[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]
I am going to be brutally honest from the get-go: Solar Shifter EX is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the worst shmup games I have ever played in my life. Literally any good shmup player will realize how bad this game feels like from the very first moments of starting to play it.
There's a lot of things that Solar Shifter EX does wrong, making me honestly doubt if anyone on the development team has taken any other shmup game as a reference to make this, as this game is even significantly inferior to shmup games that came out in the 90s. Let me tell you why I think like this by mentioning what I witnessed in the few hours that I spent with this game:
[list][*]There is no logic behind enemy/boss patterns as they never directly try to target your ship and the patterns are not understandable. The enemies just come in, target whenever they are supposed to target (which is usually somewhere far away from where your ship is) and try to leave. Not only that, sometimes the very same patterns happen multiple times back-to-back and in one level. So you can literally stay still in one place and mow down a horde of them with ease. Some of the bosses are incredibly bad in this regard, as they can barely hit you with their attacks and constantly make themselves completely exposed.
[*]This issue get worse when you get to the levels where you play as the invading force. In these levels, not only your firepower is extremely high and you mop the floor with the enemies, but you are also showered with health items so there's literally no chance of losing unless you are actively trying to blow your ship up. What's worse is that these levels feel useless as a whole as they add nothing to the game, especially when it comes to story narration.
[*]You might now wonder where the difficulty comes from, if nearly every enemy encounter has a safe spot where you are completely safe from harm in it. Well, the game generates artificial difficulty by using its horrendous visual clutter that makes you unable to see incoming enemy projectiles, having the enemies surround you so you don't have a lot of room to move in, and having the enemies also shredding your ship's armor by inflicting absurd amounts of damage (as much as 33% damage for one hit) or even one-shotting you! Not only that, contact damage is also fatal and immediately kills you. So you will get hit very hard in a very unfair manner.
[*]Considering the previous point, you might think that the game is unbeatable. Actually, that is not the case... as long as you have an iron will, at least. The game's checkpoints always save your progress and acquisitions until that point in time, with the sole exception of your health, which always gets filled up when you die and reload. Since there is no health system in place either, there is no fear of losing and no need to get better because you can die and retry as much as you want. Unfortunately, this also means the game does not need to get better either.
[*]The credits you collect in the levels are capped to a specific amount. It's just a bar that fills up the more credit items you collect and when it's full, you get no extra money. So you don't get rewarded for doing good at the game.
[*]Since we are talking about not being rewarded for being good at the game, let me also mention that there is no scoring system in the game, no unlocks, no additional modes, and the shop upgrades you can buy are only limited to your weapons and the game only lets you upgrade them whenever it wants to. So trying to get better does not net you anything in this game other than some achievements that require you to finish entire levels without a single hit... in a game that does not have a level selection feature.
[*]Despite the playing area being wide, you are not allowed to move further than a specific rectangular space. You cannot move to the far top, far left or far right, even though some of the enemies are allowed to go there which makes you being barely able to hit them, with it also really screwing with your brain and depth perception when the camera angles change. Speaking of which...
[*]The game constantly changes the camera angle by slowly rotating it around, zooming in and out or changing perspectives without ever modifying the area you can move in. You can enter a boss fight with the default camera angle, just to suddenly realize the game is rotating the camera around for spectacle and at the cost of proper gameplay enjoyment.
[*]The game's pause menu has its options bound to specific buttons, except that is not true. You can actually navigate through it and press A to confirm other options instead of initiating what it's supposed to do (resuming the game).[/list]
It does not matter whether you are a newcomer, a casual shmup enjoyer or a hardcore player, Solar Shifter EX does not have what it takes to challenge your skills or even try to entertain you in the slightest. Even though the game is very cheap, you're better off buying and trying out other, much better shmup games that are available on Steam, as they provide you with way more entertainment value and challenge you in a fair way.
