lil cutey go shooty and looty

This game is a roguelike that feels too familar, except that most roguelikes give you a sense of power progression over a playthrough. Because you can lose your weapons in this game, your sense of power can fluctuate wildly and runs can end with a whimper that never feels good.

I have various issues with Star of Providence, but I just wanna highlight the most severe for me personally: VISUAL NOISE.

A lot of the time in this game, particularly when I have a really cool chaotic weapon, like a Laser or a Fireball of some description, I have to really strain my brain and eyes to comprehend what's going on on screen.

At its best, the game has good color contrast and reads (visually) pretty well. But at its worst, your attacks are the SAME COLORS as your enemy's attacks. And often, these attacks smear together onto the Bellows/Sanctum background elements and bricks.

I don't expect perfection in this department. Certainly some of my favorites like Nova Drift, Atomicrops, and Voidigo have occasional readability issues. BUT, Star of Providence feels like a "don't get hit lol" sort of game, and it's difficult to LOCK IN when you pick up an Overheat weapon or something and just... can't really make out what's happening anymore.

There's a lot of things I like about Star of Providence, too! I might overlook the other things I dislike if I could See the Video Game.

Isaac with bullet hell and a mouse for aiming.

It is pretty clear this game belongs to a mostly bygone era of roguelikes, a time when everyone was taking inspiration from Isaac. Nowadays Roguelites are much more popular thanks to the impact of Hades on the genre but this is still good. The only problem really is the unfair regional pricing. Definitely don't buy this outside of a sale.

Edit: On second thought, no. I can't recommend this. There are two reasons. Despite being designed as an isaac clone, the limited ammo of the weapons means you'll never get that feeling of creating a broken run like you do in isaac. As such, the game lacks any real gameplay hooks to keep you engaged. The other issue is the pricing. In summer last year the price was TRIPLED from 58kr to 165kr. For a title thats so old, that is a crazy thing to do. Apparently it was done because the DLC and the main game were merged but a tripling in the price is excessive and I feel like, in this time and age, there are just better roguelikes on this level that can be bought for much less than this price. I do not feel I am getting money's worth, nor do I feel motivation to play more. Funnily enough, "Have a nice death" ended up being the isaac clone that I had hoped this game would be despite its deceptive appearance as a roguelite.

The amount that I have played so far just hasn't really been that fun. It just feels like a random mashup of different styles in one package where nothing feels cohesive and where none of the upgrades feel like they really do anything.

Largely underwhelming.

I've beaten the final boss on my ~10th attempt, spent the rest of the time unlocking random stuff and trying to find more things to do, but there was nothing.

The core gameplay isn't a lot of fun either, it's very spammy and ADHD, screens get flood filled with bullets in mostly the same patterns. And of course the game speed has to be ramped up to 11, otherwise there would be little difficulty.

Runs feel one-note, mostly using underwhelming weapons that all work largely the same way. Sometimes you get the good run, but that feels like you just got arbitrarily lucky - doesn't feel like there is much agency in how well a run will go.

Definitely not a "hidden gem", it is as popular as it deserves to be.

Couldn't get into the gameplay loop with this one.

Game play is fun. If you're into shmups ull be into this. The negative review is due to a bug that wont allow me to progress the game. I currently have 12 hours in this game and half of that has been spent trying to figure out how to progress organically. I gave up, looked at a guide just to find out my save is bugged and the only way to progress is to start all over. This game is to old to have a bug like that in it.

I love games that throw you in headfirst without babying the player but this is nuts. So much of what's going on isn't explained at all. Tooltips on pickups are completely wrong and don't make any sense. Overall, the game is very high quality but it's so unintuitive that it's a pass from me.

Good game? yeah
great game? maybe
what I'm saying is It's overrated
Grade B
giving a thumbs down because it's too overrated.

The number one problem with monolith is that it gets monotonous with all of the grinding the game forces on you. The actual game is really short, like 30 minutes long, but all of the 'length' is just because of all the grinding you have to do. The prime example are the items you can buy when you first start which are permanent - all are overly expensive and therefore take far too long to unlock. Honestly, I think a lot (but not all) of them should have been given to the player by default instead of being unlockables, because even after paying for them you still have to 'unlock' them in the game.

There's not enough variety in the level design and enemies, which becomes more apparent the more you replay rooms, and getting a decent run is mostly luck because everything is random.

The difficulty is annoying too. The first four levels are easy and the last floor is annoyingly hard. The main issue here is that it takes 20+ minutes to get to the last floor just to have a shot at the overpowered end boss, meaning you are going to find yourself playing those first few floors over and over. You also cannot practice the bosses because that's hidden behind DLC, alongside QOL improvements.

The core game play and presentation are fine, but the grinding problem overshadows the good in the game.