Super Nintendo Look - Cotton 100%

Life isn't easy for Cotton. She just wants to relax and eat willow candies, yet disaster follows her like a shadow. In Märchen Land there exists the wondrous willow grass, the main ingredient in a delicacy that has no equal. That's right! I'm talking about the Rainbow Drop. Without a doubt, a candy this tasty is reason enough to challenge seven stages of projectile-laden mayhem. Besides, it's not like the sweet-starved witch can refuse. Someone that looks just like her is causing trouble throughout Märchen Land and ruining her good name. Utilize Cotton's magical prowess to blast holes in cutesy creatures, rescue fairies for extra firepower, and perform lifesaving spells in this Super Famicom shmup by Success & Datam Polystar.

Since my previous memories of the Cotton series have been buried under a mountain of sludge, I'm going to attempt a fresh start. This means that my opinion on this entry isn't affected by some lingering attachment to an all-time favorite. With that out of the way, let me jump straight to why I don't really care for Cotton 100%. First up is the weird visual direction. I like the character designs and backgrounds, but the brightness is set way too high. Everything pops out of the screen, and that's not especially good for a STG. The blown up / overly saturated look ensures that I'll probably crash into a bullet or enemy if I'm not 100% conscious. This is very much a me thing, but I tend to do my best projectile-dodging when it's 4:00 am and I've just woken up. Shmups are usually the perfect games for broken-down insomniacs like me. However, when backgrounds and bullets share the same level of brightness, my eyes struggle to discern any difference. 

Fighting alongside Cotton is Silk. Her and her fairy friends serve as options, lending the witch additional firepower. Pressing the requisite button changes their formation, and holding the bomb button will focus their fire. Note that the bomb button just drops an explosive towards the ground Darius-style. Powerful explosives are instead tied to the spell button. The current formation determines what spell is cast, but I can't think of a reason to use any besides Barrier. It's a shield. It blocks a couple of attacks before disappearing. Even if it's supposed to drop in usefulness as players get better at the game, being able to take a hit without dying is huge. Usually, I wouldn't need an extra incentive to summon a dragon or whatever, but the alternative is a shield that actually carries over to the next stage if it survives the boss. Also, spell charges don't replenish on death, which provides even less reason to spend them on killing something a little more quickly.

Besides the number and speed of projectiles, the difficulty setting also affects enemy durability. This I assume is a form of punishment for my shield-loving ass. On Hard and especially Maniac, the popcorn baddies take as much damage as the average battleship. Since Cotton's weapon-level drops whenever she dies, momentum has a habit of swinging hard against her. She can't break through the frequent walls of fiends with poor weaponry. Maybe this is where the non-Barrier spells come into play. Personally speaking, tying enemy health to difficulty is just a bad idea. The weapons in Cotton 100% already suffer in terms of looks and impact, so having them do less damage just creates a shooting experience that's hard to enjoy. 

Also, the final boss is almost custom designed to leave me feeling less positive about the game than I was minutes before. Cotton has to be in the right place to bait the villain's lightning attack, otherwise she'll get backed against the "wall" and crushed. I get that the big bad needs something to set herself apart, but this particular move requires several lives to be sacrificed; all for an unearned light-bulb moment. My thoughts on the rest of the boss-fights waver between they're too weak to be noticeable and too gimmicky to be enjoyable. There's a tree (and squirrel?) mid-boss that requires an absurd level of pounding. One other mid-boss is a cakewalk unless its bees manage to escape. There are some others that I'm forgetting to mention, but it's hard not to when the absurdly bright visuals and flickering cause this shmup to feel like a bad dream.

I didn't intend to treat Cotton 100% so harshly. The controls and other important bits are solid. My biggest problem however is one that just happens to form into a giant hand that drags everything to hell. It's as if the rough visuals have bled over, causing me to look upon the rest of the game with additional disdain. My eyes hurt just thinking about a replay.