Dangan PS1 Review

Dangan is an arcade-styled beat-em-up that was released for the PlayStation one back in 2000 and this game was an exclusive to the japanese region only. 

So the idea behind this game is that it is a top-down style action beat em up where you can incorporate both beat em up style mechanics where you can get into fights against your opponents but you can also use weapons likes of guns like handguns, machine guns, shotguns, flamethrowers among other weapons that you will collect throughout the course of play. 

And you get the chance to play as a number of different characters that all have some sort of influence throughout the entire story and the idea is to complete levels while defeating enemies and get into likes of the end bosses and eliminating the bosses at the end of each level and continuing on with the journey. 

There's actually quite very little information about this game online that i've been able to find other than the fact is that the game does have some really cool ideas like the gameplay controls work really well even with the likes of the beat em up mechanics it is very easy to utilize even with the likes of the shooting mechanics but where the game really is lacking and where it mainly got slated from is the spammy tactics that's the computer ai uses and even in terms of the level design. 

Mainly being with the likes of at different points throughout each of the levels you will have different variations of gun turrents or you'll have different variations of gun style turrets or flamethrowers that will be positioned at different points around each of the level maps. Sometimes they can generally just get in your way and if you get too close to them they can literally almost eliminate you very very quickly. 

They'll literally drain all your health but to make matters worse is the fact is that the enemy ai once you move off screen enemies just keep constantly spawning at random once they go off screen so you can never be more than a couple of seconds without enemies coming in trying to shoot you or to punch you. 

So what will happen is later on in the game you'll find that you'll get to points in levels where you'll be surrounded by enemies trying to get past the turret or you're trying to take it out but if you get too close to all of those elements you will pretty much be wiped out. 

So what i've even found having played the game myself and even from other reviews that i have managed to see online the best course of action is ideally to literally just keep running and avoid everything until you can get to the end of the level because there is no real tactics as such because enemies placements just keep spawning all the time that you don't really have very little to go on so the gameplay can get quite repetitive very quickly and to make matters worse the boss fights themselves are extremely difficult because the bosses themselves constantly spam their attack moves so it can be very very difficult to really even get close to them to even hit them or to take any damage from them. 

Sometimes you have to kind of use spammy tactics yourself like to get them close to a wall so that when you knock them down you can punch or kick them back down again and you just have to continuously spam that attack until you've managed to take them out. 

Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but it's the best course of approach to eliminating the bosses and that in itself can get quite frustrating but even with that the enemy bosses will take double the amount of health out of you than you can out of them so they can wipe you out in a matter of only a couple of seconds where we can take you up to sometimes three to five minutes or even longer to even take all of their health. 

So it can leave the game to be very very frustrating but the most frustrating part for myself from playing the game you can get through most of the levels easy enough when you get to a certain point and then the hardest part really is to defeat the bosses but you will come to certain levels especially later on in the game where you end up having to go through small narrow hallways but the problem with it is because of the clunky mechanics and the control system especially when you're trying to shoot out turrets from a distance it's very very hard to do so because you can never really get yourself positioned in a way that you can hit them or even connect with a hit from a weapon to really do enough damage to the turret and the problem is if you get too close they'll take a lot of health from you. 

But then you've also got enemies coming up from behind you constantly as soon as you take out one or two enemies within two or three seconds enemies just keeps constantly spawning and spawning and spawning and you will get to a point in certain levels where the hallways are that narrow and there's always a turret directly at the end of the passage where you cannot get past it and the only way to get past it is to have a strong enough weapon to be able to do enough damage but the problem you have is that you have to stop and you have to aim on the spot to be able to shoot the turret without taking any real damage but then you've constantly got human enemies coming at you from behind punching your kicking and shooting you with their weapons that by the time you've tried to get past even one turret three quarters of your health power is gone then you get to the next section only to do the same thing again and then you're completely wiped out and then when you die you have to restart the entire level all over again. 

And for myself playing this i found that i had to do that quite a number of times before i eventually had to give up it just got so repetitive that it became extremely frustrating so i can see why from the reviews that i have seen why a lot of people genuinely don't really play this game it has some nice features mind you in terms of what it does offer but it's just not executed as well as it could have been. 

It could have been so much better than it actually is which is quite a pity because it does have some nice visuals it does have some nice ideas and the combat mechanics work really well but again it just depends on certain factors especially even with the gunplay depending on the positions that you're in especially when you're in narrow corridors it's very hard to take out a turrent or some sort of contraption when you've constantly got enemies spamming kicks at you and trying to shoot you the whole time. 

You never have really a second to breathe in the game and more often than not it will lead you to absolute frustration to the point that you will quit the game i can almost guarantee you will quit the game because you'll just get so annoyed by it. It will take quite a bit of skill and more to point luck to really get past some of the later levels in the game but if you're persistent with it and you do have the patience to put up with these type of spammy tactics in games you could try it out if you're able to prolong the inevitable really but if you want something that does present the challenge this is definitely the game for you but for others it's probably best to avoid it all together which is a pity because it does have some nice features it just could have been like i said executed a lot better. 

But i'll leave that up to you to decide what you think of it yourself and i would love to know your thoughts on dangan for the playstation one if you have played it yourself or did you even know that the game existed? 

I'd love to hear what your thoughts are of this game so be sure to share them in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Dangan, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...