The game looks and feels as cinematic as the promo videos, and it does a good job riffing off older retro games' styles. The characters and story, surprisingly, are tolerable and don't smell like they were written by a Bernie Sanders voter who has no idea how people really talk.

But what gets me is the moment-to-moment gameplay and the lack of big, memorable setpieces. The enemy patterns just aren't much fun to deal with, and every level feels like you're just going through an endless void of randomly-generated geometry. eg, level 1 is nothing but clouds, level 2 is like the Rocket Commander XNA tutorial, level 3 is nothing but bland lava - there's nothing to visual going on in the scene or in the distance to anchor yourself to or make these levels memorable.

The devs have MAD chops and know how to make a game, but mesa just be not liek dis gaem for SOME RAISIN.

No windowed mode means no recommendation. Simple as that.

Rogue Flight is a cool game with some sleek visuals, but is marred with some pacing issues especially later on and with some bosses i.e. having to wait for them to "reel back in" when retreating after taking damage. If you try to binge all that the game offers in one sitting it may be a bit too repetitive, since there aren't really major landmarks, set pieces, changing objectives like you may see in other rail shooter games leading to things getting stale once the harder stuff is on display. This is the kind of game where it leaves you in the dark starting off and you slowly chip away at extra details finishing multiple routes and a couple different modes. There are still extra modes beyond the main game such as Caravan mode which may be the best part of this game, but the game is a little repetitive for what you need to do to get to that point.

Potential is definitely present in this game, but I feel like it just missed the bullseye on the target, hitting just off center. If you love rail shooters I would advise checking out some gameplay footage cause I sort of went in on this blind. I got it on sale so it was justifiable the time I got out of it, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea especially if you don't like rail shooters at all.

Edit: There is also some pretty good music in this game.