Air Fortress
Main game
2.94 average rating based on 17 ratings
- Developers
- HAL Laboratory
- Publishers
- HAL Laboratory
- Platforms
- Family Computer, Nintendo Entertainment System
- Genres
- Arcade, Platform, Shooter
- Themes
- Science fiction
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is Air Fortress?
Skippable Game With Boring Shmup Segments And Overly Hard Later Platformer Parts
This review is for the Nintendo Entertainment System version
Note that I'm playing the original Japanese version, so I heard it's quite a bit harder. But had to stick to the chronology project rules ha
Preliminary: From what I'm gathering so far, the shmup segments are where you collect supplies for the action-adventure platformer segments? The first shmup segment was underwhelming, tho the background was nice. Hopefully the platformer part adds some spice. After finishing the first stage, it is mostly underwhelming: the Look underwhelming, the Sound enjoyable but underwhelming, the controls tight but overall gameplay underwhelming. The Core "bosses" were very straightforward. And I found out all that Energy and Bombs I built up and saved etc (which was overabundant in the first stage) resets between stages... I would've preferred to grind early and save a lot for later, because I read the later stages get super hard. So I guess I should bite my tongue about the underwhelming difficulty of the first stage ha.
Play: 7/10 I love that you can pause at any time and it's just a straight-up BAM paused. And the kickback from the weapons in the platformer segments is cute :-p As the stages went on, the shmup segment continued to be quite …
Note that I'm playing the original Japanese version, so I heard it's quite a bit harder. But had to stick to the chronology project rules ha
Preliminary: From what I'm gathering so far, the shmup segments are where you collect supplies for the action-adventure platformer segments? The first shmup segment was underwhelming, tho the background was nice. Hopefully the platformer part adds some spice. After finishing the first stage, it is mostly underwhelming: the Look underwhelming, the Sound enjoyable but underwhelming, the controls tight but overall gameplay underwhelming. The Core "bosses" were very straightforward. And I found out all that Energy and Bombs I built up and saved etc (which was overabundant in the first stage) resets between stages... I would've preferred to grind early and save a lot for later, because I read the later stages get super hard. So I guess I should bite my tongue about the underwhelming difficulty of the first stage ha.
Play: 7/10 I love that you can pause at any time and it's just a straight-up BAM paused. And the kickback from the weapons in the platformer segments is cute :-p As the stages went on, the shmup segment continued to be quite lame, even as it got more difficult. Just predictable and blah, maybe I'm growing out of side scroller shmups. And tho I enjoyed the platformer parts, there were too many elevator/tube/chutes and basically just shifting around. Give me more fun!
Overall, it was the gameplay of the platformer segments that saved the game and pushed me on and on. Despite not being amazing per se, it was fun feeling almost like a shoot em up with me dodging all the incoming projectiles, but having more control and platformer vibe in the controls. As I went into mid-game, I was finding the platformer segments more and more fun, because the difficulty was reasonable (while the difficulty of the shmup parts were just getting frustrating/ridiculous without savestates).
On my 2nd play session, all the same thoughts came to mind. Only additional things is how complex the later air fortresses get, so I relied more and more on the StrategyWiki maps. By no means were they linear for 4 and on. But with a map it was no problem. As everyone had warned me, Stage 6 and on are super complex and difficult. Things got a lot more irritating after that. (Wow yea in fact they just outright got awful after that. The difficulty jump was so bad. The shoot em up segments still were boring and the platformer part got sadistic. I somehow managed to almost get to the chute that would take me by the escape thingy, with only 64 Energy left and abusing savestates, but to top it off, then the air fortress exploded because the escape is timed. Definitely moving on without finishing.
Look: 7/10 The backgrounds and level sprites were nice, but dang, the main sprites were so underwhelming. As was the UI (very Metroid-esque main screen UI tho). The title screen animation of going toward a, like, space city (apparently the air fortress) is cool tho.
Sound: 7/10 Good enough tune. Got repetitive after a while but wasn't too irritating at least. And the sound effects weren't too intrusive.
Feel: 7/10 Argh! I wasted all my bombs at the start of Stage 2, mixing up the shoot buttons >.< Let's hope the Core fights go okay without them ha (it all ended up fine, indeed). Why would they have no power ups in the shmup sections? Well, no power-ups at all in the game. That really could have added a lot. Shmups aren't much without power-ups heh.
Attachment: 6/10 Tho I kept playing the game, stage after stage (oh, Instazome), I recognized again how underwhelming it all was. And my goodness how much time is used with transitions. If you're gonna do this many transitions, at least have amazing Look and Sound. Instead you had long between stage segments, with a mediocre fly away cutscene each time and mediocre world map type screen that you have no control over. Then you get to go through another tedious shoot em up segment to get to the quite a bit more fun jetpack/platformer segment. Rinse repeat. Still, I was pushing through despite the increasing difficulty. If I push through all 8 stages, it certainly says something--but how much more transitional waiting segments between tubes and stages and mediocre shoot em up parts can I handle? Haha. With all that being said, during this first play session, I found myself rushing back to do a little bit more before our movie time. Says a lot. If only it were only the platformer segments.
Interesting the 2nd quest has entirely different maps for some of the air fortresses. If only I enjoyed it enough to warrant the 2nd quest, but well-done to encourage replayability nonetheless. Oh, well, on the 2nd play session, I discovered there is definitely no reason to be so nice about the game. Stage 6 and on make the platformer part completely not fun as well, so it really wasn't worth pushing through as long as I did. With the boring shmup parts and the mediocre Look/Sound, really isn't much reason to play this.
Completion: Near end of Air Fortress 6 Playtime: 1h 30m
Beat, including the 2nd quest. The concept of this game was cool; shoot em sequence to approach each fortress followed by Metroid like platformer shooter to destroy each and get out alive. The game was good in some ways but disappointing or worse in others. Starting with the story, which was dumb. The fortress is some kind of entity? Why are there suddenly 8? It was a typical NES story, being nothing more than than a vague premise to do some action with no development along the way. Could have been a lot better. I liked the idea of collecting resources in the shoot em up part for use in the exploration part, but the shoot em up action was painfully simple. There was only the basic 3 shot gun without any fancy weapons or powerups, which put it far behind the majority of shoot em ups. I found the gun awkward to use at long range because of the delay after shooting 3 shots. Close to the right edge of the screen it fired a constant stream so there was a bit of risk vs reward for positioning. The enemies were fairly standard and there were plenty of narrow …
Beat, including the 2nd quest. The concept of this game was cool; shoot em sequence to approach each fortress followed by Metroid like platformer shooter to destroy each and get out alive. The game was good in some ways but disappointing or worse in others. Starting with the story, which was dumb. The fortress is some kind of entity? Why are there suddenly 8? It was a typical NES story, being nothing more than than a vague premise to do some action with no development along the way. Could have been a lot better. I liked the idea of collecting resources in the shoot em up part for use in the exploration part, but the shoot em up action was painfully simple. There was only the basic 3 shot gun without any fancy weapons or powerups, which put it far behind the majority of shoot em ups. I found the gun awkward to use at long range because of the delay after shooting 3 shots. Close to the right edge of the screen it fired a constant stream so there was a bit of risk vs reward for positioning. The enemies were fairly standard and there were plenty of narrow areas to go for while risking a crash. This part of the game felt a little like a chore to acquire as much resources as possible for the on foot part. There really should have been other weapons, especially with limited ammo and the ability to switch between them (like Mega Man), more challenging combat, and at least a few bosses. I beat the 1st 4 stages at normal speed without difficulty. Then I slowed it down because it was tough not to crash while gathering resources. Slow mode helped inside the fortresses too as they became larger, more complex and with more dangerous enemies.
The biggest problem with the Metroid style parts was the time limit for getting out alive. It was tense and atmospheric, reminding me of the end of Super Metroid, but the amount of time given was incredibly unforgiving. I could not get out in time for stages 5 and 6. I ended up using a password to skip 5 then redoing part of 6 from a backup save state. I started using online maps and walkthrough, finding out it was absolutely imperative to clear enemies along the escape route before triggering the timer. There was pretty much no allowance for combat in the time limit. Once I started clearing the way I had no trouble getting out on time for the rest of the game. Without online maps though this game would be a huge pain to figure out the correct escape path. There was no in game map at all and some Mario style pipes did not lead back when entered from the other end. You really would have to map each stage by hand and use some trial and error to get out; not fun. Plus it got old always having to escape like this. They should have mixed it up and definitely included boss fights. The cores were all the same other than some variation in the other enemies present. I liked that enemies did not respawn, other than some of the humanoids. Some enemies dropped health or ammo but there was a distinct lack of reward for exploration; no permanent upgrades, no ammo for other weapons, not even objectives to complete like disabling a trap or finding a key etc. There were plenty of times where damage was unavoidable with enemies camping entrances or positioned so as to be impossible to hit from the front. It was a bit cheap but the hp pool was actually huge. A few times I used the recoil from shooting to propel me backwards through enemy fire. Most enemies were fairly easy to kill or avoid, even the homing turrets that could only be destroyed with bombs. There were 2 giant robots in the final stages that I guess could count as a final boss but they were trivial to defeat. It just took a while and would definitely prevent timely escape.
The 2nd quest added nothing new, other than a bit more difficulty, and the ending was nothing at all. It was not worth playing through again. The game was interesting but a bit of a slog and could have been so much better with more in depth and varied gameplay.
6.2/10