Kanetake Ebikawa looks like a jolly fellow. What do you guys

Bandai struck a goldmine. The guy knows how to do toyetic yet aesthetically pleasing designs.

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>>15191752

Absolutely do not care for his Gundam designs one bit. His Darius Burst designs on the other hand, are fantastic and I was legitimately surprised when I learned he was responsible for them.

I guess like Okawara, and others still working for Banrise, the guy's creativity is just really hampered by their demands.

The Ebikawa look has its place, but I prefer Sunrise's growing trend of having mechanical design teams sharing the workload rather than a single person doing the finalized work, as drawing from multiple artists with unique styles helps to break up the same-machine look that results when you let one person do everything at the end of the day.

>>15191752
Ebikawa is way better than Yanase and his CGI tracing.

>>15191752
Just beat the upper route of Darius Burst EX earlier today. Golden Tyrant and Lightning whatever weren't terribly more difficult than their regular counterparts, but Knight Fossil of all things gave me some trouble.

I followed that by playing bottom route on regular using the Next. It's the first time I seriously played with the ship, which was probably a mistake because it's damn good. I hadn't really appreciated how useful it's fixed burst was. I got to Great Thing pretty easiler, and it was definitely my cleanest run through stage G. I got sloppy toward the end of the fight, sadly, and got blasted.

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>>15191752

Love this guy. Thank you for the Flauros, Ebikawa!

>>15191752
Shit just like the rest of his kin

>>15193565
Why you gotta shit up every designer thread, Katoki?

>>15191807
Neat, I didn't know.

I do dig them robo-fish-ships.

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>>15193517
Is the newest Darius friendly enough for beginner? I dig the aesthetics but I'm terrible at this kind of game.

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>>15194237
>Is the newest Darius friendly enough for beginner?

Yes. It's probably the best beginner's STG out there. It might seem a little scary at first with how much chaos can fill the screens, but the burst pod can block out so much of it that you don't have to focus too much on dodging all that much.

The big appeal of Darius games is their strong replay value and their beautifully hypnotic/atmospheric music. Vocals are actually rather reminiscent of Macross Plus' music thinking about it

>>15194277
Awesome.Gonna pick up it later.

>>15194277
>and their beautifully hypnotic/atmospheric music
Always count on Zuntata to deliver on that front.

>>15194237
>Is the newest Darius friendly enough for beginner?
It's probably the most beginner friendly STG I've played.

If you start on the easiest route (A-D-H) and with a simple ship (one without a burst engine, like Gaiden) it plays like a very typical game that's challenging but not super difficult.

After you get a feel for that, you can switch to a burst ship (Legend or Next) and experiment with the burst laser and the fixed burst gimmick. They're a little tricky to learn, but they are tremendously useful and powerful tools. Once you understand them parts of the game that were previously quite difficult become significantly safer.

From then on you can experiment with some of the weirder ships (Assault, Genesis) or further master the fixed burst system.

What really makes the game learner friendly is that progress is very immediately apparent. As you better understand the mechanics, the game becomes much safer, and you can progress farther on more difficult routes. Moreover, you become aware of different approaches you can take--you can lose to a boss's pattern and realize that you could play differently to make it easier.

It's also played in short increments. Each route is three stages, so you can play through the game in 15 minutes. And if you do lose, you can get back to where you lost very quickly to try again.