Sine Mora EX

It looks like a lavish festival on screen, but my eyes and hands are in full-on panic mode.

[h1] Great shmup definitely from the top shelf. Visuals are nice, exhilarating boss fights, interesting levels. Not too long but gameplay is solid, can't expect more from such 3D shoot'em up. [/h1]

Sine Mora EX looks great and has an interesting time-based mechanic, but it never fully comes together. The difficulty spikes feel frustrating rather than rewarding, especially when combined with certain enemy patterns. While it has solid ideas, the overall experience feels uneven and doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

Sine Mora EX suffers mainly from some of the misrepresenting delusional game reviews you can find on Steam, so keep an open mind. Now to the game itself. This is a heavily story-based shmup, with said story and great visuals being the strongest points. The writing is surprisingly thick, painting a dark scifi universe - almost feels too mature for the genre. Kept me highly entertained. Perhaps it also helped that the character voiceovers deliver professional quality. The gameplay is a simplified with a slowdown gimmick and seems to be mostly just a vehicle to connect said story and sprinkle the linear levels with cool boss designs. It's a flawed game on the whole but with a special something that shines bright, making it memorable beyond its imperfections. For the price it goes these days it's a no-brainer if you're looking for a laid back shmup dripping with cool lore.

Somehow Sine Mora EX is even worse than the original: there is some kind of synchronization issue that makes the game run at 2x speed for many players, the mouse does not work in the menu screen, and the game takes a lot longer to start. Otherwise, I did not notice any difference between the two versions and I am not sure why EX needed to be made. Mouse controls flat out do not work in either game - even with sensitivity maxed out, you cannot get from one end of the screen to the other without picking up and repositioning the mouse, which makes tunnel stages impossible. There are two difficulty modes but I failed to see any difference between them. The story is interesting, but the game is very short and feels like a boss rush, with each stage under a minute long and with less than a dozen enemies to shoot at. Time dilation ability is extremely limited for a game all about time travel and runs out in seconds, so the small enemies seem to exist solely to accumulate weapon powerups, without getting hit, to then be able to blast bosses before they can fire their bullet-hell guns. In the end, you spend more time in cutscenes then actually playing the game.

This is an A-Tier shmup but there are some things you need to know to fully enjoy it (in order of importance): 1) The way [b]DX9[/b] was implemented in this game seems to cause all kinds of problems on modern Windows setups, up to and including making it completely unplayable. Thankfully the fix is very easy as long as you don't waste your time troubleshooting red herrings: if you are on Windows, just get a DLL from the DXKV project and drop it into your game folder as explained in [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3643381804]this guide[/url]. Basically, this will translate all the problematic DX9 API calls into Vulkan, making the game run perfectly smoothly. If you are running Proton on SteamOS or another linux distro, you don't have to worry about this step, because this translation layer is already included by default. Either way, I recommend you test the game out and try the fix, if needed, during your refund window. 2) [b]This game uses an analog controller stick[/b], and was clearly designed and tested around that input method. At first I was using the d-pad + slow button, thinking these two velocities were just mapped onto the stick (as they are in many shmups). I was wrong. After a little testing it was obvious the stick was providing more precise analog input, giving far more control than using buttons. This is uncommon in shmups, where the diehards use arcade sticks or d-pads, both of which are digital inputs (such that many games have on-the-fly or powerup based ship speed settings to compensate for the lack of nuance), so it bears mentioning. After switching to the stick I immediately got my first "A" score. It makes a huge difference and feels much better, even though I'm sure the traditionalists will have some kind of beef with it. But if you want to fairly judge the game, this is important to know. Imagine panning a modern FPS because it plays horribly using a d-pad. It's not meant to be played that way. 3) [b]Normal (beginner) mode sucks[/b]. Not because it is easy per se, but because it (via the time/life clock mechanic) enables you to brute force the early levels, kamikazeing through hails of bullets, without any skill or effort; not only is this boring but it short circuits the incentive to learn and practice the controls, mechanics, and timing (which is the whole point of early shmup levels) you will need in later stages and tougher difficulties. And something about it just feels much, much less fun. For this reason I don't recommend anyone play Normal mode, even if you are a beginner. It would be better to just die a few dozen times on Challenging mode until you get the hang of it, or go play a shmup that is better designed at easier difficulties. If you don't like dying over and over you probably don't really like shmups. That's ok. There are plenty of other games. This game is not that hard, by comparison, but like Steppenwolf's Magic Theater, it is not for everybody. 4) This game was designed with a cinematic [b](21:9) aspect ratio[/b], reminiscent of early Darius games, but it defaults to the more standard 16:9. This makes a big difference in what you see on screen and how the game plays. Unless you are playing on a tiny screen, I highly recommend you switch to the wider ratio. On a more subjective note, this game seems to be quite polarizing. Partly I think this is because it has a lot of superficially "euroshmup"-adjacent features, which leads the inexperienced to try a punishing game they may not be prepared for, and the veterans to reflexively smear it based on "red flags." Yes, it's pretty (that shouldn't be a red flag). Yes, there is a story and a lot of cinematic fluff, but these can all be skipped more or less instantly. Yes, there is a "life gauge" of sorts, but it is carefully balanced (in non-Normal modes) to increase playstyle flexibility while enforcing performance floors, not as a kludge to cover up poor level design, and never as a requirement to get through a level. To my eyes, every "questionable" choice in this game turns out to be well thought-out and balanced with the rest of the design in a manner that leads to a coherent whole. They may not be to everyone's taste, but they aren't inherently flawed or misguided as some might claim. They are preferences. The most valid criticism I have seen is that the mechanics that make this game unique and interesting mostly disappear if you try to push for a high score, regardless of the other interesting aspects of scoring. To string the highest multipliers and scores, you need to AVOID using special weapons and abilities, and if you approach elite levels of efficiency in dodging and sniping, then the timer will always be full. This effectively turns all the coolest features in the game into training wheels if you decide to fully engage with the scoring system. All this makes for a game that is [b]phenomenal for intermediate players[/b], but isn't very fun or instructive for beginners (playing Normal mode) and is probably a little boring or mechanically bland for elite players. As a gambit at broad appeal it succeeded in some ways, but at its core it has the same fate as most shmups: it gives the best, intended experience only to players in a fairly narrow skill range. If you are there you will love it and grow as a player. If you aren't there, there are a lot of other options to explore. But I don't think this detracts from the game's excellence.

tl;dr yeah just dont first of all, the game has a myriad of technical issues; it only supports 60Hz displays which is honestly fine so long as it means it doesn't run at over double the speed if you have a monitor with 120Hz or more. the game has no rebindable controls. there's two presets, and if you don't like them, too bad. given that games OLDER than this have rebindable controls thanks to emulators, it feels like a comically out of touch oversight to not have rebindable controls, ESPECIALLY if your default controls are some wack ass ♥♥♥♥ that literally no other game uses (ASD instead of ZXC?? shoot is on X equivalent instead of Z????) i can't play past the first stage, it consistently crashes with "Runtime Error! Program: ...SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sine Mora EX\SineMoraEX.exe. This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information." i've tried a few troubleshooting things but no luck. i've gotten to the end of stage 1 like 5 times and each and every time it crashes like clockwork. honestly i'm impressed with how consistent it is. steam forums suggested it might be an issue with my keyboard language settings, but even after changing that it wasn't fixed. but even what i did play was kind of a hot mess and i can't really recommend it to anybody, regardless of shmup fan or newcomer. this is mostly coming from the arcade mode side of things, maybe story mode is a better experience. there's a general lack of visual clarity; enemies blend in with backgrounds with no difference in value or saturation with the foreground. the only way i could tell i was even shooting at an enemy was because of the health bars that would appear above them. collision is wonky all across the board, sometimes i'd take collision damage when im not even visually touching an enemy. there's one cavern section in stage 1 where you can clip into the wall, get stuck and lose the 1cc immediately. in between zones there's a LOOOOOOOOOOT of dead space. the game gives you the option to fast forward through it but it's still reaaally long. you just kinda sit there holding space for ten seconds twiddling your thumbs as the next encounter finally starts to show up. im assuming this is the part where the story takes place in the actual story mode, but it makes arcade mode feel like an afterthought tacked together by obligation. this is only exacerbated by this game's scoring system. it's chaining but worse, with a healthy dollop of gradius syndrome. using your powerups (deflect, speedup, rewind) negatively impacts your score... so the correct choice is to never use them at all. what's the point of having these systems if the best option is to not interact with them?? if you get hit, you don't die, but you'll lose all your powerups and have to go collect them again or you simply won't do enough damage to get by encounters like bosses. the game goes from "shmup with interesting time gimmick" to "shmup with annoying fast bullets and large hitboxes with zero room for error". speaking of which certain patterns are STRAIGHT UP UNDODGEABLE. not in a metaphorical sense of like "omg its so hard haha" there is PHYSICALLY NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO DODGE BECAUSE YOUR HITBOX IS TOO BIG. you HAVE to tank it with a shield or deflect. most of the bullets are not too hard to dodge but again, this feels like a massive oversight that's duct taped together by the fact that you can take multiple hits because of the time system. also i couldn't really tell the difference between the two difficulties on offer, i think hard just drops less time bonuses? bullet patterns are identical. enemies aren't tankier either. i think playing around with time in a shmup is a super interesting concept, and when it's done right you can get some great games like espaluga. but this ain't doin it for me. at least, of the very little that i played. i feel like i paid $10 for a broken demo. needless to say im gonna refund.

Kontrolcü orjinal olmadığından çalışmıyordu sanırım. Hikaye modu olması güzel ama hiç sarmadı. Düşman taretlerini aşırı isabetli buldum ve yeryöne sıkan bosslar rahatsız edici.

闪退问题很严重。

All in all very frustrating. The graphics are beautiful and the story is interesting. But the difficulty isn't fair at all. Something about the speed feels off, I never feel in control and keep dying. And if I don't die, I keep running out of time. Never felt that I mastered the gameplay, just trying to somehow survive. There is some interesting in there, but it's buried underneath a very frustrating gameplay.