Battle Garegga (Saturn)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
6 Difficulty levels
7 Stages
Ship speed fixed, selectable at start
- - - - - - -
Developed by Raizing
Published by Electronic Arts in 1998

When digging into the history of shmups, it's not uncommon to notice a few polarizing games that in time became legendary. Radiant Silvergun and its spiritual sequel Ikaruga are prime examples of this statement, but while Ikaruga rose to fame and was subject of incredible hype during the Dreamcast era, my feeling is that Radiant Silvergun tends to be left aside due to the emphasis on chaining if you want to survive and see the game to the end. It's a mechanic that's not everyone's cup of tea, yet Radiant Silvergun has an ardent fanbase of course.

I'm drawing this comparison because in lots of ways Battle Garegga suffers from the same fate of Silvergun. While revered by many as one of the best arcade shmups ever designed, it's also heavily criticized due to the need to cope with a very special kind of challenge if you want to survive and see the game to the end. The magnum opus of Raizing, one of the companies that flourished from the ashes of Toaplan during the 90s, Battle Garegga comes with an enormous amount of intricacies that hide beneath a seemingly normal military/sci-fi themed design. In shmup hardcore circles the game is also synonym with its creator Shinobu Yagawa, who took upon himself and his company the task of making an arcane shooter with a strong visual influence from Taito's Gun Frontier.

Crisp sprites and an overwhelming attention to detail are one of the strongest assets of the game, as is the awesome soundtrack. Enemies explode in puffs of shards and smoke that vanish on screen in the most diverse ways, and such as the gameplay itself never in the same exact fashion. It gives a special vibe to a title that's very pleasing to the eyes and ears, but playing it as you would play any regular shmup won't cut it if you're the kind of gamer who likes to abide by the 1CC rule. You will be punished hard for that. And the only way to escape utter and excruciating failure is to learn how to deal with rank.

Silver Sword and the approach towards the 4th boss

First, the basics. Button A shoots, button B activates the so-called weapon (also commonly referred to as bombs, which is understandable depending on the chosen ship) and button C switches the formation of whatever options you have. All ships have very specific characteristics related to speed, firepower and weapon types, and depending on the button used to activate your choice you'll also get increased speed (button B), smaller hitbox (button C) or both (either A+B+C or selection timeout), with button A giving you the default speed+hitbox. What's particularly interesting is that each ship variation comes with a different color and has its own name! My ship of choice when playing the Sega Saturn port, for example, is commonly known as Wild Snail (A), with variants called Iron Mackerel (B), Rust Champion (C) and Golden Bat (A+B+C).

A plethora of items will appear from destroyed enemies, falling down the screen if coming from aerial foes. Small and large power-ups, small and large weapon icons, options (you can have up to 4) and medals for points. The main shot has five power levels, and the more powered-up you are the more small items you need to upgrade the ship. 40 small weapon fragments will result in another full weapon in reserve, which is also obtained by taking the large weapon icon. You can of course deploy partial weapon attacks with whatever fragments you have in stock. Options can be arranged in 5 regular formation types: spread, tail, front, rotate and trace (point to the opposite of player's movement). There are, however, special formations achieved by collection items in a certain order.  

Medals increase in value as long as you collect them before the next medal(s) appear and you don't lose any of them without having another on screen. Maxed out medals are worth 10.000 points each, but if the medal chain is lost then the next one will be worth its initial value of 100 points. That's the main source of scoring, along with a few tricks that help you achieve more points faster if you're able to pull them off.

Picking up the relevant items and powering up the ship as fast as possible would be anyone's expected strategy, as well as getting all icons in excess for a few more points. And this is where normal conventions absolutely do not apply. Rank in Battle Garegga is directly influenced by how long you survive, how much you shoot, the amount of items collected and how many lives you have in stock, among a few other minor things. This means that powering up too fast and picking up all items the game throws at you will increase the difficulty to the point the game becomes unmanageable, be it for the density and speed of bullets, the increased stamina and aggressiveness of all enemies or the absolutely random behavior of some bosses.

Look, ma, how tiny my hands and feet are!
(courtesy of YouTube user The VideoGames Museum)

Adapting to all the constraints mentioned above is something every player needs to learn and cope with, there's absolutely no going around that. That said, the only action that effectively works to reduce rank is dying, so the most important thing to have in mind is to suicide regularly, keeping your reserve at no more than two lives – at least during the first half of the game. At the same time, regular suicides demand some dedication to scoring because the more extra lives you get the more suicides can be properly planned. Besides the extend interval of 1 million points, a single extra life will appear if you destroy the large ship that appears in stage 3 when it fully parks at the end of the level. Interesting details about deaths is that you lose only one shot power level when dying, the weapon stock is preserved when you die and you get 20 weapon fragments upon respawn.

Valley, Plateau, Factory, Plant, Cloud, Base and Airport. These are the names of the stages, each one of them putting up a harder challenge than the previous one. By the time you reach the Base in stage 6 the game is already really difficult no matter how low rank is, and that's where resources should be maximized for what's coming ahead in the final stretch of the game. Blink and you'll be toast. I lost count of how many times some very good runs ended there because I got sloppy. Just for the record, I wasn't bothered at all by the tiny thin bullet sprites. Bullet visibility is after all a common complaint from many people about Battle Garegga.

 

Click for the option menus translation for Battle Garegga on the Sega Saturn

Whatever your objective is when approaching this game, soon it becomes clear how deep the gameplay actually is, especially when you decide to try out different ships. After all, it's also possible to use four secret characters from Mahou Daisakusen / Sorcer Striker, either via a code or simply by changing a setting in the options of the Saturn port. Gain, Chitta, Miyamoto and Bornnam do have variants based on the selection buttons, only with no name changes (they are then referred to, for example, as Gain-A, B, C or ABC). For an in-depth, comprehensive description of all the subtleties about characters and gameplay, the Shmups.wiki webpage is a wonderful, if not mandatory, source of information.

It took me a long time to come to grips with Battle Garegga. It wasn't easy for a series of reasons, but mainly lack of time and stamina to practice. Slowly I warmed up to it though, spending whatever time I had to finally pursue the 1CC with the Golden Bat ship. It's got a piercing shot, a decent weapon and reasonable flying speed. My main strategy was to suicide twice on the first boss, once on the second boss and depending on how much I was able to score do it again prior to the fight against the third boss.  By then I'd have all 4 options, maximizing the weapon stock and suiciding as required to keep a low life reserve. Then from stage 6 on it was all out war. Tough as nails, but always engaging and never quite the same as the previous credit.

The port for the Japanese Sega Saturn is great and has all you need to enjoy the game to the fullest, including TATE mode, an arranged soundtrack, nice configuration tweaks and the previously mentioned ability to easily choose the secret characters. It was the only home version available for almost two decades until the joint release for the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One, titled Battle Garegga Rev. 2016.

Here's my final 1CC result, playing with Golden Bat in the Arcade difficulty. Arcade is the default setting selectable from the main option menu, and is the same as difficulty 4 when you activate the Simple options.