Well, it may be best to start by looking at what you get out of Fraxy when ignoring the community and the editor (two of Fraxy's biggest strengths). In this simplistic look, Fraxy is basically a shoot-em-up boss rush game. Players control a ship which has multiple weapons that can be switched between as well as a 'boost' feature for getting out of the way of attacks. Shooting and boosting both drain energy, which is used for health as well, so constantly moving fast and attacking generally results in having such low energy that even the smallest of attacks instantly destroys the ship; energy regenerates quickly though so taking a small break will generally put it back up to full in about a second, although the rate energy drains and restores at depends on the ship chosen and weapons used.
Bosses can be chosen from a list or selected randomly and the ones which come by default with the game are generally simplistic and fairly easy to kill, but bosses can be set to become more aggressive after each defeat so even these can be threatening in the long run. Bosses in Fraxy are composed of a central 'core' and various breakable and non-breakable parts which function in a parent/child way, so killing the 'parent' part, such as a subcore, can destroy 'child' parts of the boss associated with it while killing the main core kills the boss outright. Possibly the most unusual part about Fraxy is the 'arena' these bosses are generally fought in; while it is possible to set a fight to take place in a fixed screen, generally both the player and the boss can move around in any direction with the only risk being that getting too far from the boss destroys it and restarts the fight. There are also infinite continues, so boss fights in Fraxy are technically impossible to lose, but the fun comes from trying to kill bosses in as few lives as possible.
When the editor and community are taken into account, Fraxy becomes significantly more complicated. The editor offers well over 200 parts to play around with, some of which are purely aesthetic, but many of which have actual functions. On top of this, Each part is highly modifiable as most have several default 'behaviors' to choose from which can significantly impact how the part functions and traits such as health, vulnerability, and when/if it is visible can all easily be tinkered with. There are also more complex functions, such as event triggers, which can be used to make the parts do some truly surprising and impressive things. In short, the editor is simple enough for those who just want to make a quick boss in a handful of minutes, but it has enough hidden complexity and flexibility built into it that it is just as easy to spend dozens, or even hundreds, of hours carefully crafting an extremely impressive boss fight for those who choose to do so.
Even those who do not enjoy creating bosses themselves can enjoy the thousands of bosses the Fraxy community has created over the years. There are bosses for just about any type of shoot-em-up fan. Some bosses stick to Fraxy's standard form of combat, others are bullethell-style fights, many have multiple forms or phases or consist of multiple bosses while others are short and sweet, some boss fights are in fixed screens while others allow free movement, some bosses simply look cool, some emulate fights from other games, some fights have scrolling walls, some are vertical while others are horizontal (such as the Palenque fight I discussed previously), and some 'boss fights' are outright entire levels; people have even created various mods which change some of the core mechanics of Fraxy. So, if you like any type of shoot-em-up at all, you're bound to like at least some of the things people have created with Fraxy.
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| Fraxy bosses can |
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| have lots of |
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| variety! |
Due to Fraxy's flexible nature as both a game and a tool, it's difficult to find much in the way of fault with it. Perhaps the one 'issue' with the game is it takes at least a small amount of commitment on the player's part to get the most out of it. The bosses which come with the game are fairly dull and tend on the easy and simplistic side, so players will need to look around the Internet for better challenges. While there are several sites which offer dozens or hundreds of bosses, I have found that many members of the community simply post their bosses on YouTube or similar sites with a download link in the description, so there is no one 'definitive source' for Fraxy bosses. The editor also can take a while to get used to as there is no built-in tutorial and it can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but I have found that the best way to get accustomed to the editor is to just try it out for a few hours and tinker around with some of the mechanics as it's fairly easy to understand once you get a hang of just what everything does.
Otherwise, I'd suggest fans of any sort of shoot-em-up to go check it out and even those who normally don't care for the genre may want to give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised.
The official homepage with the latest versions can be found HERE
The Fraxy Compendium has plenty of bosses HERE
The Fraxy HQ forum is another good source HERE
A video and download link to one of my bosses can be found HERE
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