Karous, Japanese for raven, originally launched on Sega arcades and Dreamcast later on. Years after the original game, the shoot ‘em up gets a release on the Nintendo 3DS. It’s a great attempt to create something different in the shmup genre but it didn’t work out that great.
What is it?
Karous: The Beast of Re-Eden is a classic vertical-scrolling shooter where you need to take down wave after wave of enemies. You defeat them using your special mech, including a lot of guns and melee weapons. This switching between guns and blades is fun and keeps the game interesting during the first missions. You won’t find a lot of melee action in other shmup games so the inclusion of melee weapons is definitely a great decision. Aside of this you can also use bombs and that’s about it.
Karous plays and feels as a traditional shoot ‘em up game and that’s a bit of a shame. You can really tell that the developers tried some new approaches but never went all the way with them, resulting in a rather mediocre game. The game is divided into several small missions, all with another task to complete. Don’t expect breathtaking missions however. Most missions offer variations on ‘survive as long as possible’ or ‘kill that type of enemy’. Again nothing really new or innovating.
Ignore the story
To make things even more stranger, the game comes with a story mode without explanation. During missions, you’ll see some text messages popping up on the touchscreen. Most of the time those messages are very generic and even misplaced. You’ll never know who’s actually speaking to you and why they even bother saying anything. Shoot ‘em ups aren’t known for great stories but for Karous it really doesn’t make sense they tried to include a story that nobody will understand.
Level up your gear
To make the game interesting for the gamers, the level system of your weapons and other powers, works great. After completing levels, your weapons will gain levels, meaning they’ll get more powerful in the next missions. This system keeps it interesting for those who want some variation. They only downside to the system is that your weapons can get too powerful so that all challenge gets lost.
It’s nice to see that the developers invested a lot of time in creating a lot of weapons and powers. Before the start of a mission, you can select your weapons (guns, bombs and special ability). This means you can complete all levels using different strategies. The game isn’t interesting enough to actually replay a lot of missions but it’s good to see that there isn’t a set path to follow.
Still some performance problems
Aside of the rather mediocre gameplay, the game also suffers from other problems. The frame rate drops when there’s a lot of action on the screen and the entire game seems to freeze for a moment when this action really gets over the top. We can tolerate this in other games but in a fast paced shmup it just isn’t possible to ignore those bugs. Aside of this, the game doesn’t use the 3D effect of the 3DS. It seems like a straight Dreamcast port without any options for the Nintendo handheld.
| The good: | The Bad: |
| + Melee weapons | – Strange story |
| + Short missions | – Performance issues |
| + Level your gear | – Nothing special |
It’s a shame we need to conclude that this game never gets any better than mediocre. The story is worthless and the lack of 3D features is just strange. Thanks to the short missions however, it’s a perfect game to play from time to time in short sessions. It never thrills or excites but it’s fun for a while nevertheless. It’s not a bad port of a classic shmup but it could have been so much better!
