Azur lane - Honor, Loyalty and Anthropomorphic Ship Girls

Azur Lane is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up video game created by Chinese developers Shanghai Manjuu and Xiamen Yongshi. The game was released in 2017 for the iOS and Android. First launched in China in May and in Japan in September 2017.

The game is said to rank just below fate Stay and kancolle franchises. Im no fan of ship girls and I'd admit it took me a while to finally got around to playing the game. Also I know this is greatly compared to kancolle but for this review I won't be making any comparison to it since it feels like a disrespect to both franchises.

The game of Azur Lane in an alternate timeline of World War II, players engage in side-scrolling shooter gameplay, using female anthropomorphic characters based on warships from the war's major participants. Basically the idea of Azur Lane is what if warships are female characters. A trend that goes back to the days of Dragonball and Wolf's Rain.

The character are extremely well designed each representing the faction each ship girl belong to with Eagle Union being the games representation of America and Sakura Empire being that of japan based ships. Each character being named after a certain ship with some of the mission being based on actual world scenarios like the Battle of the Denmark Strait. And being a pilipino Im happy to add that theres even a ship called the Bataan probably a homage to the battle of bataan in this game.  A ship girl which I have yet to acquire as I write this review.  

Gameplay of Azur Lane is mostly a  bullet hell shooter where you take control of fleets of six to nine warships in form of girls with warship armaments attached to them. Some even have arms twice as big as themselves. They remind me of that old 80's cartoon Centurian but with less armor, more guns and a lot more cute. The difficulty is level enough that new players won't have a hard time advancing just as long as they know the basic mechanics of gameplay.

Strategy elements composed choosing which girl to take as each one has a set number of skills that can win or break a stage mission. Some skills compliment other skills and some characters are combat compatible at use skills when they sortie on missions together making missions a lot easier. Knowing which ship to take is part of the strategy and the appeal of the game. The game has over 60+ ships in the game each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's even a reward for collection all the character ships in the game as well.

On the graphics side Azur Lane visual is simple with very little movement from the chibi like characters during missions as the game is part bulllet hell shooter and part ship collection with some strategy elements involved. The graphics isn't as flashy as other games but it's still highly enjoyable specially if your into ship girl genre. The menu right to the loading screen art is done beautifully. The simple  graphics does makes the game accessible and you won't need a high end Android phone to play it.  

The gameplay system is well designed and original that Azur Lane a manga and novelization has been made from it. There's also a anime adaptation with the same title and 3D playstation game by Compile Heart entitles Azur lane Crosswaves. The game has also been voted as Top 5 best games of Google play back in the year 2017.

The sound is decent although I'd probably prefer something a bit more catchy or maybe more sound options for the game but thats a minor complain on how everything else is extremely well made. There's also some voice dialogue from characters such as Laffey everything she use a special skill and the likes. Gun, bombs and explosions are decent enough for game such as this.

Azur Lane is very user friendly as you can get most of the great warship girl without spending real money and the quest isn't all that hard that F2P players can get a decent and powerful enough set of characters to take on anything the game has to throw at them. Leveling and mission does takes a little bit of patience since some quest takes days of consecutive play through to complete. But most of them only require at the most one or two hours of gaming every day.

Overall the Azur Lane is a really well made game that anybody should at least try once even if you are not a fan of ship girls. Its fresh and well developed addictive gameplay will lure most players in. If you ever own a mobile Android phone or want to try something that isnt as hectic to play then I can't recommend this game enough. This is a high recommended game for anyone with an Android phone.