Redux: Dark Matters pays homage to classic shmups such as R-Type, XEXEX, and Pulstar.
Is it as good as any of them? Not really.
Is it still worth playing? Ehhhh....I guess? Possibly...possibly maybe...maybe possibly...but certainly not definitely.

First off, it's a good-looking game, but it's also not. Everything looks sharp and really clean. The problem is everything also has this bright and cheery aesthetic. In a way, it's a conscious design-decision. The backgrounds are fairly muted, while the player-ship, enemies, and bullets are colourful* and easily distinguishable. While I respect that, I think the artist went a little too far. In stage 2, it seems that half the enemies are firing flowers. Are they trying to kill me with kindness? What's the deal here?

Still, this is merely nitpicking compared to Redux's most glaring issue; it's way too easy. When fully-powered, the player-ship is protected from about 90% of the enemy's arsenal. Sure, lasers and bullets that might hit from behind are worrying, but they don't come up all that often. If that wasn't enough, there are usually 2-3 extra lives in every stage, plus a couple extends from surpassing certain score thresholds. If that wasn't enough, then the player can hit a button. This causes a vortex to swallow up any nearby bullets for several seconds. This special ability is tied to a meter, but it refills fairly quickly.

Now if all of that still(!) wasn't enough, there's also the portions of the game that went overlooked. The fourth boss has laser cannons placed along the top and bottom of the screen, except for a massive space towards the left side. This is the most obvious safe-spot I've ever seen. Instead of forcing the player to weave in-between bullets approaching from above and below, all anyone has to do is sit back, watch, and laugh. I'm guessing that when this game was remade in wide-screen, nobody bothered to account for the additional real estate.

I play a lot of STGs, but I'm a mediocre talent at best. I still cleared this game with 10 lives remaining, on my very first play-through. Granted, this was on the default ship, which is practically invincible. Redux added a ship designed specifically for veteran shmup-players, but it's loaded with oversights. The most obvious and ridiculous of the problems is that the veteran-ship's weaponry OVERLAPS THE ENEMY BULLETS! When I saw this, my jaw hit the floor so hard it drove through the earth, and then I cut my chin on the sharp edge of a dinosaur bone. I can't even remember the last time I saw this happen in a shmup.

Was this an actual idea by the developer? Did they think: "Those guys who play shmups by holding down the fire button all the time annoy me soooooo much. We have to do something about them."? I can't come up with a reasonable explanation, I simply can not. So if you're firing away, there's a good chance that you won't even see most of the bullets that are coming directly at you. That's just great. Veteran-ship also lacks the force-pod/other shields, which causes the game's difficulty to do a complete 180. Situations that were originally exceedingly simple become absurdly improbable.

Dux originally started off as a strict R-Type clone. It employed a checkpoint-system, which kicked players backwards whenever they died, rather than respawning them immediately. Over the next couple re-releases, the game has become considerably more lax, but that isn't enough of an excuse to assume that anyone can reasonably finish it without shields. The amount of bullets on-screen never hits danmaku levels, but it's overkill all the same. On a normal play-through, anyone can sleep-walk through Redux, but they'll hit a brick wall as early as stage 2, with the veteran ship. That isn't balanced, not in the slightest. If it were up to me, I would have made the charge-shot slightly wider, so that hard-to-reach enemies don't get quite as many opportunities to clog the screen with bullets. I also would have lowered the density of certain bullet-patterns.

Or I would have just made a different game, one that's not actually designed around having force-pods or shields just to survive. Redux is an otherwise competently-made shooter held down by a complete lack of challenge. When it tries to break away, it goes too far. In any case, this shmup simply isn't entertaining.

The graphics and the music are alright, nothing ground breaking, but not bad either.

On level 7, there's a silly difficulty spike, chances are you're going to die several times before you memorize it and manage to beat it, and guess what ? because the continues are limited, you will have to replay all those 6 levels again before getting to try again, it can get really annoying and really boring.

Not a bad game, but the limited continues can make the game annoying for the non-hardcore shmup fans, specially with that silly difficulty spike there's on level 7.

Since there's no neutral reviews for steam and i grabbed this on a steam sale for a few cents, i'm willing to give it the Positive.

I'm giving this a positive recommendation with a caveat: there's bit of a frustration factor

What's frustrating about it:
-Many objects on screen (the ship, enemies, bullets) are rather bulky which oftentimes leaves little room to maneuver.
-The space ship doesn't move very quickly, so you're handicapped by less-than-avg speed when dodging obstacles.
-There's so much on-screen clutter, it might be a little confusing by what are collectables and what are harmful objects. Also sometimes you're not sure what exactly is part of the background and what is in the foreground.

What's good about it:
-The visuals are stunning; very vibrant colors and mostly nice level designs for a schmup
-OST is fantastic, fitting to the game for the most part
-The challenge isn't over-the-top unfair although it's still quite challenging (still yet to try advanced difficulty level), but fun enough to play
-Power ups are REALLY helpful, especially when you're powered to full capacity, then it's blast to go through the levels.

Also note:
There's a minor learning curve to the game, in which you need to acclimate to the shield and what exactly the shield can absorb, along with the controls and bulky objects.

I'd give this a solid 8/10

interesting title that has come around on me in the lead up to the new R Type release.

This game is heavily flawed.

Graphically it's fine, although it's a taste not for everyone. The problem is that everything is too big. If the player/enemies/obstacles/etc were shrunk down to about 1/2 of what they are it wouldn't be so bad. As it stands now, it's a claustrophobic mess. Most of the time your ship will have almost no room to maneuver around enemy fire.

To make things worse, there's so much going on that distinguishing enemy fire from everything else can be near impossible once things get hectic. When fully powered, your ship is firing missiles, a wide spread auto-firing energy cannon, AND bouncing lasers. That's already a lot going on before you take into account explosions and enemy fire. However it gets better, because this is coupled with the fact that everything that explodes leaves behind gold ore chunks for you to collect. Do these ore chunks beef up your ship, replenish supplies, or offer some sort of upgrade option? Nope. These are collected just to increase your score. Rather than just giving you the points for destroying an enemy, you have to collect massive gold pieces. Just what's needed: more objects to clutter the already claustrophobic playing area.

I can't recommend this game at all. Paying homage to classic shooters takes way more thought than was put into this game.

This is a game that draws heavy inspiration from R-Type and Pulstar but doesn't really do much to draw people in. There's no stage select, only start game and options choices. There's two ships, one of which will make the game really easy and a 2nd ship which might give some people a run for their money since it lacks a shield. It's a pretty straightforward point collecting shmup which isn't really all that challenging for veterans. Maybe a pickup on sale for those that aren't veterans but there's only so little mileage possible to get out of this game.

A mediocre indie shooter that was released on the Dreamcast. It's a horizontal shoot'em up that really doesn't bring anything new to the table and comes off as being very basic. The controls seems floaty at first, but I quickly got accustomed to it. The game's art direction is definitely off putting for me as everything seems too big and toyish. There are 2 tracks in the game that sound pretty good Stage 7 and the game over screen. The rest of the tracks are forgettable. The game itself is pretty bare bones with its features. There are no replays, no online leader boards, but there's at least some graphic settings and remappable options in the settings .exe.

Almost all of the stages are ridiculously easy to get through with bosses offering some challenge. The difficulty just isn't there until Stage 7 where all hell breaks loose. It almost seems like all their work in terms of bullet patterns went only to that stage. There are other shooters who have gone this route and have done a better job with it. It's definitely not a horrible game at all and playing it on Veteran really brings a new twist to the game and makes it a bit more entertaining. Buy this only if you're really into STGs and just want something to scratch that itch in between notable releases.

Also, I've played this game for about 6 or 7 hours. I must have left the game on during a weekend trip or something.

I have to say I'm somewhat biased because I generally don't like bullethell/shmups that much and would only play them if I got them for free or they were inside some game bundle.

That said, I did play my share of Shoot ' em ups and in my opinion this is not a very good one. Since all the games are so similar you do have to come up with something special and I do not see anything great in this game, graphic-wise or gameplay-wise.

Perhaps there is a small group of people who would enjoy Redux:Dark Matters but I would not recommend it.

Beautiful shmup. I've played Dux on dreamcast , this one is a sequel and it's HD screen. Easy shmup :)

Redux: Dark Matters is a solid effort for a small indie dev. The graphics are smooth and nice too look at, scrolling is constant 60fps. But it's not challenging until Stage 7. Nice try!