If I can describe this game with a single sentence, it'd be "Bruh, what the hell is this balancing?!"
It's not like the game doesn't try to balance itself, it just does so in completely contradicting directions of what the game feels like it's trying to be. For example, there is a cool down mechanic on your weapon of choice. Now let me say, it is really really cute that the game has this, like it's not about to swarm you with more enemies that most horde shooters. It is utterly ridiculous that the game expects you to take you to take on 100+ enemies with seemingly no cap on how many can spawn. You can't even single them out, as the enemies will rubberband you harder than NPC's in racing games, actually they rubberband you far more than any game I have ever seen! You can't fight them when they swarm you, you die in such few hits that you're outright an idiot if you think you can actually take them on with the breadcrumbs of useful abilities and weapons that the game gives you. Barrel rolling might just be an emote as, even if it can help you dodge, means ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when there's 80+ enemies shooting at you on all sides. You're going to die whether you do a flashy barrel roll or not, the most it can do is slightly delay that when you're up against the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that the game throws at you later on. The only way you can level the playing field is by circling terrain and tricking the AI to crash, which isn't gameplay. I bought this to fight planes, not spin around in circles to exploit a flaw in the game itself! This game looked like it was going to be fun, and challenging, but what I get it a game that doesn't know what it's trying to be besides "plennn go shoota ten spennnn". There's little actual gameplay to be had here, the game has a good foundation for one but fumbles it MASSIVELY by not playing into it's strengths and just pulling random ♥♥♥♥ out it's ass to make the most incomplete finished product I've ever had the displeasure of playing.
If you want my opinion on how the game could have been good, here's a good start.
-Add a unit cap that can be adjusted in an "accessibility" option to allow players to tweak their experience
-actually, add accessibility sliders for just about everything as I feel lied to and betrayed by this developer and don't trust that he can balance things in a way that makes sense.
-remove rubberbanding except for maybe the cargo ships as that would actually add options to how you can approach situations.
-add weapons more fitting for taking out multiple enemies
-remove the cool down and let it burn in hell
-focus more on enemies being tougher to deal with individually rather than relying on swarming you and calling it "difficulty". Sky Rogue, another plane game that swarms you with planes, suffers similarly to this game but at least that game gives you options to deal with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it's throwing at you while this one does not. Plus, I can play Sky Rogue's campaign from beginning to end with it only getting bad in the last area, while this game gets bad within the first 40 minutes.
I cannot recommend this game to anyone, it's barely a game and doesn't offer a fun gameplay loop to master.
Now, I do know there is a sequel to this game called "Top Dog" that I have played briefly, I still need to play it more to see if it improves on any issues here and will edit this review to say whether the sequel is worth checking out.
