Small rules correction: "If a heroine has multiple star effects, they all trigger each time a star is cleared in any order" - last sentence in the Star Bullets paragraph.
That whole review was ADORABLE omg I love these family reviews lately. Laughed a lot. AND I actually want to play this with my kids now. The 3-minute theme music timer is a great touch.
I think Tom sums it up best in the end: it's an incredibly unique experience, and I loved how different it felt from other boardgames. I've never played anything like it, except maybe Tash-Kalar a tiny bit (but only because of the pattern-matching element). It's the first boardgame I played that truly evoked a video-game feeling while still being like a boardgame.
@@CarpeGuitarrem yeah I like them both I also love puzzle fighter. Sad thing is both bullet and puzzle strike is a great game that deserves more spotlight than they are getting
Learning how each character works is the tricky part. It's best to pick one you think looks cool and just stick with them for a few games and get used to them before you switch it up with a different character.
To be precise, the chain of cultural influence is as follows: "Shoot-'em-up" video games (aka "shmups") > "Bullet hell" (or in Japan, "danmaku") - shmups that feature complex patterns of dozens to hundreds of enemy bullets > Shmups in which your character and the enemies aren't fighter jets, spacecraft, aliens, etc., but instead things like fairies and girls drawn in anime style ("cute-'em-ups"). (So it's on-theme for the music to sound like a video game.)
It was brutal, I tried it in tabletopia and it's difficult. And this is coming from someone who like punishing games. Problem is the game is so asymmetric that some boss is super strong against certain character and super weak against other.
Can you get the soundtrack on another platform besides Spotify? Because we all know Spotify killed music, therefore I refuse to download it. He who still buys CD's and Vinyl salutes you!!
I hope my kids grow up loving anime too. You're an extremely fortunate man Tom Vassel. :) Great looking game, great review and great kids. Three thumbs up, if possible.
You can find them on youtube too and you'll get the song names from there. Just copy and paste this in youtube searchbar: "Bullet♥︎ Soundtrack" and it should show the correct playlist. If you can't do that, the playlist can be found at "Level 99 Games" youtube page.
The decision to name every box of characters "Bullet [insert symbol here]" does not strike me as a good one. Currently there are Heart and Orange, with Star in the works.
@@jcatterwaul yeah, I got it from the video, but this genre also could be called "space invaders" for what it is worth - there are also some things falling down at a player :D The gameplay and the theme rather remind me of Guitar Hero or DanceDanceRevolution, that is why ;)
Unless I missed it, Tom should have addressed the card quality. It is atrocious. Easy the worst I've gotten in a game in many many years. Even sleeved, they still feel flimsy. And the edges feel rough, like they were cut with a dull blade.
@@SeerMagicX I looked and you are right, they are not linen finish, but they don't stand out to me as being bad quality cards, although I really do wish the player boards were cardboard instead of cardstock. That's my only gripe with the game, that and having to wait for more characters to come out!
the dating profiles and character art for the underage girls in the game makes me extremely uncomfortable. They got even worse in upcoming expansion, featuring more adult focused underage characters. In japan these kind of "like dislike" profiles are often attached to more adult leaning pedophilia content that's animated as a way to skirt the law over there.
The expansion characters are from Japanese indie games. Japan loves and idolizes underage girls. People don't really even bat an eye about this stuff in Japan.
@@tomasxfranco unfortunately even if I was oblivious, my partner also knows about underage wifu culture and would instantly leave me, so not much choice there.
Dating profiles? I guess Street Fighter 2 wanted me to date Blanka when I let the game sit at the title screen and it tells me his weight and body measurements. If your issue is that girls (or anyone, for that matter) aren't allowed to wear skirts, or that you find an anthropomorphized dog attractive, then I think that's entirely on you. As it turns out, people are allowed to wear skirts, and showing what people like or dislike helps you know them a little bit better so that they aren't just faceless entities.
