Assault Suits Valken Declassified

Genre: Action-Platformer / Shmup

Players: 1

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Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

Assault Suits Valken is the second game in developer Masaya’s “Assault Suit” series and a prequel to the original game, Target Earth, first released on Sega Genesis. Assault Suits Valken is a mech-centric Action-Platformer with Shmup sections originally released on the Super Famicom in 1992, with a version of the game coming to the US that same year under the title Cybernator, with some of the game’s scenes and artwork removed to comply with Nintendo of America’s censorship policies at the time.

This release of the game on Nintendo Switch in 2023 restores the cut content with an all-new English localization, adds an optional remastered soundtrack, includes new display and control options, gives players access to save states, and includes a wealth of bonus content such as a gallery of promotional art, a translated version of the original Super Famicom instruction manual, and audio interviews with one of the game’s designers.

This is clearly a lovingly-crafted port of the game, on par with the sort of quality we’ve come to expect from developer M2, well-known for their excellent work on the Sega Ages series. In particular, I really appreciate the game now letting players alter the speed of their aiming, which cuts down somewhat on the original game’s clunky control issues.

Having said that, the controls in this game are still extremely clunky, and you’ll frequently have to deal with the frustration of your mech not acting how you want it to. You’ll also have to deal with your mech’s gun having an extremely frequent need to reload/cool down, interrupting your attacks at the most inconvenient time. This issue on top of enemies often being bullet sponges may well frustrate you into just swapping to melee attacks, which are somewhat more reliable, but can also make it easier to take damage. On top of this, the Shmup sections are outright terrible, with players having a massive hitbox and with enemies still being bullet sponges leading to repeatedly taking damage that seems unavoidable.

I really want to like Assault Suits Valken – the 2D pixel art is still really appealing with lots of detail, and when the combat actually works, it’s delightful. But far more often things don’t work, and the clunky and frustrating issues this game has overwhelm its more positive elements. And that this mess of a game is encased within such a wonderful, quality port is even more sad, because all this effort feels somewhat wasted on a game that ultimately doesn’t deserve it, or at least it needed to have more work done to the original game to make this effort truly worthwhile.

tl;dr – Assault Suits Valken, elsewhere known as Cybernator, is an Action-Platformer with Shmup sections that has been given a wonderful port here with tons of extra content and options. Unfortunately, the game being ported is still a clunky, frustrating mess that doesn’t really deserve all this care and attention it’s received.

Grade: C

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