Terra Cresta II

~ TERRA CRESTA II ~

Nichibutsu

HuCard

1992

After Armed F turned out to be a pleasant surprise, I began to think it was possible I'd misjudged Nichibutsu. Perhaps they'd found their niche with vertical shooters. Maybe they deserved another chance. But then this happened.

Terra Cresta II is not particularly terrible, but it's old, and it looks and feels old. Despite some well-implemented multi-layer scrolling, most of the backdrops come off as horribly bland, particularly when contrasted with the vibrant, colorful stages in many other PC Engine shooters. The sprites are small and boring, and enemy repetition becomes a serious issue, as the same NES-type small-fry that assail you during the opening strip keep coming back for more, even near the conclusion of the trip. Your mission will take you over and through a wide variety of environments, including a volcanic region, a desert, outer space, and an icy expanse (which actually doesn't look too bad), but you'll have to fight off the same small, unimpressive fools all the while.

You might expect the weapons system to follow suit and hand you 8-bit-era pea shooters, but thankfully, it's one of the few interesting elements of the game. Once you find different ships to team up with, you can merge with them into one powerful unit (which actually isn't much fun to use due to its limited-in-scope straight-vertical fire), or you can position your squadron in formations of your own design. You can also have your craft transform into a mighty phoenix for a short time--though I kinda prefer the Psychic Storm bug-forms, myself.

But while the weapons system is TC2's main claim of "innovation," the bosses will probably make more of an impression, and not necessarily for good reasons. They're not much stouter than their lame henchmen and go down quite easily in most cases, though they can take a while to beat, which becomes all the more annoying when you have to defeat them again during a pointless, time-consuming gauntlet.

And that stupid gauntlet isn't even the final fucking stage, which really pissed me off. I'd thought I was finally done with the game, only for the words "TIME SLIP" to appear on the screen as my ship was unceremoniously dumped into an ugly "prehistoric" level, where I had to face a cheap super-bastard of a boss.

And even THAT wasn't the end. But the real final boss battle is actually epic and enjoyable, even though the multi-form bum you face continues with the cheap stuff. (Seriously, I hope you have quite a few lives saved up for these last few rounds...)

Sadly, the fun final tussle is just too little after everything that comes before it feels so drawn out and mediocre. And by the way, you'll have to pay good money to experience that drawn-out mediocrity. Do yourself a favor: find TC2 loose for a price in the neighborhood of fifty bucks. That's about as good as the deals get for it, and it ain't worth a whole hell of a lot in play value.