Cotton Fantasy (PS4)
The Cotton series of shoot-em-ups spent nearly 20 years being difficult to play, most entries not receiving international translations while old copies of the games were often prohibitively expensive and on niche consoles. Luckily, beginning with Cotton Reboot!, gradually every Cotton game would see some form of rerelease across PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC, and it looks like bringing back this once forgotten franchise sparked a desire to create a new entry. Such is the origin story of Cotton Fantasy… also known as Superlative Night Dreams: Cotton Rock’n Roll, COTTOn Rock’n’Roll -Superlative Night Dreams-, Cotton Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Superlative Night Dreams: Cotton Fantasy. The many names does make this comeback a bit messy, and while each name typically refers to something specific like the arcade release or its release on digital stores versus physical formats, you also have the Steam release’s odd capitalization making this naming mess even stranger. Once you figure out just what to call your copy of Cotton Fantasy though, you’ll find the decisions made about the game are much better handled past the title screen.
Cotton Fantasy takes place after all the previous Cotton games, and once more the magical candy known as Willows are the heart of Fairyland’s problems. The Willows have begun to disappear, and while Cotton Fantasy doesn’t explain why this is a problem, the elderly Oh-baba tells of a legend on how the Willows will return when an azure-robed girl appears. This girl is the cute red-haired witch Cotton, but as the fairy Silk knows from their previous adventures together, Cotton is anything but a hero. Cotton only really ever saves the day because of the single-minded goal of getting her hands on some Willows, the witch otherwise incredibly immature and by now fed up with how often Silk has sought her out for her assistance. Luckily, Cotton’s tune will change the moment a reward is dangled in front of her, and while she gets sidetracked along the journey most any time she can nearly get her hands on some candy, Cotton Fantasy’s story is there mostly for comedic interludes. Exaggerated depictions of Cotton and Silk squabbling make up most of the simple story and even the main antagonist’s motivation ends up being ridiculous, this side-scrolling shooter not even trying to make the stakes serious for this quick little adventure.
When playing as Cotton, you’ll fly through a range of levels where plenty of monsters will fly towards you or try to shoot you down. One hit is all it takes to kill you and you only have a few lives before you’ll be asked to use a continue, although on Normal and lower continues aren’t a finite resource. To fight back against the often cute and cartoony creatures in places like an ancient Egyptian ruin, sky armada, and a town at night, you’ll be relying on Cotton’s magic. Her regular shots come in three varieties, a green wind-based homing shot, a stronger electric blue spread, and a more focused and powerful fiery red shot. You can only use one shot type at a time and to switch to a new one you must grab the colorful crystals enemies drop, the player immediately switching once they grab one. You’ll also get a powerful magical attack for each crystal you grab, each magic type coming with a move like a large tornado or a flaming dragon that will deal heavy damage across a great deal of the screen while discarding your current shot type for the next in line with up to three possible to store at once.
Yellow crystals also exist, these providing experience points for Cotton. Once you reach a certain level, your magic shots are upgraded often to cover more range, and should you die, you lose a level, careful play key to keeping your stronger and more effective shot types. Notably, the crystals dropped can be shot to change their color, meaning you are never forced to use a type you don’t want and you can invest in trying to build up your experience instead of getting more magic attacks, although one must remember you’re trying to balance this alongside fighting for your life. The screen in Cotton Fantasy can get quite cramped, either because you’re weaving through tunnels while avoiding traps and well-placed foes or flying through a sky filled with enemy fire, your special attacks able to earn you some wiggle room since they convert bullets into points items but Cotton can also utilize fairy companions whenever she comes across them. They normally just add another string of attacks to your spray, but if you need to save yourself in a pinch you can launch one forward to blow up, the bomb saving you from damage and wiping out most enemies that aren’t bosses. There are some patterns that lean towards bullet hell levels of extremely tight dodge windows, especially near the short adventure’s end, Cotton Fantasy ending up a battle to hold onto your resources even if you aren’t trying to hit the high scores, a game over clearing your score entirely.
For the most part, stages in Cotton Fantasy play in a similar manner, the player automatically flying forward but able to move anywhere they like on-screen. The game doesn’t attempt many cheeky ambushes, warnings for when enemies will be coming from behind obvious, and while some things will inevitably catch you by surprise on your first run through, stages are often distinct enough that you don’t even need to work hard to remember the danger that killed you so you can avoid it on a replay. There are what amount to bonus stages of a sort as well, the player moving away from the side-scrolling view to instead follow from behind as you collect floating tea purely for points and potential extra lives, these sections based on how Panorama Cotton played not exactly exciting due to low stakes and no real action beyond the simple act of collection. If you only play through Cotton Fantasy once though, you might figure it for a decent shoot-em-up but nothing too out of the ordinary. However, Cotton is but one of seven playable characters, all of them playing differently in some way. While one of them is an unlockable reward, the other six are available from the start and each time you beat the game with one of them, a new level is unlocked as well. Normally, the adventure consists of 8 stages, with all but the first level and last two being approached in the order you desire, but when you unlock the extra stages, you can mix and match more and experience new areas with brand new ideas like Earth V where you float about in cyberspace and have to heed warnings on when attacks will suddenly appear where you’re sitting.
The other characters can diverge quite a bit from Cotton in how they play even though everyone sadly only gets to see the one unique story about Cotton unfold during their journey. A few characters are just slight variations on Cotton, using the crystal and level system but having new shot types or a replacement for the bomb fairies. Appli and Umihara Kawase (a guest star from her own series) both have the ability to capture enemies and launch them back for damage, but like many shooters that feature this mechanic, it unfortunately only works on weak foes that your regular shots would kill more quickly and firing them back isn’t often worth the effort of easing up on your unrelenting bullet spray. More interesting play types come from the other guest stars though, not only bringing along the unlockable level that hearkens back to their home game but sometimes imitating mechanics from their source material. Ria is based on the fightercraft from Psyvariar and brings with it the Buzz system where you’re rewarded for just barely avoiding being hit, and rather than crystals, she’ll grow stronger by building Buzz. Her standard laser shots also grow in different ways than most characters, it becoming an ever wide spread of more and more laser streams up until you can basically cover the entire screen before you if you pull off the Buzzes well. Fine, based on the spaceship from Sanvein, actually won’t die in one hit, but instead has a timer she needs to manage, grabbing white crystals from defeated enemies restoring time while taking hits wears it down. Even Kawase has a very different attack spread with her magic shots thanks to their fish theming, and Luffee takes that even further by having only one shot type with a simple straight beam she fires that makes her simpler to play but also harder since that’s all she has besides a limited number of bombs.
While many shoot-em-ups are made to be replayed again and again, the player gradually getting better as they learn the layout and can clear stages without dying, the extra characters provide a more exciting reason to dive back in that isn’t built on punishing the inexperienced player. Higher difficulties do also exist if you want to keep going after giving each girl’s adventure a whirl, there even being an Extra mode where every enemy you defeat bursts into a spread of bullets for a different kind of new difficulty, but the different play types give you new ways to play the game as each character can be challenged by different situations. At the same time, you feel your mastery building up as you become more familiar with some levels, but the freedom to pick your order for many of them or throw in the new stages you unlock also can help stave off the repetition. The energetic background music and cute anime art style help to make this an approachable light-hearted shooter even with its harder moments, and while there could have been room for greater variation or more unique content, Cotton Fantasy is able to be more than an hour long adventure because of its extended cast. That cast certainly feels important to have to, because while one level is indeed a throwback to the first Cotton game, if it was just her on this journey, it would almost feel like an unambitious retread since the new enemies and level layouts don’t shake things up considerably when compared to Cotton Reboot!.
THE VERDICT: Cotton Fantasy provides a solid set of levels for the player to tackle as Cotton, the magic crystal system giving you some appreciated control over how you fight. However, it is the addition of the extra characters and their unlockable stages that give Cotton Fantasy its real appeal, each girl having a different way to approach the action without it breaking too far from the enjoyable core shooting. Ria’s Buzz system and Fine’s timer give you wilder breaks while characters like Kawase and Appli approach the regular crystal play a bit differently, the player getting the option of pursuing satisfying shoot-em-up mastery or playing with unique considerations.
And so, I give Cotton Fantasy for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. Cotton Fantasy was a little worrying at first, feeling much like Cotton Reboot! even if it had brand new enemies and levels. There are bosses and creatures that can test you in different ways like the one-eyed green monsters who will fire a sweeping laser if you don’t kill them quickly enough and some bosses test how quickly you can beat them since leaving something like the gryphon alive long enough will let it activate an additional phase. However, while Cotton’s run through the adventure isn’t breaking much new ground save on an individual enemy basis, having the characters come in from different games or other Cotton adventures helps to introduce an exciting wrinkle to how the stage can be played. Even Luffee’s simple laser beam thankfully doesn’t feel too weak for the action, although a boss or two might be hard to hit with the weirder attack types, but figuring out how each girl’s gameplay should be approached makes replaying the journey stay fresh and having the unlockable levels and ability to mix up the order you play stages helps as well. Thankfully, this new entry in the series didn’t fall into old traps like unpredictable ambushes and while especially the final boss has some bullet patterns that will be hard to respond to on first encounter, you are also able to break through with options like special moves and bombs with some characters before you approach it with experience as your aid as the less capable heroines. Some extra modes, unlockables, or just a bit more variation between the more similar characters would help the adventure be more robust and earn it some extra longevity, but it feels like Cotton Fantasy threads the needle on being a quick experience for shoot-em-up fans but also one that isn’t too lean thanks to what it does offer. It’s still not a hearty package per se, but it makes sure replayability is interesting beyond just the game being enjoyable to play.
Cotton Fantasy, or whatever name it might be going as at the moment, isn’t an adventurous new entry in its once quiet series and with all the rereleases of the older games it doesn’t feel like a basic reboot was needed either. Cotton Fantasy is able to have its familiar gameplay style with Cotton as well as some shake-ups thanks to bringing in characters from other series or entries, and with how cleanly its levels can cater to all the shooting styles no matter who you pick, it could be a great way to get into the series before you explore its now well-preserved history.