New DC shooters, who has played them?

[RadiantSvgun]

Trigger heart Excelia, Last Hope, and Karous have recently been released. I have Last hope, but do not have Trigger heart and Karous (crow). Has anyone played these yet?

[Muscelli]

I prefer karous

[djsquarewave]

I only have Exelica, but I like it a lot. Though, it's the only late-release DC shmup I've played other than Chaos Field and Psyvariar 2 (neither of which I much liked), so I dunno how much weight my opinion might hold.

It's quite nice, though, to grab an enemy from the top of the screen and pull it downward, eliminating the whole lot in one go. :)

[Julio III]

I've only got Triggerheart Exelica so far (waiting for Karous in the post still... actually, i think its just arrived :) ) and it is quite good but i haven't really got into it properly, or played it that much. I can see it being interesting but at the moment i don't understand the score system fully. I once got about 5 times my highest score on level 1 and don't understand how

[smork]

I've just gotten Karous and Trigger Heart in the mail, only given them a spin and haven't gotten in too deep yet. I'm not sure i like Karous as much as Radilgy yet, but repeated time with it will tell.

I think it takes a few hours of play sometimes before you can "get" a shooter.

[fishsandwich]

I've got all of them too. I'm not a big fan of Last Hope and Trigger Heart is just a little better. I like Karous a lot. One of my favorite shooters on the DC is Zero Gunner 2 so take that for what you will.

[RadiantSvgun]

It seems Karous is more popular. Is is a Bullet-hell type shooter? Since they are kinda pricey, I want to know which one to get first.

[GaijinPunch]

THE & Karous both sport small hitboxes, a scoring system, and lots of bullets. THE's system is way more involved.
The breakdown:

THE: Kill enemies and gather those pieces of cheese. These build your mulitplier which is applied to enemies you kill. Grab enemies and swing them to kill other ones. This gives more points, and can really raise your score if your multiplier is high. I depeletes your multiplier though.

Karous: Kill enemies with 1 of three weapons (shot, sword, shield) to gain points to level that weapon up. When your DFS meter is full, use it (a bomb, effectively) to gain even more experience for that weapon. Your overall level (level of each of the 3 weapons) is your multiplier, and never goes down. This adds a whole "longer you go, the higher your score will get" element to it. The only way to not score as you go further is to not kill the bosses.

Both games are quite easy. I 1CC'ed both of them in about a week, and didn't play them all that much. THE's bosses have different forms which are decided on one of your meters. Do really shitty on a stage, the boss might have 1 form. Do well, and you're looking at 5-6. Of course, the more bosses, the higher the score, and you will need them to trigger the extends.

Karous has a feature where bosses timeout to prevent completely jacking up your weapons. The downside is that it can make the last couple of stages boring. I could never figure out the patterns on the stage 4 & 5 bosses, so I just sat in the corner w/ my shield on and timed them out.

Neither are great. Both have poor visuals. Karous soundtrack is very nice though. Kind of D&B'ish w/ some lush techno thrown on. They're worth getting for some fun, but I don't see me playing them again.

[segagamer]

I agree with the previous post that neither is great. Both have average visuals and sounds. They're worth getting for some fun, but I don't see myself playing them again anytime soon.

[ubersaurus]

Finally got my Last Hope LE.

I'm digging the game, but then I set the lives to 7 and the difficulty to very easy, at which point the game is roughly on par with "Normal" for any other game.

Gorgeous, good music...I like it. I can see why most people wouldn't, though.

[Tron 2.0]

Just Exelica Heart Trigger and i've enjoy it so far.

Still i'm short on, Karous and Underdefeat since i haven't had a chance to get them still.

I neglected my dc for so long.. it took a sale at play-asia to finally pick up, Exelica Heart Trigger for it.

[jpark203]

I got all of them but never really play them that much. I'm not a big shooter fan, but they're fun to pop in every now and then. Trigger Heart's probably my favorite of the bunch though.

[Mark III]

Last Hope is decent but very hard and unforgiving. Basically your looking at R-Type level difficulty but with a much more underpowered ship. I like it so far but the constant deaths and respawning at checkpoints gets old real quick. It's also definately not as polished as the ther two, being a homebrew game. Graphically I would rate it as a middle of the road Saturn shooter. Very good for a homebrew game though, so it's a bit unfair to compare it to other shooters on the system.