Bullet Witch Game Review
Bullet Witch initially released way back in 2007 on the Xbox 360, getting a mixed reception from critics, being developed by Cavia, and published on release by Atari, but the 2018 release on PC is published by XSEED Games who have become well known on Steam for bringing across localization ports of Japanese titles.
Having not played the initial game, I went into Bullet Witch not expecting anything. From the screenshots, it’s very abundantly clear that it’s purely a resolution re-work. The graphics look very dated compared to current day works, but it is nice to be able to play these types of games on higher resolutions on a big monitor. Graphical options are limited to a pre-launch window, but given the age of the title, it’s hard to imagine it will be too taxing even on the most moderate of gaming PCs.
The world is suffering from multiple natural disasters throughout the years, but in 2007, a huge demon invasion turns what was left of planet Earth into a wasteland, and by the year 2013, humanity is on the very brink of being wiped out. You play as Alicia Claus, a witch, and she is guided by an inner demonic power, which is known as the “Darkness”. She enters a destroyed city, against the advice of her inner demon. Whilst in the city she accompanies a resistance force to save the city from destruction. The story is a little lackluster and did leave me wanting more in the end.
Even though the story is lacking, and the graphics are dated I did enjoy my time playing Bullet Witch. You can really tell this title is a few generations old now. It really feels its age but it is fun.You play from a third person perspective over the shoulder view and the bulk of the combat is gunning demons down with a huge machine gun. Alicia can also use her massive gun as a melee weapon, but the melee combat mechanic feels very clunky and I hardly ever used it.
Other than using your machine gun, and some melee, Alicia also has the ability to use some magical abilities. You start off with a few basic abilities, however, you can unlock more by spending your skill points that you are rewarded with at the end of every level. The magical powers are probably the best part of Bullet Witch, due to giving a different spin on combat each time, and the lightning spell just absolutely kick-ass. All of the spells can also be upgraded using skill points too.
The gunplay is simple, you can zoom in with your weapons, but this doesn’t exactly make aiming any easier, the camera is just zoomed in closer to the target. You can also unlock new weapons using skill points too, the selection is shotgun, cannon, and Gatling gun. Over the course of a single playthrough, I was only able to unlock one of these, but the regular machine gun is still probably the best out of the four.
It wasn’t all bells and whistles with the gameplay though. The control scheme is horribly designed and it wasn’t until I was halfway through the story that I finally got to grip with the controls. Your special abilities are mapped to Z, X, and C, but you have to equip them first using an ability wheel first; it sounds simple, but as it’s such a foreign way of doing things nowadays; it just felt off.
Bullet Witch took me around four hours to complete. I could have done with another two or three more hours worth of content to truly be satisfied. There is an essence of replayability by playing on higher difficulties and getting competitive in the online player rankings. For those that enjoy that sort of mechanic it’s there, but for me, I just don’t have the interest in gaining ranks in a meaningless scoreboard.
Having never played Bullet Witch when it released over ten years ago, I went in not expecting much, but what I ended up getting was an enjoyable blast from the past with some classic seventh gen gameplay. A lackluster story is made up for with the high action gunplay.
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