A dog-gone good swordsman — Dogurai review

Anyone else remember the older days of gaming, where we had limited pixels, colors, and gameplay options? Sure, I wasn’t around during the beginning with games like Pong, but I grew up with games like Pokemon on the GameBoy. That right there is one of my earliest memories of old school graphics. With all the graphical upgrades that have been developed over the years, many people want flashy, AAA level quality from their games. That being said, it’s nice when games pay homage to those classic styles that got us where we are today. Dogurai uses limited colors and pixels in order to create an enjoyable platformer with a retro feel to it. It may not be a long adventure, but it’s easily worth the time to embark on it.

Dogurai plays very similarly to Mega Man games, so if you’re familiar with those, then you’ll adjust very quickly here. By that I mean you play as the hero Bones, fighting through eight levels that are filled with platforming and robot enemies. After the first level, you can play the next four in any order you wish, so take your pick. Each of these five levels have a robot boss at the end, which all have a Mega Man feel to them. They aren’t as humanoid as the robot masters, but they do follow the themes of their levels in terms of fighting style. For example, the lava level has a phoenix that shoots fireballs at you. The last three levels are in a set order, similar to when you are making your final stretch towards Dr. Wily. I know I’m mentioning Mega Man a lot here, but the inspirations are clearly visible as you play. It’s not a bad thing; in fact, it adds to the retro feel that I previously mentioned.

Now, unlike Mega Man, you don’t get any special abilities from defeating the robot bosses. You only complete their level and then move on. This means that they have no real weaknesses, but then again, you only have one attack. Speaking of controls, besides moving, you have an attack button, a jump button, and a slide button. The slide is useful for quickly moving through long stretches of area, slipping under hazardous obstacles, and getting through tight spaces. Other than that, you’ll mostly be jumping and striking down foes in your way. The controls are very simplistic and easy to learn, which I appreciated. You don’t get any introduction to the controls, so not having to learn much helps. One neat thing is certain enemies, including bosses, have specific moments where an exclamation point appears next to them. Attacking them during this time triggers a special attack where you launch them into the air and slash through them multiple times. Once in the air, you’ll be given a sequence of five directional arrows that you need to repeat in order to continue the attack. Arrows appear one at a time, and making a mistake ends the attack early. I love this move because it helps you do some really good damage to the bosses. Also, it makes you feel like a true samurai.

As you progress through the levels, there are health pickups scattered around to help you out. Some of these are in obvious places, while others are in sneaky sections that you have to be watching out for to find. For example, there are some random openings that you can slide through that lead to rooms only containing health pickups. Dogurai was more generous with health pickups than I expected, but I preferred it that way. They even have health placed right before the boss fights to allow you to prepare yourself. Speaking of generous, on normal difficulty you’re given infinite lives; that means when you die, you just respawn at the last checkpoint you reached. There are no checkpoint markers, so where those respawns are located are a mystery to me. What I do know is that dying during a boss fight respawns you outside the boss room, so thankfully there’s no trek back to them. Without spoiling anything, I want to mention something I didn’t realize when I first played through the game. There are four hidden computer chips, with one contained within each of the four levels you can play in any order. I only got three and found out what happened if I got the fourth. If you can get all four, I’d say go for it.

In terms of difficulty, I’d say it’s moderate compared to similar games. It’s not super hard to complete the levels and defeat the bosses, but it’s not a cakewalk either. You need to carefully time your jumps, wait for openings to strike foes, and avoid as much damage as possible. If you can do that, then you’ll do just fine. That being said, some aspects such as the icy floors are annoying to deal with no matter what. The ice level was easily the part I disliked the most. As previously mentioned, the graphics aren’t anything special, but the retro aesthetic is very charming. Be forewarned that the entire color palette changes depending on what level you’re on. So one level turns everything to a blue tint, another one makes it orange, another goes green, and so on. It’s not the most attractive look, but it’s also what some games were like years ago. Dogurai only takes a couple hours to beat, but those two hours were a good time. I do wish it hadn’t ended so quickly, but for the style of game it makes sense. For $4.99, it’s a good way to spend a couple hours, so if you’re looking for some retro platforming, why not give it a shot?

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