Thanks to Bitwave Games for the review code

Title: Dogyuun
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $7.99
Release Date: 04/08/2024

Story

In this frantic shooter, you take control of a ship who sets out to stop evil taking over a city… And can merge into a giant robot?!?! This wild shooter ramps things up and is a slight shift from the usual Toaplan norm, and even disregarding a story, there’s still a lot of cool stuff going on during these stages.

Presentation

Usual Bitwave drill; good display options, bad audio emulation. The game itself continues Toaplan’s later trend of using impressive shading on sprites, and the dot art work here remains impressive, with great use of scaling and memorable, huge bosses that you’ll be facing during your shooting adventures, along with your shots having gorgeous colors to them, making Dogyyun a visual treat to eyes, even during the stages in which the backgrounds aren’t the greatest.

Yes, sound effects and audio are off compared to prior ports and a PCB, though when it comes to the original game, the audio was a bit weird there, too, sounding unusually muffled and not as great as other Toaplan shooters due to a different sound setup from their normal efforts. Still, even with the limitations of that shift, the composers did a damn good job with what they had and you end up with a uniquely strange OST at the end of it all, which is why hearing the music and especially sound effects being so off continues to be infuriating! Yes, the distinctiveness of the game’s audio makes it tougher to even pick up that much is wrong if you aren’t familiar with the original score, but even still, we shouldn’t be having ports in 2024 with inaccurate Arcade audio, or shrill sound effects.

Gameplay

Dogyunn takes place across ten lengthy stages, with your main goal being to pilot a ship and fight your way through each level, picking up one of four colored weapons to aid you on your journey. From the Blue laser, the Purple homing shot, the Orange fire, and the Green wide shot, you have your typical assortment of shot types to make use of during your playthrough, and in Toaplan fashion, each of them has their own benefits and you can pick a favorite. For me, I primarily stuck with the Green shot due to its useful range.

Input lag is handled very well, per usual, and I don’t have much new to say on that front. It continues to be the best aspect of these Bitwave ports. What isn’t handled well (besides the audio), is the continued weirdness of the QOL features and DIP settings. Right away I assumed that the game might have been a bit tougher than most other Toaplan shooters, since you seemed to only start with two lives total, and I found things to be a lot more harsh than the other shooters on default.

Well no, it wasn’t a case like Truxton II where the game’s original difficulty was all over the place, but rather, bugged out DIP settings! Instead of the normal DIP defaults, it sometimes sets you on a harder default for whatever reason. Considering this bugged default still works with the leaderboard’s Default setting, (and sometimes it gives you an extra life, and that default works on the leaderboard, too) that kinda ruins the nature of the leaderboards, since even if you fix the DIPs yourself or have the default options work properly, it still is a bit of a mess.

Either way, once you get things to properly behave, the game itself is pretty decent fun, even if it continues the tradition of being rather tough. This is a checkpoint shooter through and through, and still is very fulfilling to take on a tough boss and win after many, many continues. There is a local Co-Op option if you want to power to the end with a friend (and even benefits in the powerup system if you work together!), but I had no means of testing it and I still ultimately prefer the checkpoint experience for these kinds of games anyway. The differing weapons come in handy, along with attachments you can find for your ship such as a bomb to deploy, (and you can only hold one at a time here!) and the ability to zip all around the screen by holding down the button, a fantastic way to dodge the tricky bosses. Eventually, you’ll gain the temporary ability to become a robot for some overheat punching action, leading for a weird shift in certain boss fights that somehow works delightfully well at adding some variety between the traditional shooting action.

Conclusion

Dogyunn is the weirdest of Toaplan’s shooters by far, but not in a bad way! This seemingly typical shooter eventually branches out into one packed with variety and a ton of challenge, with checkpoints that are brutal, yet rewarding for once you overcome the challenges they face at you. Then you have the shifts into being a giant robot and fighting enemies that way? Pure chaotic fun.

This game isn’t one that I found was fun for scoring due to the bugged DIP options, but it definitely made for a memorable shooting experience that would be well worth a full play, and if you somehow get truly stuck by the checkpoints, well… There’s always the Co-Op to cheese your way to the ending with a buddy, or making great use of the special attachments for your ship to clinch a boss win! As a Toaplan shooter, it still keeps the fun factor despite being a bit too long and a little different from the norm.

Unfortunately, the repeated audio issues still sour my thoughts on this port ever so slightly, and it shouldn’t have even launched with these minor inaccuracies to begin with, and considering how weird sounding this game was originally, that is a remarkable feat to somehow still mess up the audio.

The fact that the in-game DIP settings are completely broken and some of the QOL features don’t work right or are also broken (yet again, a good chunk of the old QOL options from older bitwave ports are missing, making me think they couldn’t bother to get some working at all here), really just leads to this being another rushed portjob, and while it still controls miles better than the Astro V version, you really shouldn’t give this port a look in its rushed state. Wait for it to be fixed, unfortunately.

I give Dogyunn a 4 out of 10.