Crim's Humble Opinion Curator

Space Elite Force II is shmup game that takes the formula of the first game and optimizes it a bit more with improved graphics, frame rates, and accessibility with controller support. There's a fair chunk of levels with an upgrade tree that allows you to get different weapons and sub weapons. The game has some decent adjustable difficulty settings and forgiving checkpoints. You'll not have too much of a problem getting through the base game, but you'll have to strap down for some of the harder content. The bullet barrage is creative and you don't ever feel like you've quite stepped too far into the bullet hell genre.

While this is a casual and fun game it just doesn't bring much of anything new or diverse to the genre. I guess that's okay if you want to scratch the itch. Some of the bosses a bit samey and it would have been cool to see more diversity among them. Other than that I don't have many gripes with this one. It's an enjoyable shoot em up.


Fans of the genre will breeze through this one and tack down another completed shoot em up title among their completed games. Base game takes a little under two hours or so to get through and than there is extra modes and a harder difficulty you can try. All in all a decent addition to shoot em ups available on steam.

𝕀𝕗 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝔼𝕟𝕛𝕠𝕪 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕋𝕣𝕪
https://store.steampowered.com/app/262260/JetsnGuns_Gold/

I had to refund the game as I couldn't play it with my XBOX360 controller. I could navigate the menus but as soon as the game started nothing worked.

"This game is the price of a Fancy Cup Of Coffee!"
..Mega improvement over the First Space Elite!,these Games are again so cheap,they are practically free.They need your support by purchasing it,and that will lead to an even better Space Elite 3 :P Happy days!
A Jets & Guns wannabee it is but thats not a bad thing now is it! :)

I bought this game based on the positive reviews, but now I feel like they weren't being honest about this game. Just look at the playtime of the top reviews, all under 4 hours, most of them at under 2 hours.

The game is short and has very little replayability. I finished the campaign in under 2 hours with multiple deaths, so it is even shorter than 2 hours if you are good at dodging bullets. The endless mode is just the campaign but you only get to upgrade your ship once at the start. The boss rush mode is as expected (just bosses).

This game has some really nice art and music. The UI is well done too (easy to read when the screen is full of bullets/sfx). The enemies are interesting, as well as their attacks/patterns. The bosses have some cool patterns too. As a top-down shooter, it works and is enjoyable.

BUT the game has some big issues:

1. As far as I can tell, you can't rebind any key (keyboard or controller). The keyboard has 2 ways to play (either wasd or arrow keys for movement, with the other hand controlling the fire/specials/whatever). I played with wasd and while the controls were fine, they weren't ideal. There is a button for fine tuning your movement for tight dodges, but it is bound to left shift (not even right shift) and has to be held down to use - so I never used it because it was so clunky do to so.

2. The upgrades are extremely limiting and the game feels like it was designed with the max upgrade of each item in mind (ie. everything feels underpowered until you max upgrade it). This becomes a bigger issue in the late campaign as the first tier abilities have a lot of trouble killing anything.

3. Only 1 ship to play. Another issue with replayability.

4. There are only 3 special weapons and only one is useful. One gives you a big purple laser beam (you can see it on the animation on the store page) that lasts a short amount of time but does good damage. One gives you a large bomb that clears the screen of bullets and kills things. And one that gives you a shield that protects you from all damage, allows you to ram into bullets/ships to damage/destroy them and lasts longer than the other two abilities. I'll leave you to figure out which one is most useful. But for real - only 3 abilities to choose from?

5. There are some unique/fun pick-ups that drop from a specific enemy, but they don't last long enough or are too situational (thanks to them having a timer and not staying on the screen until you need them). For example, you can drop a healing item, but if you are at full health (because you are good at dodging bullets), then it is useless and you can't save it until later when you take damage as it will 'scroll' off the side of the screen. Or a bonus that doubles the currency you pick-up, which has a very short timer (about 1.5 waves when upgraded) - it is super situational since you cannot control when you use/active it, and it is only useful when there is a ton of currency on the screen. These two pick-ups could easily be changed, for example, the health could give you overhealing, and the currency bonus could apply to x amount of currency picked up (ie. double received for first 20 currency picked up).

6. Homing [weapons] AI is stupid. There are certain enemies in the game that the dev never intended for you to kill ("obstacles"), but the homing weapons will still target them, even if killable targets are on the screen.

7. Achievements are laughable. You get an achievement for unlocking each upgrade in the game. For each boss killed. For each pickup dropped by enemies. If a game cannot create meaningful achievements - then does that mean the game lacks anything worth achieving? IMO, this game should have ~30 achievements tops (kill each boss; kill each boss on elite difficulty, reach x/y/z waves in endless, complete boss rush, maybe a few 'challenging' ones like complete the campaign without dying or complete a boss without taking damage).

If the Devs read this and you decide to update this game (versus just working on the next one), here is a list of things for me to change this review to recommended: bindable keys; more replayability (ie. different ship types; ways to customize the campaign or endless mode); more weapon types or variety; more ways to upgrade a weapon (ie. side grades) or your ship (ie. movement speed); more special items; fix homing ai; longer lasting pick-up items.

Solid, clean, and with an incredible variety of enemy shooting patterns. This is a good game, crafter with love and care, well balanced and very pleasant to play. I can't understand why games like this one don't have 5 times the number of the steam reviews they have. Well done devs, big big thumb up! With this one it's 3 out of 3 good games I try from of the Shooting Ships bundle, i am impressed.

Eh... this one is really on the border between recommendation and not recommending it. It's an okay enough game at that price. However, it is a blatant copy of Steredenn, the enemies and boss ships are almost verbatim copied, alot of the game mechanics are copied, and in those cases where it is not a copy, it doesn't really work out all too well. Also, it is just an updated version of the first game, not really a second game. And for that, it seems not really finished or polished. On top a few bugs.

Meh. But kinda okay for the price.

Had a lot of fun with this one...it's familiar territory once again but that's a good thing.

Graphics are nicely done, a cool rock/electronic soundtrack, lots of good upgrades and achievements, leaderboards for all modes, co-op, extra modes like boss rush and arcade kept me coming back for more. I liked the smaller enclosed levels too (SO glad you don't take damage if you hit a wall here too).

There's a few things I'd like to see in future games in the series...more upgrades, larger/longer campaign, more fun achievements, levels where the whole thing is a boss, (like level 3 from R-type), trading cards, more varied bosses, this game has some enclosed levels which were fun and I'd like to see more of those too.

This series is severely underrated...if you like shmups and progression, buy this game...it's a lot of fun!

Play Steredenn instead, this is a bad boring clone of it.

Steam sucks and I no longer support them.

Shocked to see only positive reviews for this game.As I said in my SEF1 review, I'm easy to please when it comes to retro pixel games, but this sequel is no better than the first game.
Still boring, repetitive, too easy and nothing new, in fact it feels like a slight rehash of the first game with a barely anything new to get excited about.
The arcade mode can be fun if you want to compete for the high score but that's about it.
You are better off playing Super Hydorah on STEAM or Gradius on the NES.