Where’s there a Willow, there’s a way!
Cotton is a beloved franchise of shoot’em up adventures starring the titular Cotton as she blasts through a series of bullet hell environments in order to save the day. Debuting with Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams way back in 1991, the series has spanned a wealth of titles over the years across nearly every retro or modern console you can think of. However; while we’ve had Cotton Reboot to keep us recently busy, Cotton Fantasy, or Cotton: Rock and Roll as it is known in Japan, is the first new title in the series in nearly 18 years, and honestly, it’s pretty damn charming.
It’s hard to imagine that Cotton first debuted over 30 years ago, let alone being a franchise to see a whole new entry and most of its beloved catalog playable on new hardware, but here we are. While the bullet-hell genre is certainly a busy one of late with numerous retro series’ seeing a refresh or remake or two, Cotton has certainly been one with a very cute and charming personality, as opposed to the genre usually being built around high tech weaponry and futuristic spacecraft. Here, Cotton takes on the world via her broom with a little bit of magic along the way.
Cotton Fantasy looks remarkably better than Cotton Reboot, which was a title that was so busy in its visuals that it was nearly impossible to even grasp what was going on at any given moment. Cotton Fantasy does away with a lot of that on-screen clutter and gives us a very cute and appealing visual presentation that makes its assets and action pop in a clear and concise way. Cotton Fantasy brings a lot of its past to the table while also implementing more 3D assets to modernize it a bit, even if those components don’t quite live up to the strong 2D sprites the series is known for.
Cotton Fantasy packs a somewhat decent arrangement of characters and content into its overall package. While it’s easy enough to burn through the game in about an hour, you have six playable characters right from the start that all play entirely different, and some from other franchises to boot. And, completion of the game will see a seventh character join your roster, giving you even more to work with. If you are a fan of the genre and the import scene, you’ll easily recognize a few of her companions such as Umihara Kawase, Psyva Ria from the Psyvariar games, Ruffee from Dokidoki Poyatchio, and more.
Each character brings with them vastly different bullet patterns, playstyles, and even how they survive. Fine, a character from the Sanvein series, will use the rewarded crystals that fall from defeated enemies as a booster to a timed meter to stay alive, whereas Cotton will use those crystals to change how her attacks work. While the levels do remain the same, the variety amongst the cast does make the experience feel varied in ways I simply wasn’t expecting.
Told throughout several fun and fully voiced cutscenes, in Japanese, is a pretty basic story about how the young fairy Silk seeks out the help of Cotton as all the Willows across the land are mysteriously disappearing. Willows, being a candy treat that Cotton cannot turn down, lures her to help Silk out and track down what has happened to them. Each cutscene features a moment that plays out between the two and it’s not long before the villain responsible for it is lured out and taunts the pair. Again, the story campaign here is rather short, well under an hour, but while each trip through is from Cotton’s perspective, you can play as any of the available characters, making that experience to be largely different from character to character.
Cotton Fantasy should definitely be played on one of the harder difficulties as you’ll easily mow down enemies and bosses alike without much resistance on the normal setting. Bosses have additional phases and you can easily burn through them without seeing much of everything they have on offer, so changing the game to hard will allow you to take advantage of their entire combat design. Should you die, you do have unlimited continues, but it will reset your score, so for those that are wanting to reach a high score to compete with leaderboards, you’ll likely want to restart the level and try again.
The level design and overall look of each location is rather sharp, with a few instances of some really engaging moments, such as outrunning a series of closing doors or a plethora of lasers. These types of moments are few and far between, unfortunately, and most levels are just far too short to take advantage of much more of what they can offer. I really dig the themes each level can bring, but most levels are just a few minutes long at best and don’t have multiple stages to prolong them. One level I really enjoyed was doing battle against the backdrop of a huge ship, weaving and flying alongside it. While most levels are sadly just simple backdrops, the developer here does show they have the chops to create some fantastic set pieces to dodge a mass array of bullets to.
Now, dodging those bullets is a bit easier than something like R-Type, as there is a lot of forgiveness here in colliding with objects in the environment or using special attacks to phase through various bullets. Cotton Fantasy is not meant to be a difficult affair, even on hard, but something you can gleefully play through and enjoy the story and shooting mechanics. Overall, Cotton Fantasy is very easy to pick up and play with tight controls and nothing implemented to create any sort of frustration.
While Cotton Fantasy is a solid entry into the series and a game I did quite enjoy, I do feel the $49.99 CAD ($39.99 USD) price point to be a pretty steep entry point for the amount of content here. Had this included another Cotton game alongside it or additional game modes apart from the training feature, it would have a bit more going for it to warrant the overall price point. If you absolutely enjoy the Cotton series, you may see a whole new entry as justification alone for the price, but otherwise, this is a game I really do recommend tracking down if you should see it on sale.
Developer - Success. Publisher - Success, United Games Entertainment GmbH. Released -May 20th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch, PS4, Windows. Rated - (E 10+) Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.