great way to treat your customers. In fact the launch discount goes till the 24th. Swell people, those nice dudes and dudettes at Degica / Cave.

Where are you seeing the OST being free for the first week (not that I don't believe you)? I can't seem to find that stated anywhere.

Is this the same soundtrack that came with the US 360 release?

 

[Spiral Insanity]

Where are you seeing the OST being free for the first week (not that I don't believe you)? I can't seem to find that stated anywhere.

Is this the same soundtrack that came with the US 360 release?

Not sure where it is stated, but it is definitely the case.

 

[Momentary]

Where are you seeing the OST being free for the first week (not that I don't believe you)? I can't seem to find that stated anywhere.

Is this the same soundtrack that came with the US 360 release?

I got the soundtrack. I think it's available until the end of the promotion discount

 

[jonjonaug]

4th attempt on Normal: Made it to the final boss of the first loop. Stage 5 is really intense.

 

[magnetic]

Small, but welcome fix. Hopefully they can work out some of the other issues. It would be a real shame if this is the version of Ketsuipachi that is available at large.




My descriptions of the modes are terrible. I'd like to take another pass on them but had to settle with a one or two line description. In the meantime I will defer to HG101's excellent breakdown. Very much more at the link.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dodonpachi/dodonpachi4.htm

That sounds pretty interesting - I always found the idea of a more stage based "quick challenge" run structure appealing for the genre, as I rarely have the motivation to do entire runs and usually just hang out in practice mode most of the time.

I'll definitely toy around with Arrange B some more, simply because how odd it is.

 

[Remembrance]

Where are you seeing the OST being free for the first week (not that I don't believe you)? I can't seem to find that stated anywhere.

Is this the same soundtrack that came with the US 360 release?

There was no US 360 release - the European 360 release came with an arrange soundtrack.

The Steam release comes with the standard arcade soundtrack, which is completely different.

 

[jonjonaug]

So I tried Arrange B a little.

Um, what? I don't get it.