Syakuga is a 2D Action game that is a love letter to the iconic Splatterhouse series. There are many similarities between the two, to the point that this could be a re-imagining of Splatterhouse 1. We play as a legally distinct pink-masked antihero who has found himself dying and crawling through a barren landscape. After slowly inching his way across this eerie-looking field, he comes across a mask which restores his mobility and grants him strength. In return for what? Who can say, this game is entirely in Japanese, so the slow text crawl was sadly lost on me.
Not understanding Japanese can be a hindrance in Syakuga. Simple things like changing the many settings available to the player can prove challenging. You’ll need to load up an app on your phone to translate it via your camera. That goes for the tutorial too. It is quite in-depth but of little use to those unable to understand the language. This is not a slight against the title. It is just a heads-up on what you can expect. After that initial learning curve, Syakuga is smooth sailing from then on since it doesn’t have much in the way of text throughout.
Granted we don’t change it in the settings; we start off with three hearts and lives. There are no continues here. Once we lose all three of our lives, it is back to the main menu. It is a lot less harsh than it sounds. We can simply jump into the level select screen and get right back into the stage in which we lost. The massive pile of muscles that is our character is controlled with three buttons, barring our movement keys. Those buttons allow us to grab, attack, and jump. This isn’t a platformer, and there are rarely things you are required to jump over. Your primary use in jumping is to transfer into a slidekick upon hitting the ground. It requires precise timing but is your mightiest attack and is needed to pass across some obstacles.
Depending on the foe that you grab, you will be given a set of two options. The first is to decapitate them and fling their heads towards another enemy. It is an extremely useful way to dispatch enemies quickly, yet the trade-off is in the danger of getting close enough to grapple them. Your second option comes into play with the more humanoid-looking foes. The main feature of this game is your ability to have sex with all manner of questionable things. Each enemy you can impale with your one-eyed snake has three unique animations. This is not a gimmick. Going at it long enough for you to ejaculate will get you another heart, allowing you to take more damage before dying. Utilizing the enemies you can bang for the added resources will significantly help through this hellish journey.
Our ability to essentially recover health at will is offset by an ever-encroaching wall of death chasing us. You can’t spend all day pounding away at demon vaginas. We still have a level to clear and foes that require slaying on our path to the exit. It is crucial to keep an eye on the top right of the screen, which states how far away that insta-death wall is. With our time limited, it is best to not attempt finishing off inside every monster you grapple. It is often better to slowly edge yourself to an orgasm over the course of a few foes. Or simply killing them if time truly isn’t on your side. The sex is a well-implemented and interesting mechanic that is more fun than a simple timer like in Splatterhouse.
There are several occasions where we can find weapons to use against our enemies. All of them are melee-based and will destroy anything in a single hit. They are incredibly satisfying to use, and in a nod to Splatterhouse, the blunt weapons splat your foe’s corpse into the background. It looks pretty odd when the environment is that of a forest and its corpse is smashed against nothing but thin air, yet it is hardly something we have much time to look at as the death-wall chases us. If you couldn’t tell by now, this is quite the violent title. With no need to worry about censoring themselves as Splatterhouse did for the Arcade/Home Console audience, Syakuga puts that freedom to good use. This can get pretty messed up and crazy.
That craziness isn’t contained to just the violence. This entire title feels like a fever dream or a drug-induced hallucination. It is centered around the theme of sex and rebirth, with things progressively getting stranger over time. One of your first instances of this is after clearing a stage, in which you are then taken to a bonus event. It has you play as a cell with the goal of reaching the end of the tunnel without touching either a wall or an obstacle. I assume it symbolizes the sperm going through the uterus and reaching the ovary. The music in this event also makes me feel like I’m tripping balls. As out of the blue as it occurs, these bonus events are enjoyable and beneficial for proper stages if you grab the health orbs that earn you an extra heart. Syakuga is not just Splatterhouse. It certainly becomes its own thing despite how much it borrows from that series.
Where that experimental nature may be less wanted is during the last third of the game. It features some shmup sections, more than enough to become troublesome if the player isn’t skilled in that genre. They are not bonus events but proper levels. The player can lose quite a bit of hearts and possibly even lives to get through these. Aside from suddenly swapping genres on us, its problem is that it is introduced so late into the journey with no prior indication. With our ability to select stages and return after dying, it will mainly be an issue for those going for a high score or a 1CC. These sections, while basic, are fun enough as far as Shmups go. The only actual fault I can attribute to it is the color of projectiles cause them to blend in too much with the background. It is hardly invisible, but it can catch you off-guard if you’re not paying close attention.
Syakuga has a range of bosses to defeat. Whether that be from giving them a creampie to punching their breast like that one meat-locker scene in the Rocky movie depends. Some are even solely faced via the Shmup sections, which are far less entertaining. I find that reaching them tends to be more challenging than the boss fight itself, yet they are a nice change of pace. This is a good time to mention just how much adjusting the difficulty can alter the level. You will definitely be missing out if you simply play it on default or lower and never attempt to replay it again. It can go from “why did he say the slide-kick is useful?” to “how on Earth did I live without it?”. The difficulty affects a ton from the total enemy count, boss fights, and obstacles. However, I do wish it had a separate one for the Shump sections. Raising the challenge is currently an all-or-nothing type of deal, which is hardly ideal when dealing with two vastly different genres.
There is full controller support here, and we are able to enter fullscreen by pressing F4. Minus some slight hitches when loading up a level, I didn’t experience any technical issues. Once you finish the campaign, there is a Gallery Mode in which you can freely view all the sex animations you’ve unlocked. If you don’t want to bother unlocking them all the legitimate way, the dev gives us instructions on how to activate a cheat for all of the hentai and to play the extra levels. It is a slightly complex process which I will not go through here. I highly suggest going into the title’s root folder and translating the text files for clearer steps on how to go about it than I would be able to provide.
Syakuga took me less than an hour to beat, but it strongly encourages repeated playthroughs. I’ve played it for far longer. I love how customizable it is. You can easily give yourself max lives and hearts while on the easiest difficulty for a stress-free experience. On the other hand, we Splatterhouse fans molded by high-stress gameplay can up that difficulty and go in with a single life if we choose. Whatever your choice or way of playing it, this is a darn fun game. The music, the enemy design, and its atmosphere are all great. If you were a fan of Splatterhouse back in the day, you should at least try the demo if you don’t mind the adult content. That said, I’m of the opinion that they went in a little too hard in the Shmup genre, to the point of the last couple of bosses all being relegated to it. Syakuga is a bizarre game, indeed. It has its flaws, but I’m glad that I experienced it and will more than likely continue playing it from time to time.
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