Intended to play Powered but wanted to give this a fair shake first. It's pretty rock-solid, not as good a mech-driven Compile shooter as MUSHA but miles above whatever Robo Aleste decided to be. Weapon system has a very unique 3-tiered system, you collect and hold up to 3 weapons at once (blue/red/yellow/green), and the attack you get is a combination of their properties. It's like Gunstar Heroes, though because all the weapons are so chaotic and different, none of the game is designed with them in mind and you don't really strategize around them, it's just cool to get a weapon and see your range and hit rate change. You can also throw away your items as bombs.

Pretty standard Compile affair outside of that - lots of empty stretches, punishingly weak default weapon when you die, levels that get too trigger happy near the end, y'know. Like Robo Aleste I really can't get behind the sound direction, the crunchy SFX and punchless guitar music has no sense of cohesion or power.

You kill a frog and its headless husk spews chunks and then you kill that and its heart crawls along the ground while its intestines follow behind, insane

Bosses with homing missiles is to Compile what poison swamps is to Fromsoft. Stop doing this shit.

This is basically MUSHA reskinned and with slightly different mechanics. I like both equally, though Spriggan has the advantage of not being as absurdly hard to recover after death as MUSHA. If you happen to die and revert to your pea shooter, it's still quite a spike in difficulty, but it feels more manageable.

But the Mega Drive game has the edge when it comes to power ups granting one extra hit. The only extra hit you get in this one is a collectible shield, that also serves as a screen nuke, which I greatly appreciate

I also really really love how the power ups just keep on coming on a very steady pace. You can change your shot type constantly throughout a level, though not all of them are created equal - the homing shot was a piece of crap only useful in certain bosses.

There's a 90s-anime as hell aesthetic that makes me wish I understood what they were saying during cutscenes. Oh well.

Blown away by this one being from 1991. It must have been from the future. Really, it's Compile building on the platform of their previous work. Spriggan has a great implementation of the Aleste system of collecting multiple power-ups but these ones can be combined to change the shape and pattern of your shot. Even better, each of the three that you can hold at a time can be ejected in a pinch as a small bomb. Sprites are great, there are fully voiced cutscenes (that my lacking Japanese was not up to, that's on me), and designs are detailed. There could be a little more to some enemies and patterns, but there's more than enough variety for its six-levels-plus-a-final-boss.

Normally when I play a Shoot 'em up in Japanese it isn't often an issue as menus are mostly in English and it's not often there is enough story for it to matter. Seirei Senshi Spriggan blindsided me a little bit with it's large amount of anime cutscenes and voice acting however as I knew very little about it. Obviously I barely understood a word as the game hasn't had a Western translation officially or by fans. I love the 90's anime aesthetic and cover art the TurboGrafx and other NEC consoles had going on back then regardless and the core part of any shooter will be the action anyway. Having researched a little bit about the game partially for this review but also out of curiosity it seems this was originally developed as part of Compile's Aleste series. Initially developed for the Sega Megadrive as Seirei Senshi Aleste before being changed to Seirei Senshi Spriggan as a new series for the TurboGrafx CD. Having come out a year after M.U.S.H.A Aleste I can see the backbones of that history with the design of the mech suit. That does seem to be where the similarities end however, especially in the gameplay department.

Seirei Senshi Spriggan uses an interesting power up/weapon system. I'll be honest with you of all the shoot 'em ups I've played over the years I think this is one of my favorites. Your mech the Spriggan starts with a basic gun that fires forward. As you fight you will collect a variety of four elemental orbs from either enemy drops or just come onto screen. These orbs are red (fire), green (wind), yellow (earth), and blue (water). You can hold three at any one time and collecting a new one will remove the oldest of the currently held orbs you collected. There are three interesting aspects to this:

Firstly, and the most obviously apparent being that depending on the combination of orbs you hold will dictate what attacks you actually have such as wind blades, fire balls, homing waters beams etc. With four orb types the potential combinations can reach almost 30. These can constantly change on the fly as power ups come fairly fast keeping the action hectic but in an extremely controlled way.

The second aspect being that the super attack isn't a different collectable or charge shot like in other shoot 'em ups though there is a rare flashing orb that will level the screen. Instead you fire one of your orbs as an area elemental bomb dropping down to the lower level of attacks. This is quite a tactically viable option allowing you to launch an orb for area damage before collecting another orb on the screen changing your attack type in the process.

Lastly because when you die you drop the orbs and they also appear generally at a steady pace it rarely feels like the game will be unplayable or extremely punishable on death. Some other Shoot 'em ups when you die losing your power ups feels like an almost impossible climb to carry on but Spriggan never feels that way. There are always weapon options, they just might be different.

Presentation wise to go with the anime scenes mentioned above, Spriggan's pixel art is very good and I'm surprised by the fast pace it keeps up pretty solidly. I haven't played many TurboGrafx games yet to really be able to state the technical points of this being impressive or not but it ran smoothly with a nice usage of colour. Levels are varied with clouds, forests, castles, space. The visuals are a bit basic but honestly I like how it looks. The soundtrack is also excellent using a mixture of up beat tunes that could have been from Super Fantasy Zone but also dropping into more alien like theme tunes or Castlevania feeling gothic tracks depending on the level. The CD quality music is very apparent and something that super stands out on both this and the Sega CD compared with the visuals on display. Not really a bad thing though.

The game plays over 7 acts but really it's 6 and then the final boss. About my only real criticism of it is the sound effects could grate a little at times and lacked any real punch for pretty much any weapon you use. I do wish it was in English though I knew going into it it wasn't but on one of the end levels there is like a two minute monologue from an enemy all voiced I just had to sit through due to my pigeon Japanese. Considering it has been released on the Wii and the TurboGrafx / PC Engine mini in the west and not been updated though it seems unlikely it will be any time soon.

Still it's another great Complie shooter with a really unique and balanced power up system. This game is probably older than a lot of people that use this site but it holds up well and is still very much worth playing today and not forgotten to the annals of time.

+ Cool power up system with variation.
+ Doesn't feel excruciatingly punishing when you die.
+ Colorful sprites, fast paced gameplay.
+ I like the OST.

- Sound effects are a bit rough.
- Without English subtitles the cool scenes and villain monologue are sadly redundant.