Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Psikyo
Release Date: 7/2/1998
Date Played: 5/13/2020
Region: Japan
Time Played: 9 minutes
What’d you think?: This shmup was developed by Psikyo, who have quite the shmup pedigree, so I’m going to assume this game was pretty great. PS1Try rules means that I usually don’t get to see much of a shmup, and this was no exception. Most of my 9 minutes of gameplay was watching the intro videos, I was only able to beat the first few (very short) stages and the first boss. What I did get to see was pretty neat, though — this shmup had a medieval fantasy theme. So many games put you in some sort of vehicle shooting at other vehicles, but in Sol Divide you’re a person (one of three selectables) with a sword and spellbook, shooting (and slashing! Melee strikes in a shmup?!) at other people swith swords and spellbooks (and dragons and such).
All this still takes place on the familiar ever-scrolling horizontal field typical of all shmups so there’s a sort of uncanny blending of worlds going on, like all the sprites from a brawler and all the sprites from a shmup got Freaky Friday-ed into each other’s games.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjaVJlnAYA0
