Cannon Dancer – Osman Review

Cannon Dancer/Osman is a game set in the near future of the 21st century where the world is controlled by a single corrupt government under the threat of an evil sorceress, Abdullah the Slaver. A lone assassin and top-class agent named Kirin is called upon to offer his skills as weapons for hire in order to eliminate Abdullah and restore peace.

The first thing to address is that Cannon Dancer – Osman is actually a bundle of the exact same game twice. Cannon Dancer is the English version whereas Osman is the Japanese version. There are very little nuances in terms of boss fights, but as a whole, both games are exactly the same.

Cannon Dancer is a hard-as-nail 2D action platformer/beat’em up where you need to kick your way through waves of enemies and sub-bosses in order to reach each level’s boss and progress forward. You can pick up powerups as you progress through levels that add Shadow-like figures akin to Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos.

Thankfully, given the game’s crazy difficulty, your character has a three-slot health bar giving players a bit of leeway in terms of damage. You can pick up additional health or find items to refill lost health. You can also have a special attack that you can use up to three times. Both games are also available in two different difficulties: Standard and Challenge mode.

Both difficulties let you tweak a few things to give you chances of survival. Standard difficulty also lets you enable two from a handful of Enhancements such as double jump or invincibility when attacking; there are also cheats like Invincibility or Unlimited Special attack, use a Rewind Feature or Save slots, but Achievements are disabled. Whereas in Challenge mode, you can only able two Enhancements and it will unlock Achievements.

The game looks great and reeks of the 1990s arcade-y vibe. It looks like a 16-bit MegaDrive game; speaking of which the aesthetics are reminiscent of the MD version of Capcom’s Strider. The futuristic setting is well-designed and detailed. There’s also a decent enemy variety. Mini-bosses and bosses are well thought out and unique. The soundtrack however is as generic as you’d expect and quite forgettable.

The first nuisance is that achievements are gatekept behind difficulty. If you tackle the game under standard mode (with or without cheats), Achievements won’t unlock. Another is that some of the later levels are of the “Where the fuck do I go” variety which is quite annoying because not all levels are linear and there’s no arrow indicating where to go. Also, there’s obviously no point in having the same game twice.

Cannon Dancer – Osman is a fun, intense, highly challenging 2D beat’em up platformer. It’s hard as nails, but standard mode gives you a chance to practice the game before tackling Challenge mode. The use of Enhancements in the latter gives a bit of help and obviously, cheats will make things a breeze in Standard mode. But yeah there’s no point of having the same game twice in the same package and gatekeeping Achievements behind difficulty is another argument for making gaming accessible. Cannon Dancer – Osman is definitely worth your time and money.