Recent reviews by Karhrandras

Whether you're looking for a chill "Space Walking Sim" or a competitive speedrun challenge - Exo One has you covered.
It's a very unique and stylish game, that you can finish in less than three hours but also one that may last you for a long time after getting all achievements.
However, it's not a game that I would recommend to everyone.

If you're not willing to spend some time learning the controls, it will be a frustrating experience.
If you expect to breeze through the levels as shown in the trailers on your first playthrough, you will be sad.
It was only towards the final third of the game that I started feeling confident with the controls.
When I was done with my first playthrough, I wanted to start another one immediately so I could apply what I had learned so far.
For these reasons the game is very rewarding if you stick with it.
Getting better at this game is a lot of fun and being able to beat it in as little time as possible is the ultimate goal.

The music is utterly fantastic with warm, welcoming guitar tones right from the start and supersweet ambient tracks throughout the game.
The overall sound design can only be described as fantastic.

Worth the full price for me, and certainly worth taking a look at during sale.

Starts out great but becomes kind of tedious quite quickly. A great core-gameplay idea is offset by minimal enemy variety, super-samey levels (literally 3 levels, repeated over and over again with different color themes) and deaths that will feel undeserved or even unfair nine out of ten times.

The higher difficulties devolve into fleeing from swarms of guided missles while making sure not to get crushed by dozens of laserbeams at the same time. There are also formations that spawn on top of you while trying to do so, so watch out.

End-of-Stage bosses are all the same. If you're unlucky and your shield just wore off, they can get you quite easily by spraying a wall of bullets that is often undodgable so that you can see death coming for several seconds without a chance of escape. Some sort of „Warning“ would have been helpful here. The hidden bosses are underwhelming and not fun to battle.

The game is cheap enough to give it a try if you're a fan of the genre, but overall it leaves kind of a bitter taste.

Game is utter trash, tedious and annoying. A game for people who are into belching humor. Moveset and controls are horrible, fighting is bland and repetitive. The camera is zoomed in so much you can barely see where you're going. Hitboxes are wonky, the music is garbage. But somehow the level design manages to be even worse than all of this with narrow corridors, blocked by obstacles that take like 3-4 full attack combos to destroy, exploding into food that you'll need to digest by sitting around, killing any trace of fluid, fun gameplay.

It's beyond me how this abomination achieved an overwhelmingly positive status, but then again I was also surprised to see cringe gaming Youtubers get more than 100 subs, so it all makes sense I guess.

Avoid.

Holesome but short.

Would recommend during sale, or if you don't care about money.

Broodstar is an utterly addictive rogue-lite shoot 'em up that manages to capture the spirit of old school shooters while having a strong identity of it's own. Proper aiming and swift executions are of the essence as the game features a good mix of passing and persistant formations that will put on the pressure if not dealt with. Veterans of Galaga and Space Invaders are certainly at an advantage in the early stages.

The game features a good amount of fun modules to pick up and modify the ship with and with a little luck and proper combos, players are capable of building quite the deathstars. However, the game is still challenging enough and god-runs aren't all that frequent. Players who prefer a more purist approach can disable the permanent progress and there is even the aptly named New Game Minus achievement that is awarded for beating Hard mode with base stats.

Graphics are a bit basic but very workable still, while the Soundtrack is great throughout the game with a couple of standout moments.

The only negative I encountered was the early stages of hardmode with bad luck in terms of upgrade-drops. Low damage combined with very nimble bosses that have small hitboxes can lead to some sluggish battles and I found myself quitting out of a couple runs.

Overall I very much recommend this game to people looking for old-school shmups rather than bullet hell style games. Hardcore players might find the overall difficulty a bit too easy but in my view, this is a very enjoyable title for players of all skill levels and experience with the genre. Great replay value and score chasing makes for a game that you can return to for a run or two for a long time..

Darkwood offers a fantastic blend of survival, horror, exploration and deep lore. Players will have to accept the game's pacing and how it handles the stamina bar or they will not make it far and might even quit out of frustration. Darkwood is not a short game and will have you go through ~30+ hours of intense gameplay before you see the credits. The first couple of hours are pretty harsh, especially if you overestimate your battle prowess. Luckily, somewhere around 10 hours, Stockholm Syndrome will kick in and you'll probably stick with the game till the end, if you made it this far. The game looks great and features an awesome Soundtrack, that digs into the deeper regions of Ambient and Drone music. Multiple playthroughs are encouraged and required in order to see everything.

The amount of joy one can get from this game correlates with how smart they are.

10/10

Ginga Force offers a fresh, if not entirely new approach to the shmup formula. The game has two modes of play – Story and Score – which makes it both a great choice for new players but also keeps things interesting for the more competitive crowd.

In story mode, players can customize their ship with a plethora of main- and subweapons, specials, extras, engines and even color schemes before taking on a mission. The range covers most of what you'd expect: lasers, spreadshots, homing weapons, shields, bombs and so on but also more exotic stuff like time-slowdowns, web-blasters, a radar-jammer etc. that come in handy when trying to achieve specific goals for some missions.

Score Attack has the same missions but instead of getting to customize the ship, players get to chose from 3 different types of loadouts. Eternal fame on the Leaderboards can be earned here.

Overall, the game is quite challenging but fortunately, additional lifes can be earned for destroying enemies - up to a maximum of 30 Extends per mission - which should ensure that everybody gets to see the end credits.

Sadly this also plays into my only complaint with the game: Hard mode is really effing hard and will have all but the most talented players grind for quite some extra lifes before beating the game. Even with every piece of equipment unlocked (God-Mode aside), Hard is still brutal to the point where I find it kinda unenjoyable.

I'd still highly recommend this game to anyone with a slight interest in Shmups and especially to those who like to unlock stuff and try out different combinations of weapons. Well worth the full price for me.

No pickups or gimmicks but highly engaging core gameplay that will keep you on your toes during each and every playthrough!

The game puts an emphasis on the proper use of special attacks (MEFA2) and bombs (Concept Reactor) as dodging some bullet and enemy patterns is intentionally impossible. Each of the three ships requires a different approach to the various sections and (mid)boss fights during five short but brutal stages, which results in an overall rather learny shmup.

Aesthetics and music are both top notch and some of the boss encounters, especially the last one, are simply epic. RefRain ~prism memories~ is an extremely stylish game that is approachable enough for players new to the genre but also offers challenges that will test even the most hardcore shmup veterans.

TL;DR: Refunded.

Refund requested as neither my DS4 nor Xbox controller worked properly (inverted up-down, buttons stopped being recognised after some play). The game launcher wouldn't even detect my controllers and the keyboard stopped working during my third playthrough. Tried well over an hour to tweak things. I have some experience with setting up controls in Shmups but could not get things to work.

I have little hope this gets fixed, since the Discussion Board of this game is filled with threads about problems with controllers...

Disappointed since the game looked promising. BGM is good; excellent if you're into that kind of music. Gameplay is a bit on the tamer side but the later bosses offer some nice bullet patterns.

Overall, this could be an okay addition to a Shmup Fan's library but nothing to write home about besides the art style. Can't recommend.