Recent reviews by xaerock

[Completed on the default difficulty (delicate)]

Technical arena shooter centering around controlling two symbiotes. Getting the hang of the combat mechanics is very satisfying and has a unique feeling. Eventually you're spewing shotguns of flower bullets while meleeing enemy waves in a rhythmic fashion & get rewarded for good play with more ammunition/health to keep this snowball rolling. Quite a challenging game on the default mode. The bosses and enemies all seem pretty well thought out.

Visual style is very cool and somewhat reminiscent of Thumper, but can get a bit irritating on the eyes. It can sometimes be hard to read what's going on especially on the final stage if you lose control of the situation. I'd disable screen shake, flashing effects and set Bloom to low. The game looks excellent even without these.

I highly recommend playing on gamepad + mouse (or kb+m) instead of gamepad only, feels very natural with the wasp control. For me with this method it doesn't feel like controlling two separate characters, but rather a 'ship' with projectile attacks and a 'pointer' with a melee attack. Kind of like some strange mix of Sin & Punishment and Hellsinker (option types).
Going for speedy game clears seems fun even if you don't get into the scoring or higher difficulties.

Based on 1CCing Chaos ALL Trial+ and a 32mins clear on Chaos Counter Speedrun.

Kind of a best of CAVE shooting game with a Touhou twist on boss fights & grazing along with a very silly artstyle. Absolutely nails the controls and pacing of stages especially after Stage 2. Has a surprisingly strong soundtrack using royalty free materials.

Chaos difficulty and Extra stage were added in a later update and are superb addition, particularly for existing fans of the genre. These along with the unique Speedrun mode push the package close to perfection for a PC bullet hell game for me and that is as someone who dislikes the artstyle. Granted regarding the visuals: visibility of bullets, enemies etc. is good and the game has a level of visual clarity that isn't too common in doujin or arcade shmups, further lending to it being comfortable to pick up and play.

The game has a very lenient 'deathbomb' window to bomb before you die giving a kind of training wheels to get used to and experiment as you learn stages, but still becoming more strict resource management on higher difficulties. This makes the game more beginner friendly on top of the huge variety of game modes and gives a feeling that you can always recover despite being on the edge of your ability.

Boss fights simultaneously borrow CAVE elements but also bring refreshing new things to the table. I think Outside's games can easily be a gateway drug into Touhou games, sitting in a comfortable middle ground. This one leans heavily on arcade style for stage design though and I think that is to a massive benefit. Compared to Cosmo Dreamer there is less dead air and repetition in stage sections with things like the same mid-size enemy spawning 5 times in a row.

Includes an oddball Speedrun mode which infinitely speeds up scrolling speed and enemy spawn cycles if you've cleaned the screen. A couple other games have similar modes but I'd love to see more like this. Stages become completely unhinged based on how well you play, and the game turns 8 stages into a 30 minute rush with 0 downtime. Even having played shmups for over a decade this mode is extremely exhausting (I can't do more than 2-3 full runs a day) but it's the most fun I've had with a shmup in years + is probably the best STG mode you could unironically play for pure speedruns. It's super intense and I appreciate the length of all-trial being pushed below 30 minutes the better you play.

For small gripes I think hyper on death having more invincibility frames than using it normally is off and seems like a design error. Death bombing on purpose is silly and very unintuitive for newcomers (it kind of should be).

Being a CAVE style PC game comes with the usual potential benefits of not having arcade game/port jank (no hardware slowdown, lowest possible input lag, instant switching between fast & slow movement speeds ala Touhou, difficulty selection instead of multiple game loops, etc.)

Chaos, Speedrun and Extra modes are just so fun I can see myself coming back to this game indefinitely. The artstyle is a negative and the setting doesn't do anything for me but this is a bullet hell shmup I don't see getting old gameplay wise. There's always some mode that's fun to pick up and play and the game is full of fun to dodge patterns. The visual clarity, perfect controls and generous deathbomb make it comfy to pick up even on a bad day.

Super easy to pick up and play shmup with amazing graphics. A continuation of both the Dezaemon style and of modern shmup design that stays in a comfortable spot between gimmicks and bullet hell. Think Eschatos, Cho Ren Sha or some of ZeroRanger.
The game also has an extremely fitting soundtrack to the action. I've followed the artist for a long time but don't think they have worked on a shmup before.

Lots of pseudo 3D action going on with the stage design and bosses reminiscent of games like Kamui and Strania especially during the final stage.
Enemy attacks are extremely varied keeping things fresh for any kind of player. Despite the game being full of gimmicky attacks and surprises due to great telegraphing it always feels fair to play.

Scoring system is also easy to understand and the game has gameplay modes for every type of player. Perhaps apart from a 'very hard' difficulty mode, as inferno is more like hard with restrictions.

In general a really nice package for anyone remotely interested in a shmup that's not in the bullet hell subgenre. But it's also one that also plays things safe to the point of becoming a bit stale after your first playthroughs apart from the visual spectacle.

Some small gripes:

I think Stage 4 is a weak point of the stage design. Fighting a big battleship cut to tiny screen segments removes most of the intensity you would experience if it was fought in an autoscroll with the enemies or scrolling stacking up to overwhelm you. You can see this by trying the included retro mode. Or comparing to 'enemy base' stages in other shmups like Garegga or Batrider. Ginga Force Chapter X does something similar but makes more sense as an extra stage.

The highest difficulty mode by removing Boosts has less gameplay mechanics for both survival & scoring play and only increases difficulty by restricting resources. It's still a fun mode but the reduced complexity is strange and the 'must point blank or die' mechanic only matters at the start of stages. Granted, clearing Inferno is still a good survival challenge. But it feels out of line with the rest of the game, comparing to an imaginary mode with 'Enemy level' raised to 4. Maybe in a future update.

Scoring system is so simple that the game will probably be 'solved' in a couple weeks, with someone coming up with a basically perfect score that nobody will try to beat after the 1st month. As a result there would be no lasting score attack scene and people would quickly move to other games and/or not revisit Devil Blade years later for improvements.
Flexible bonus enemy waves based on how fast you play ala Ikaruga would probably be a way to solve this, with it becoming practically impossible to be fast enough to get all possible enemies to spawn while maintaining max multiplier and not getting hit. There are some bonus spawns but only after midboss enemies once or twice in a game. Not using these bonus waves more seems like a lost opportunity as speedkilling enemies is something the game already does a great job teaching you to do.

Momentum-focused 3D platformer that feels like a 3D Sonic Team game from the Saturn era. Kind of a NiGHTS aesthetic going on as well. This game is about chaining special movement techniques back to back to move around quickly. Basic walking is a bad way to speed up or switch directions. Air dashing, using a grappling-hook type move and riding across terrain to keep your speed up is basically the core gameplay here.

The platforming levels get fairly challenging to clear later on. Mainly the optional Star levels but fully unlocking these requires completionist item collection which may not be for everyone.

The games boss fights seem very weak compared to the main platforming parts. I wish the Busker Bonus minigame wasn't in the game at all, being a trivial quick-time event at the end of every stage. It breaks the pace between levels a bit too much, including the minigame music not being stage specific.
Time Attack mode gets rid of this but that's essentially post-game. Speedrunning through levels does seem like the core appeal and most fun to have in the game.

Levels and especially boss fights have some dead air with auto scrolling rail grab, etc. sequences where you wait around for the next scene. The campaign feels a tiny bit bloated personally. I really started enjoying the level design around World 6-7.

When there isn't dead air the movement does feel very fast paced. Being a momentum based game messing up is just heavily punished. Even in optional levels you're often able to skip sections by fully using all your movement abilities.

The game at launch is a little buggy and also doesn't allow remapping your controls which is strange. The default 'pro' layout has many duplicate buttons and wants you to dash by double flicking the right stick which felt awkward. I had a much better experience after using Steam Input to change R1/RB to be a yo-yo throw button allowing dash by flicking the right stick once and pressing a button.

I had trouble perceiving depth visually on a few levels, especially if the ground is lava or something else that doesn't show the players shadow. Generally seems good though and I can imagine this being polished later.

Really polished Action RPG with Monster Hunter-like quest structure. The main story doesn't overstay its welcome & quest system keeps things refreshingly focused compared to your typical big budget ARPG. I think this game could be god tier depending on the quality of challenging endgame content added post-release.
As it is it has all the makings of one but the 'optional' content is very easy and takes a long time to build up (especially if you touch multiplayer) while player side mechanics are really strong.

Combat definitely feels very platinum games-like. A bit simple but each character is very unique from the other. The skill ceiling is still higher than you might think and some characters are more technical than others.
The amount of quality of life features is kind of incredible, from training modes to wishlists etc. As a comparison both of those features are pulled off better than monster hunter. The downtime / busywork you need to do between quests is extremely minimal.
Enemy attacks & AoEs have the cleanest visual indicators i've seen in a 3D action game like this from memory. They can definitely up the difficulty without visibility being an issue.

Misc. gripes:
The disparity between multiplayer and single player difficulty is too big. It's not good if multiplayer feels like an easy/cheat mode. This is a bit like if monhun didn't scale quests to be harder based on player count.

Guard seems nonsensically strong. Many bosses have attack patterns where you can't do anything but dodge until it times out. But guess what. You can just stand in place and hold the guard button. If you got hit it's because you assumed you need to do something. There are very few fights with unblockable attacks, and it's usually some mid-tier monster instead of an endgame boss.

There are many bosses where the only challenging part of the fight is a DPS check. This is pretty cringe & even if the rest of fight was fun in a challenge run (say playing 1 character only) that limitation might make the dps check part impossible. Struggling through a difficult fight with a lowish power party isn't rewarded, rather you kinda get punished for good gameplay through the rest of the fight.

Lock-on and targeting behavior is strange with your character very likely trying to hit something on the other side of the map, if the movement direction matches more.
The auto tracking on your moves is really strong even without locking. If manual aim could be more of its own thing ala monster hunter this could make some characters with slower attacks more fun to play.

Launch version specific:
The endgame quests aren't very interesting for multiplayer play. Only 1-2 quests are challenging for survival if played with random people (main one having multiple bosses at once, one with many unblockables). For others if you are playing multiplayer you can assume there's no chance of quest failure and it's just a speedrun to get to your loot drop gacha. Getting hit also barely costs you time or resources unless it kills you, unlike monhun. Tanking hits is the way to go if you are specced above the quest level. The 'final' farmable quest is more of a setpiece & dps check fest than actual combat which is pretty meh.

EDIT: dropped the rating as I really don't like the direction this game developed. Instead of adding plenty of fights or bringing old fights up to match it's 2 new fights & 10x more grinding + gacha mechanics + player power creep, further invalidating existing content. The fights themselves seem alright but this ratio of content is really ass and a ton of fights never got an upgrade to match the player power level.

Over-the-top Shmup/STG with mouse control for movement. Has a lot of similarities to Akashicverse by the same developer. The game defaults to mouse control but there is an option for gamepad. There's a shop system to unlock moves and increase stats.
I think the crazy speed potential of mouse control fits well with the kind of bosses and stage design in Endless Shirafu games. They tend to have fast paced and unique attacks which require memorization to deal with. Mouse control doesn't make those aspects redundant and potentially gives the player a higher 'power level' so it's interesting to test the concept here.
∀stralbringer can be really challenging if you try playing with base equipment and avoiding the shop. The skill ceiling with just the base tools seems really high. Mouse movement control has crazy potential & grazing/bullet absorb mechanics with this have some interesting synergy (seems similar to the Psyvariar mobile game).
If you want it to get easier you can power up over progress and gain access to additional Methods/Skills. The strange thing is you barely need to scratch the surface of the mechanics to clear the Early Access / non-DLC content. This personally made most of the mechanics seem underbaked because they just don't matter. The game felt 'cleaner' with access to only initial tools but once you expand to the full set of abilities this explodes out of hand and becomes kind of messy.

If you want endgame content or English language support wait for the game to exit Early Access. The base game is similar to if Akashicverse was missing 1-2 of the final stages. Pricing seems reasonable regardless.

note: the trial and current Early Access version appear to require you to set the Windows Region setting 'Language for non-Unicode programs' to Japanese to run properly. Otherwise it will crash at launch.

Solid spiritual sequel to Rabi-Ribi. Interesting gameplay mechanic additions and the exploration aspect is more fleshed out. Difficulty seems a bit lower. Boss fights are excellent but unlike Rabi-Ribi this doesn't feel like a bossrush game, for better or worse. It's more of a balanced metroidvania game. Movement mechanics are more gated behind progress and basically all mechanics are tutorialized instead of being left to player discovery.

TEVI still suffers from having to unlock higher difficulty modes over multiple playthroughs and repeat the same metroidvania collectathon between them. Personally annoying since I mainly want to see the boss fights on Infernal, not hunt through hundreds of rooms for items again.
I prefer the more linear stage design introduced in the Rabi-Ribi DLC (TEVI has linear & boss rush sections near the endgame, these feel similar) and would be more keen to replay such a game across different modes.
In TEVI even though the exploration & secret hunting are improved: if they're not the games strongest point is it really worth expanding to be a bigger part of the game? (eg. exploration taking up more hours between every combat & boss section). Same goes for the story being more of a focus, but I don't really mind.

For presentation I found the music to be great much like Rabi-Ribi. In-combat visuals are nice and it's generally clear to see what's going on, combining well with the snappy controls. That is apart from a screen shake effect introduced during a couple specific boss attacks that just makes it hard to see what's happening.

Nice followup to Talos 1 core gameplay wise. Kind of misses the point of the first games unique storytelling and pacing by shoving in triple-A game tropes.
Difficulty of puzzles is moderate and doesn't curve upwards much. For most levels each area introduces new mechanics starting from a basic concept instead of them getting cumulatively more difficult. I wish there was more content like the gold puzzles.

Not sure if I like the voiced dialogue & AAA-ish action sequences. I feel like the major strength of Talos 1 is that the game world & text logs are something you discover and take in entirely on your own pace. I thought 2 having character dialogues & cliche sequences shoved in your face from the get-go takes away from that much more than it gives in return. Text terminals & messaging still have some of that old appeal. Though it does get better about the voiced dialogue later on.

World environments are super pretty but I felt like I was running fetchquests using map markers and dialing through voiced dialogue instead of really taking the areas in. That's probably my own fault for rushing through the game.
Music does a great job fitting the puzzles & locations.

I'm hoping for a DLC expansion like Gehenna but it's kind of weird when this game already has a LOT of puzzles. They just hover around the same difficulty. Not sure why when they added an optional mechanic to skip a lot of puzzles if needed.
About the AAA setpieces.. maybe unlike the Institute for Applied Noematics just because you could doesn't mean you should. If there's a cinematic/dialogue sequence that feels forced it makes the game appear more generic. Instead of playing into its unique strengths.

Pudding (& Shield Lyre) is a game by developer Katatema mixing puzzle, shooting game and visual novel elements. A similar mix of genres to many of their previous games.
Compared to Murasaki this game is smaller in scope and with less focus on the shooting game (shmup) aspect. Pudding leans more heavily into the story setting & character building.
You have to unveil the story piece by piece which also translates into gameplay in this case.

Similar to Katatema's other games the world has a distinct visual style along with a strong soundtrack.
Experiencing this game feels a bit like a fantasy short story in videogame form. It was refreshing to play accompanied with the presentation. Even if it's a small package it was charming and easily worth the price and time spent.

NOTE: The game is only available in japanese language at time of review. This review is assuming you can read most of the story for context by one means or another. Even with a language barrier it can be a fun experience if you enjoyed the developers previous games.

Great core campaign. Controls feel perfect, visuals are impressively distinct for the setting & somehow this has the least performance issues of any modern fromsoft game.
However the enemy ACs are way too weak compared to the big boss fights. This undermines the character personalities & Armored Core being all about personalized unique AC builds since when you fight the given examples it's just fluff.

Multiplayer environment, Weapon balance, S-ranking system & overall post-game content seem very underwhelming (especially compared to Verdict Day).
Hoping these get fleshed out for this game to have more lasting appeal. The devs did repeatedly say this focuses on the main campaign. By series tradition AC6.5 could expand on all these aspects and be really amazing.
If the multiplayer & balance in 6.5 was brought up to spec with ACVD fans would easily stick around playing it for a decade constantly adjusting ACs for team builds just like that game.