Ex-Zodiac

[b]My score: 6.5/10 (EARLY ACCESS) ⭐ TL;DR:[/b] A stylish [i]Star Fox[/i]-inspired shooter buried under annoyingly punishing design choices. 🟦 [b]NOTE:[/b] Development seems to be progressing steadily, with regular updates. [h2]Overview[/h2] It’s an obvious homage / love letter to [i]Star Fox[/i], and it checks many boxes on my personal list of positives: Super FX Chip-style visuals, vaporwave-inspired color palettes and environments, delightful pixel art, banger soundtrack, smooth customizable controls, etc. However, it also has one massive flaw: IT. IS. SO. FREAKIN’. HARD. When you die, you respawn at the latest checkpoint — but you lose ALL your upgrades. Imagine reaching a boss (which already tend to have unnecessarily huge health pools), dying near the end of the fight, and restarting with the default pea-shooter laser. At that point, you might as well just restart the stage altogether. And then there’s the lives system: you only get three lives for the entire run, not per level. So if you die twice in one stage, you’ll enter the next one with a single life left, and as far as I can tell there’s no way to earn extra lives at all. Don’t even get me started on the “S” ranks. The score requirements are absurd. At first I thought it was simply a skill issue on my part, but after checking the achievement percentages... yeah, I’m starting to think the game might actually be the problem here. MNKY, if by any chance you’re reading this: please reconsider the lives system and rethink your idea of what counts as “challenging”. [h2]One Thing I Liked / One Thing I Didn’t[/h2] ✔️ [b]Liked:[/b] Every stage feels visually distinct and exciting — you genuinely want to keep playing just to see what comes next. ✖️ [b]Didn’t:[/b] Having to read dialogue mid-flight while dodging two giant worms, four kamikaze robots, three collapsing wind turbines, and approximately seven million projectiles at the same time. [h2]Key Points[/h2] [*][h3]DIFFICULTY:[/h3] Getting an “S” rank with the current score requirements feels borderline impossible. [*][h3]PRESENTATION:[/h3] It honestly looks and sounds fantastic. There’s some noticeable inconsistency in the art style, though: later levels — especially the newest one, “Ethuna” — have visibly higher polygon counts and more detailed textures compared to the earlier stages. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. [*][h3]STORY:[/h3] I COULDN’T READ. I WAS BUSY. [*][h3]GAMEPLAY/GAMEPLAY LOOP:[/h3] On-rails shooter. Basically [i]Star Fox[/i] with occasional [i]Space Harrier[/i]-style sections. Do yourself a favor and enable “autofire” in the options menu. [*][h3]TECHNICAL POLISH:[/h3] I noticed some questionable hitboxes/collisions and a few misleading camera angles. Other than that, no major glitches or bugs detected. [*][h3]MONEYxCONTENT VALUE:[/h3] Even in Early Access, you can already tell where this is heading: artificial longevity through pure memorization of enemy placement and attack patterns in order to achieve decent scores. Hopefully the difficulty gets smoothed out a bit over time and more replayability features get introduced (like branching paths — currently there are no alternate routes or level exits, which was a huge part of older [i]Star Fox[/i] games). It’s not expensive, but I’d still wait for a discount. [/list]