Alright, at the time of this review I've played this game for ~6 hours according to steam, which to me is a fair shot to give, especially to a shmup.
Do keep in mind that this game may contain mechanics and/or visual design elements that I critique that are a throwback to earlier Cresta games, which I did not play. I'll question whether they were fun and good in my opinion regardless of their legacy and how they could, to some, shape the identity of the series.
Also, opinions opinions everyone. Very few thing I say are hard facts.
Honestly, I'd say that I am disappointed overall.
I'll try to articulate that in the 3 sections below.
[h1] What I Love about this game[/h1]
- [b]First off, the music is absolutely fantastic[/b]. It was composed and produced by Yuzo Koshiro, which I'd urge you to listen to. This is easily the most impressive thing in this game, not because the rest of it is bad ( although some of it is in my opinion), but because it is just that [b]good[/b].
- [b]There is a LOT of in game mechanics, and most of them are interesting and engaging[/b]. The sol gauge makes scoring higher exciting and lets you unlock new attacks that can be unleashed with half circles, charge moves and full circle joystick motions (reminiscent of fighting game inputs) on top of more shield, more lives, more score and other exciting mini-objectives.
Acquiring and messing with the formation, ship order and charge shots while managing your gauge is interesting and unique. I can't think of any other games that does that. Kinda reminiscent of wonderful 101 in a sense.
- [b]In general, scoring is fun[/b]. There are no crazy danmaku mechanics with insane multipliers to be found, instead most of it revolves with playing the game safe and knowing when to switch to which ship to pass through colour-coded circles, hit cyan orbs with charge shots, hitting the right enemies with the right ship, getting the right formation coins and destroying crates with the right ship. This makes scoring a very different experience compared to just trying to 1CC the game .
[h1] What I dislike about the game that I can see changing in a future patch[/h1]
- [b]The way the game renders sprites is bad and upon closer inspection, most of them look bad in motion[/b]. the CRT options might have alleviated that by making it not as noticeable, but the CRT doesn't look good either.
[b]For some reason, these issues are even more noticeable in tate (vertical) mode, which is a shame because tate should be the best way to experience the visuals in this game.[/b] Coins and shots also frequently clip and/or only partially get rendered, making it look like a really bad case of screen tearing (although it is not). It might be an attempt at emulating older hardware, in which case I'd like an option to turn it off.
- [b]The game lacks graphical options, and most of the mechanics are explained poorly in a .pdf tucked in the menus.[/b] I'd like to see more CRT options, ways to toggle v-sync on and off, or other basic features, at least on the steam version.
- [b]The UI is not good at all in my opinion[/b]. While not distracting and overwhelmingly animated or colourful, The greyish and monotonous looks of it really make the visual appeal of the game significantly worse. More importantly however, it completely feels at odds with the (not so crisp I admit) pixel art direction in game. It looks like a UI that would be stamped on a remaster edition with no regards for the game's artistic direction.
On top of looking bad, I also think it does a poor job at making information easy to consult during play. Meter is spread out and a bit hard to get good grasp of where it's at until you stare at it directly, formations are okay in horizontal mode but really hard to make out which one you already collected in tate, and the sol gauge is just suffering from being too small, horizontal or vertical mode. Maybe displaying less, bigger icons and scrolling through them as you progress might have been better?
- [b]You should recover a ship upon picking the ship medal, rather than picking the medal and then coming in contact with the ship that spawns at the bottom of the screen.[/b]
[h1] What I dislike about the game that I do not think will get changed[/h1]
- [b]The levels are kind of uninspired in their layout (at least until the later levels)[/b], and feel kind of long. A playthrough is about 2 hours long , this discourages me from scoring it or playing this game long-term.
- [b]There are no individual level scoreboards[/b], this could have been a way for beginners and fans of platinum games that are not shmup players to put a foot in the door when it comes to scoring without attempting a full run, especially with loops.
- [b]Formations and other gameplay elements don't play as good as they look on paper.[/b] The formation slowmo is hard to control precisely, some patterns look too similar to each other and are a pain to "draw" (such as the triangle ones), the command inputs for shooting around you or on the sides are also kinda janky while still being fun and at times worthwhile to do.
- [b]The game is visually messy at times.[/b] Too many moving parts with the game's pixelated (rather than pixel art) look in very narrow spaces can be difficult to make out. This is especially true when your ships are on top of each other and you don't have a clear-looking hitbox during slowmo. Also, while subjective, I do think that the background, boss designs and enemy designs are kind of too simple and repetitive. The T-rexes on terra felt extremely exciting as a byproduct of this monotony.
-[b] There are a lot of background elements that look like foreground elements and vice versa.[/b] While you can just learn it (albeit in a 2 hour long run), this is still easily what kills me most after 5+ hours of playtime.
At the very end of the game there is a portion where the scrolling becomes a lot faster and this issue can generate a lot of frustration as this portion will most likely kill you more than anything else in the game, at the very end of a 2 hour run...
- [b]Speaking of which, some mechanics seems strangely punishing.[/b] Hitting a wall or a door will kill you instantly no matter your shield, you respawn with 0 upgrades and just 1 ship and immediately need to dance around the screen to get the 2nd ship medal and make your way to the ship that spawns. This makes dying a few times in 5 seconds when attempting to recover during a boss pattern quite frequent.
- [b] The game feels very deliberate in what it wants you to do and when to do it when scoring.[/b] This is subjective, But I would have liked the game to be a bit more open ended in how to approach a scoring run.
This concludes my thoughts on the games. Overall, I Like the game for what it attempts and what it tries to do differently, but I dislike it because too many issues stand in the way of trying to seriously get involved with it. It feels much cooler as a precendent for the shmup genre and the industry rather than as a game to get involved with.
As it stands, if some of the issues I have with the game get patched, I'll modify this review accordingly. At this time I'd say it's a [b]35/65[/b] ratio for me between things to like and things to dislike. I am usually a shmup player that plays for hard CCs and/or score however, so this is coming from this kind of personal perspective.
You might notice that I left the price point out of my review, as I believe that you'll make your own judgement on it after reading and researching rather than take my word for it. However, I'll say that a lot of polish-related issues and the fact that the game is emanating from a well-established AA company seem contradictory with the price that is asked as it stands. patches and updates might change that in the future.
