Cotton Fantasy Reviews
Cotton Fantasy is a shoot-em-up title celebrating the thirty-year anniversary of the Cotton franchise. With multiple playable characters and sixteen stages, I was excited to see whether I ended up enjoying my first experience in the franchise. Find out if I did in this Rapid Review.
I was hoping for more content in Cotton Fantasy but I am excited to see the franchise be given new life through ports, remakes, and whole new games.
Overall Cotton Fantasy may be a short game with average playthroughs lasting about 30-40 minutes. But with 7 characters to play as and added difficulty it definitely adds a lot of replayability and if this a taste of what the Cotton franchise will continue as then fans of this series have every right to be excited to see what comes next.
All in all, Cotton Fantasy keeps the series tradition of providing plenty of eye candy and a pushover level of challenge that should please newcomers to the genre even though veterans might find themselves somewhat bored by the straight ahead approach that the franchise is known for and it kept intact in this new entry. Regardless of where you stand, there’s no denying Cotton Fantasy is one heck of a charming little game any way you look at it.
Cotton Fantasy is a great choice for any shmup fan or anyone new to the genre: the carefully balanced difficulty modes and option for unlimited continues mean that anyone can enjoy it, but there's also ample scope for would-be experts to hone their graft and gain their bragging rights. It's also a game testimony to the Nintendo Switch as the ultimate platform for the genre. These games may have been born in the arcade, but given their pick-up-and-play nature, they were made for a system like this.
Cotton Fantasy remains a game that is fairly consistent in style and comfortable to its origins, perhaps even too much so. The experience is challenging and the introduction of new styles of gameplay bring a fresh look to the series, but it still lacks more, especially for a 30-year legacy.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Cotton Fantasy is an excellent tribute to the series and a beautiful gift for its 30 years anniversary, keeping all the magic of its legacy. A classic that continues to please both lovers of the genre and those who just like to play it casually.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams is a bit pricey for the time it takes to get to the end. However, it's a shoot-em-up. It's not about getting through a story, it's about shooting baddies and getting a high score. Fans of shmups (and of the recently revitalized Cotton in particular) will have some fun with this one.
Cotton Fantasy is ridiculously cute, colourful and charming. Shoot 'em fans looking for a more relaxed game oozing with personality will have a blast playing through the 16 levels filled with candy and bucket loads of kawaii. I especially liked that all seven playable characters have completely different playstyles, as that alone significantly beefs up the game's replayability. I had a great time playing this game and if you also love extreme cuteness then surely you'll enjoy it too.
Cotton Fantasy is a beautiful love-letter to the best parts of an iconic, decades-old shoot-em-up franchise. The characters are cuter than ever, the shooting is funner than ever, and the wide variety of play styles and bonus stages to master makes this a game worth returning to plenty of times over.
Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams is a super fun and adorable shoot 'em up with tons of crazy action, a variety of unique characters and beautiful-looking 2D stages to challenge, and is sure to keep you busy attempting to get on the leaderboard!
It’s a fun time, and it’s great to see Cotton back after so long. Trying to shove so many different gameplay styles for all of these guest characters was definitely ambitious and I applaud the developers for trying, but next time around I’d much rather they focus on moving this series forward and making the best Cotton game they can.
Cotton Fantasy is a great new entry in this classic shoot ‘em up franchise that should please any fan of the genre. It’s colorful, fun, and offers up a range of different playstyles thanks to the varied playable characters. My biggest gripes against it are that it just doesn’t have much for extra modes or gameplay features which could be a tough pill to swallow for those who see the current asking price. Whether you play it now or sometime in the future though, Cotton Fantasy is a great time and I hope we see further new entries in the franchise moving forward.
Cotton Fantasy is the new installment of the veteran Success Corporation franchise that champions the cute 'em up subgenre. 22 years after his last Dreamcast adventure -bypassing the remake Reboot! and various ports released last year - of the witch Nata de Cotton. We will once again control the young and problematic witch along with six other playable characters -including one unlockable-, each with their own gameplay and mechanics that will make each game with each of them a new and satisfying experience.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The game's best design choice is how its variety of playable characters significantly alters the gameplay mechanics. Cotton Fantasy's Producer, Shinya Nagatomo, told Issue 231 of Retro Gamer magazine that "It's an all-star game with not only characters from other games, but also new systems from other Success games". This means controlling Ria incorporates the risk/reward Buzz System from Psyvariar, and you can unlock playing as the final boss character, Tacoot, with wand flinging abilities. It's these deeper systems, and unlockable stages that make Cotton Fantasy an intricate cute-'em-up that core shoot-'em-up fans will relish mastering and replaying.
The sheer variety of levels, choosing your own route, the differing playstyles, and the online leaderboards easily make Cotton Fantasy one of the best modern shmups available on the Nintendo Switch, with the lack of a dedicated Caravan Mode being my only real gripe here. Still, thanks to online leaderboards and good character variety, this is a shooter that’ll keep any scorechaser fan in bliss.
"Hard and expensive candy."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
There’s no doubt that the Switch has been a system blessed with some very strong retro representation, and a specific genre that has seen a lot of great titles come out of the woodwork has been shooters...
Cotton Fantasy is a lesson on how to present a franchise to a new generation while bringing back all the best things it had presented in its various titles. Adding guest characters was also a great idea to create different dynamics that break the repetition a shoot'em up usually has.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Cotton Fantasy feels like the definitive Cotton experience. Taking aspects from all the games that came before it and creating an experience that is just a joy to play through with Cotton or with the varied characters available. If you love your arcade games, this will likely put a big smile on your face with all the colours and numbers glaring back at you on screen and, of course, a pumping arcade-style soundtrack. The games main niggle is the price of entry is a bit steep, and the game is very light on content. Whether you are old or new to the Cotton series, this is an excellent side-scrolling shooter that is a must-play for high score chasers and fans of retro shooters.