It's a tough one for me to not recommend. The gameplay and style are an immediate draw and it made me play quite far into the game.

The drawbacks are what made me put it away.

The difficulty is cranked up by spacing out checkpoints further and further apart. At first you will get checkpoints right before bosses and regularly after passing a difficult part. Later on you are required to repeat a lot.

Another part of the difficulty is that the game will change its 2D perspective in some scenes and this gives you no sense of where enemies and other hazards are coming from.

These two annoyences are both present at a certain boss, making for a very frustrating sequence.

The upgrade materials are so scarce that you can't really experiment. You just have to hold off upgrades until you have accumulated a lot of weapons or choose early and commit, making you wonder if you made the right call or not.

A very awesome and unique game is hampered by these negatives leaving me unsatisfied.

The game would be fine if the enemy-projectiles wouldn't blend in with the environment.

Get this on sale only if you are a fan of their previous games, because sadly Steel Mantis dropped the ball in their shoot em up implementation.

The game features all the classic pitfalls of bad shmups:
-Gigantic player hitbox
-Hard to see enemy projectiles: same color as background, the effects from your weapon obscure everything, foreground obstructs vision, you name it.
-Surprise enemy spawns from the back/below for nice BS deaths
-2.5D shenanigans: enemies/projectiles from z axis, sudden camera rotations that disorient you while you're trying to dodge, etc.

The game promotes going melee, which leads to getting shot in the face with no time to react. Also many actions (like melee and some guns) mess with your movement speed in weird ways, which doesnt feel good in a shmup game which should be all about precision.

The worst sin, though, is how boring it is due to the very bad pacing. 99% of the time you're just cruising through enemies that fly into your shots, until you run into a BS death (see list above). There is no constant sense of tension and danger. Also you have infinite continues and frequent checkpoints, which make the stakes even lower as death means nothing. It's easy to just plow through the game even in hard mode, but, like beating an old arcade game by feeding endless credits, it's not rewarding. Trying to 1cc or minimize deaths, on the other hand, is a recipe for insanity.

There are a couple of good things. The art and style is incredible, both in design and technically, and is the highlight of the game. Also there is great variety of weapons which can give the game some replay value if you're willing to keep playing given all I explained above.

Edit/disclaimer after reading other reviews: I played the game on hard (2 hp) from the get go, because I like challenge and I think it's often the way to put game design to the test. On normal or easy you can probably just breeze through the game tanking the BS and enjoying the visuals. Many people seem to have had a great time with that. For me it would just be more boring.

3 hours is a bit meager for 25 euros
screen sometimes has too much going on, projectiles are not emphasized and not clearly visible through all the particle effects
died often enough because of camera rotations
vroll's second phase is rage-inducing bad design (or me dumb)
hitboxes and melee attacks seem a bit strange sometimes
enemy variety is meh, bosses ok
art style is nice, music is great

I like shoot 'em ups, especially the NES ones, like Burai Fighter, Section Z, Gradius etc.

This game has some interesting elements of a good shoot 'em up game, but in the end it didn't deliver to me. There are some big flaws that made the whole experience a bit sour.

I didn't like the whole weapon upgrade system and especially that you can only change/upgrade your weapons only on checkpoints.

And especially I didn't like the constant changes to viewing perspective. Yes, it's cool visually, but from the gameplay standpoint it's an unnecessary difficulty spike that doesn't bring anything good/fun to the table. Eating random projectiles just because the game thinks it's the right time to go from 2d to 3d and rotate the whole screen...is just not fun.

Graphics are ok, paper'ish feeling, like everything is made out of a cardboard boxes. Level design is also a hit and miss. Some levels are good, but some just frustrating from start to finish. Boss batlles were not bad.

Overall. I didn't like this game. Not my cup of enjoyment tea.

I found the controls to be cumbersome. And I had a lot of problems getting it to use my gamepad so I was stuck using the keyboard which makes the game quite a bit worse.

Well this has reminded me of why I don't play SHMUPs anymore. I gave this a chance after having given DRAINUS a chance and having had way too much fun with that game, but it ends here. No more SHMUPs.

There is a distinct issue with this game though which need to be mentioned: A severe lack of visual clarity. It is remarkably hard to make out whats happening on the screen at times and there's many times.

I think I'm close to the end now but I am not sure if I will finish the game, tired of dying over and over at this point...

This game was removed from my account on 9.25.2024 by the developer/publisher. They have provided no explanation why this happened except shifting the blame to a Steam bug and/or Fanatical issue.

On 9.26.2024 the game was added to my library by Steam, along with everyone else.

First, this is a good lesson/reminder that we don't own games, we only license them. It's up to you if you're ok with that fact. Me personally, I am. I trust Steam and they've never given us a reason to not trust them.

Second, Steam should make changes to their rules and functionality that does not allow for developers/publishers to revoke Steam keys without Steam's approval and a damn good reason to do so. Allowing them to revoke the game is ripe for abuse by more nefarious developers. To be fair, I don't think there was any bad intentions in this case, but it still should not have happened or been allowed by Steam.

Finally, I cannot recommend this game or developer after this event. While I'm incredibly glad Steam stepped into to fix it (along with the developer), I can no longer trust a company that revoked the keys in the first place, mistake or not. There is no logical reason to revoke keys. What's worse is there was no explanation of why or how it happened. If there's zero company transparency, I cannot support them.

With all that said, I invite you to form your own conclusions and opinions on the matter. If you're fine with everything written above, absolutely support them and buy their games with no judgement. However, I won't be.

First one was better, this one just felt rushed.

a pretty run of the mill euroshmup disguised under some pretty inspired visuals