Frantic 2

Sometimes when I play the game, I think to my self, "OMG! This game RULEZ!" But now, when you play it too much, it gets boring, then duller, then sensless, then you'll be wondering why are you playing this, then you remember-this game was supposed to be awesome, exhilrating, and not-boring-stupid-dull. It really makes me mad that the adrenaline bar has only a few passive skills to use and when Frantic 3 comes out, I hope it becomes the best game ever.

Can anyone explain the scraping/combo/power-up system?

Like its predecessor, far too easy, which spoils an otherwise fun game. It should take a leaf from Touhou's book and turn its Insane difficulty into its Normal one, then go from there.

So I haven't played it yet but just looking at the first screenshot made me :O

Second impressions to come shortly.

I have been waiting for Frantic 2 ever since I found Frantic 1, mostly because it is the one shooter I don't suck at and that I will play for more than 10 minutes. The first one was total awesomeness, but it needed a lot of work. For one thing, it looked super hard but when you actually played it it was ultra easy. But no. 2 was a disappointment! They didn't make many major changes and it is definitely still way too easy. But then again, I got no. 35 on the high scores list! Let's see if it lasts more than 5 minutes...

I got 39th on the Episode 1: Easy scoreboard! 13,546,983...Could have been better though. This game really lives up to it's name, even on easy.

This is decently fun, but I don't have a clue how the powerup system works. Is it explained anywhere?

Agreeing with JIGuest that compared to Touhou this is child's play

There's no law that says you have to compare this to Touhou. It's a manic shooter that casual gamers can play. I agree that it would be a stronger game if the higher difficulty levels were significantly more difficult, but it's just not aimed at hardcore vertical shooter fans.

This shouldnt be compared with Touhou; Touhou is made for ultra experienced "i-have-no-live-whatsoever" people who want to train. This is a game for people who dont want to train but to have fun for 10-20 minutes.

Just my 2 cents...

Yeah, there's pretty much no reason you would ever want to compare any shooter to Touhou. Doing so is just unfair to the game in question, as only a select few games are more difficult. This is a casual gameplay blog, any game where you have to practice multiple times just to beat the easiest setting is pretty much off the list.

Touhou is practically its own genre, why do people always try to compare other games to it? It's like comparing Mario to IWBTG.

I played this on Newgrounds earlier. It is incredible!

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER before reading this post: I have Cave games on arcade PCBs, which probably makes me a game snob, at least when it comes to this stuff. Consider this fact when reading the below rant.

This is WAY too easy for this type of gsame. For one thing, health bars have no business being in a manic shmup. PERIOD. It's 3 hits and a game over, got it? I think my Grandma could beat Espgaluda or Ikaruga if you gave her 30 lives to work with. If we're feeling nice today, maybe we won't send you back to the beginning of the level every time. And none of these ridiculous uber-bombs that last so long you could grab a cup of coffee while they're going off. That's OK, the bullets are going to take half an hour to reach you anyway. Granted, manic shooters tend not to have particularly fast bullets, but these are traveling at about half the speed they need to be to be challenging to dodge. All in all, the whole thing feels like someone saw a grainy 15fps cameraphone video of someone playing Dodonpachi Daioujou in a Japanese arcade, and interpolated the rest.

That said, there were a few things that were good here. The Warning Forever style bosses were a nice touch, and some of the bullet patterns are well done (if, as I already said, way too slow.)

why were you going on about this game being hard? beat the first episode on hard without dropping below 3/4 health

It bugs me that the stuff you buy doesn't carry over to the next episode. Kinda takes away the fun of buyin stuff in the first place..

I think the first replier had the best insight: this is more of a bridging sequel between a flawed but good idea that was the first, and the hopefully brilliant third.

@ Brian: Yes. That makes you a snob. :p

I only compared it to Touhou because it says:
'On "easy" difficulty, the game is a bit of a bully even to veteran fans of the scrolling shooter.'
I guess you can call me a veteran fan... and this is still the easiest vertical shooter I have ever played.

Enjoying the game, but it would be nice if there were a help menu with some explanations, i.e. what is scraping (thought I'd figured it out, but either I can't tell a laser from a a bullet or my 'stats' menu disagrees)? how do multipliers work? why does the special attack seem to randomly fire even though I haven't triggered it?

this game pleases me
but I dont like how you lose all your weapons after each episode

I don't understand why such people like Brian with their "uber"skill don't play touhou and beat every record in there :P

No, I don't have uber skills at this type of game (I can make it about halfway through the second level in Dodonpachi, and that's about it.) And I can beat this game on hard difficulty without even being challenged. There's a certain difficulty level that's required for this type of game to work, and it's just not here.

I just checked it out and it's definitely an improvement upon the first. I felt the mouse controls were a bit off since you couldn't see where the mouse was and you didn't auto lock to the mouse position, however I'd rather play with keyboard anyway so it didn't really bug me. Overall a definite improvement upon the first.

Yes it's fun, yes it isn't hard on the easier difficulties (though it probably did oversell itself a bit), but my problems with the game are the very similar music tracks, and the fact that the game doesn't auto-save. If you close it and start it up again, you're back at the very beginning, having to unlock everything again.

Also, for reference, "Scraping" is getting close to enemy shots, but not close enough to get hit. There's an option to show your ship's hitbox (which shows up as a big red dot that's actually smaller than your ship's size, which can make scraping confusing if your ship is bigger or wider than the dot) and a larger circle which counts anything that moves through it a scrape. It's supposed to reward you for getting close, but not too close, to enemy fire.

Little incentive to upgrade when it will all be snatched away from you shortly afterwards.

I love this game so much! After playing this, I decided to influence my skills on playing shmups. I already played the first one, but hey, this one is a lot better. There tons of other features you can do in this game, such as Frantic difficulty.

Anyone know how to unlock the last ship? I beat the game on Frantic hoping to jump right back in and play it as a nearly-invulnerable behemoth, but when I clicked back through it was still ghosted.

@wastedtime, look in the feats section it tells you how to unlock everything, and just for reference, you have to beat a level with a 100 or more multiplier. Which I still haven't done yet >_>

A bit of a grindfest, especially the bosses. A lot of them are repetitive, with the same lasers and cluster shots and rockets.
The upgrades not carrying over is what makes this game playable. You unlock new cards, which still require good performance to upgrade. The enemies don't have to be OMGBBQ powerful near the end because of this.
The last ship

i think this game can be a warmup to touhou
aka play arcade play this then if you want harder play touhou!