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Dual pistols out as Crow flips through the air, tensely waiting to get a bead on his target before blowing them away in one well placed shot, his trenchcoat swirling behind him.
Luger in one hand, grenade in the other. Get too close and get a taste of a hard kick to someplace painful. The bleach blonde Alice isn't as harmless as she looks.
Slow motion leap through a hail of hot lead leaving vapor trails all around him. The Dragon unleashes his fists and feet of justice to send his enemies flying.
Backed by an upbeat jazz soundtrack reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop, Tsukiyo ni Saraba is all about style. It's all about action and intense gameplay that will leave you begging for lower difficulties until you master its subtleties. It's for people who want a mix of martial arts and gunkata in bullet time, but were blindsided by the train wreck known as Enter the Matrix. It's definitely not for the weak of heart or the easily frustrated, who want a game to hold their hand and guide them safely through the whole experience. Here's it's tough it out, or chicken out to the lower difficulty levels when they're offered.
The story isn't anything you haven't seen before. Crow was a well known assassin who was raised by the mafia after the murder of his mother. This sets him upon the path of revenge that ends with a face off against his former mentor, which isn't much of a surprise considering his name is Judas. All of this exists just as an excuse to blast through a seemingly endless supply of armed thugs and martial artists to lead up to a confrontation with one of the game's eight bosses.
Push start to reload. For Crow and Alice, this is the most important ability in the game, and your ultimate goal is to use it as little as possible. Targets are acquired via a lock-on, but even though the shots are certain to hit just mashing the fire button won't even get you past the first boss. A single clip doesn't last long at that rate, and the telltale click of an empty chamber draws bullet trails like supersonic flies to honey.
If you stop moving, you will die.
If you stop fighting, you will die.
The only solution is to stop time.
Popularized by the Matrix, bullet time has nearly reached the level of an essential for third person shooters, just like dual pistols and bullet trails (which Saraba also has). TnS approaches this a bit differently than most, offering three levels of bullet time, which are gained as the game progresses, and a relatively short duration for the effect that really forces you to pay attention for the moment you'll be snapped back to reality, that is if you don't want to be dead in seconds. Another twist I haven't seen elsewhere is some of the bosses have their own time altering abilities, and won't hesitate to slow your down to a crawl to keep you from easily dodging their attacks. In your first fight with Judas he will sometimes stop time completely and fill the air around you with bullet trails, letting time resume just so this barrage can strike you all at once. And he's one of the nicer bosses.
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