Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams Review

Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams (referred to as Cotton Fantasy from here on out) is the latest game in the Cotton series that started back in 1991. This brand-new entry has Cotton and Silk trying to figure out why all the Willows are vanishing in Fairyland. Willows are not trees like you may first think, but instead candy. Cotton has a real sweet tooth, so even though she is hesitant to help out her friend, once she is promised a lifetime all-you-can-eat supply of tasty Willows, she will do anything she can to find out what is causing the candy’s disappearance and increase of monsters and chaos. 

Cotton Fantasy’s gameplay keeps the feel of the other games in the series but looks gorgeous with its HD graphics combining 2.5D horizontal shooting action and 3D movement. All the characters, monsters, and 16 stages are brightly coloured and fun to look at. Cotton Fantasy has a big selection of charming cute characters to play; you can play as characters from other titles like Umihara Kawase Fresh! and Sanvein," if you aren’t familiar with them they are all super kawaii and that’s all that matters! Once you complete the game, you will unlock the main villain and be able to play as her in your next run, or if you pre-order the game on Amazon, you can get Silk the fairy as a playable character. 

Cotton Fantasy is a super fun shoot ‘em up style game with tons of fast-paced action and various weapon power-ups to collect during the stage. The weapon you get is determined by the colour of the crystals that you pick up after an enemy is defeated; my personal favourite is the homing missile-type shot. It doesn’t matter where your enemy is on the stage; these shots will follow them wherever they go! Two buttons control your attacks; one fires your cannon, and the other drops a bomb or other unique item that your character has. With all the characters having unique attacks and mechanics, it adds a ton of variation and replayability to the game. 

In the main menu, you can jump right into the Story Mode, but if you are new to the series or just want a refresher, you can play through the Training Mode. I used this to help decide which of the characters I wanted to use for my first playthrough based on the weapons they had and how much I liked their voices. I know that sounds bad, but some of the voices can get pretty annoying after a while, and since there is no option to save and continue, you will play as this character for the duration of the game. Sure it’s not a long game, but if you are annoyed, it will feel a lot longer!

You start off the story playing through the Castle Garden stage, and like any good shoot ‘em up, defeating the boss at the end. From there on, you get to select which of the five stages you would like to challenge next; all the stages will have to be completed, but the order in which they are done is up to you. When you successfully finish the stage, you will get a scorecard giving you points based on how many enemies you defeated and how many collectables you collected. If you die during your run and get a game over, you have the option to give up the points you have collected so far and continue playing again from that spot. On my first playthrough, I wasn’t as concerned about my final score, so I kept continuing, but if you want to get higher on the leaderboards, it would be advantageous to just start from the beginning. After completing a couple of stages, you will be taken to the Aurum Claven, which is a bonus round where you get points determined by how many tea bags you collect. The unique thing is that instead of flying through a normal horizontal stage, you instead fly towards all the tea bags spread around the screen. This was really fun to play as it totally switched things up! Remember, the black tea bags are worth 10x more than one of the standard tea bags, so make sure you grab them! If you get enough points, you will earn more lives to use during your playthrough.

I had a great time playing through this light-hearted story of Cotton, the candy-loving witch. The silly cutscenes, catchy music, difficulty selection and fully-voiced Japanese voice acting really came together to make this a fun game that is accessible for anyone to play. I just wish there was the option to play cooperatively with someone else. If you want a fun title that doesn’t require a huge time commitment and is just adorable and quirky, Cotton Fantasy is a title that you should definitely check out. Plus, with so many unique characters to play as and the leaderboard that has all players competing to get on, you could keep yourself busy for a long time!