GALAK-Z

Right, so Galak-Z. What a bloody disaster. Picture this: You're a game developer, yeah? And instead of giving players a proper ending, you just... stop. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum and walking away mid-conversation. "Oh, only a few hundred players completed our last season, so we'll just NOT FINISH THE GAME." Brilliant strategy, that. Absolutely genius. Let me break this down like I'm explaining quantum physics to a particularly slow audience member. The game is divided into FIVE seasons - which is just developer speak for "we couldn't be arsed to create actual varied content". Each season is basically the same two maps recycled, with a mission so randomly generated it might as well have been created by a drunk programmer playing Tetris. The real comedy gold? Every time you reach a new season, you LOSE. EVERYTHING. And the difficulty? OH. MY. GOD. It's not challenging. It's sadistic. It's like the developers looked at Dark Souls and thought, "You know what? Not punishing enough." The enemies in later seasons don't get more intelligent. They just get MORE BLOODY HEALTH. Here's the tragic bit - the CORE of the game is actually brilliant. The combat? Visceral. The atmosphere? Excellent. The dialogues? Genuinely entertaining. But it's like finding a gorgeous supermodel who can't string two sentences together. Looks amazing. Absolutely NO substance. The control scheme is so counterintuitive, it's like conducting a symphony orchestra while wearing boxing gloves . Strafing? More convoluted than a politician's explanation of their expenses. Bottom line? If you're a masochistic space shooter fan with unlimited patience and a love for repetitive missions, WELCOME HOME. For everyone else? Save your money. Buy a nice cup of tea. Or literally anything else. Galak-Z: A game that promises the cosmos, delivers a cardboard cutout, and has the audacity to charge you for the privilege.

Really fun rogue-like top down space shooter with visuals inspired by 80's anime like Robotech. Combat feels so cool and satisfying because although it looks like an arcade shooter there's actually a big tactical edge where you have to retreat to recharge your shields and use the environment against your enemies to take their shields down and then move in to finish them off. It nails making you feel overwhelmed but empowered at the same time. The campaign is split up into "Seasons" like it's a TV show where you start each season with the default ship and then upgrade it as you progress with new weapons, boost upgrades and other stuff like elemental shots which freeze or set enemy ships on fire. Everything has so much character from the synth music to the Saturday morning cartoon style voice acting and the way enemies insult you over the radio and scream when they explode. Good stuff.

It's a game I really WANT to like, with its marriage of Robotech/Macross aesthetics and Luftrausers style play, but I find the controls awkward and frustrating.

Not Recommended

What a great game!

I never thought that this game has so few reviews (or maybe something happened them), but, honestly, it felt like an AAA game to me back when I played it, I really liked it, and it felt cool. It has nice combat mechanics and visuals and sounds and music and voice acting. And different weapons that you can upgrade, and it feels rewarding. What adds variety is that story is not completely static, but seasons have several stories mixed up in random order. And music, it can change slightly in real-time when you get close to certain objects, that's some nice sound design. What felt strange, though, is that there are few cases where you can use rockets. They are powerful indeed and boost your planning ability because they should be used as a last resort. But maybe it would be nice to add some sort of bonus level where you could use rockets as much as you want, just to let the player see that cool animation a little more.

Getting 100% was a mixed bag of decent gameplay but an achievement gamble. approximate amount of time to 100%: 15-25hours ~ (skill dependent) Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10 Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2+ Multiplayer achievements: No. Missable achievements: Yes !!! (Limited stage replay available*) Grinding Achievements: No*. DLC-Only achievements: No. Time-gated achievements: No. Speed-run achievements: Yes !!! (Rescue the Admiral in 3 minutes). RNG-achievements: No*. Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes!! Need to complete the entire game on rogue mode. Unobtainable/glitched achievements: YES !!!*. Point of no return: No. First achievement unlock: Finish the tutorial (along with Stealth Extraction). Is there a good guide: The steam guide by Brother STX is excellent. His patched DLL still works. Notes: * The game is made up of 4 chapter with 5 missions each. While you can re-play each chapter there's no way to select which mission to play. You will have to start from scratch and play them all * You can always play in rogue mode as long as you quit to desktop and backup your save after every mission. * No real grind, the 500 kills will be easily gotten while you work on the other achievements as long as you don't overly rely on stealth play. * While there are no true RNG achievements, the map generation can make getting some achievements either really easy or impossible(notably getting the +50% upgrade to spawn or getting the overpowered laser upgrades early) * About half of the achievements are either broken or extremely glitchy. ( See Brother STX's Guide on steam for confirmed fix and workarounds for where to attempt the glitchy ones). * There are many achievements where the unlock condition is wrong in the achievement text. They either unlock in a different mode (void/arcade etc..) or in a specific stage that's not mentioned. * At full price the game isn't worth it in my opinion. Despite it being fun at times, the appalling state of the achievements in this game marks it as "avoid" in my book. Not Recommended.

Randomly remembered I liked this game on PS4. Surprised it wasn't more successful especially after they added the mission checkpoint system. Fun aesthetic, decent gameplay.

i have 86 hours on this game as of writing this, i'm sure that says enough great game, the storyline is good and the more intricate lore details are very interesting to me. the void is a very fun mode to play despite the difficulty at later levels, and the controls are good too. i highly recommend this game to people who like action and stuff, this got me hooked on spaceship shooter games

Light not recommended. If you are a fan of the classic space arcade games you will love this but if you don't love that style of gameplay this game will not be for you. I really like the art style in this game and overall the direction was good. It also seemed somewhat not fully complete to me, they are the beginnings of a great game and just left it as okay. 4/10