Plot - N/A

Holocure has the bare bones of a story concept, but you're certainly not playing the game for the plot. I don't think a plot rating is applicable for this game.

Gameplay - 4/5

The game is in the style of a "Vampire Survivors" game, where you must survive hordes of enemies over the course of 20 minutes, collecting experience to upgrade different items and weapons. The variety of items and weapons in the game make runs feel varied and interesting, but the game still provides you tools to help with consistency when attempting difficult or challenging runs. There is a gacha element to the game, but it's entirely self contained without any real purchases, meaning that you'll easily get every character with the surplus of money you'll get after some successful runs. There aren't many stages in the game yet, but there are a good number of characters to play and achievements to collect that the game can keep your attention for awhile. The only complaint I have about the game is minor, which is that the balancing for some characters and items are a bit skewed. This is to be expected with most games, so it's not a huge issue, but it can make some characters or builds more frustrating to play than others. The game is still getting updated every few months, and the creator has put a lot of effort into balancing, so this is definitely an issue that only gets better with each update.

Presentation - 5/5

The game looks cute and the references to Hololive are really fun! The 8-bit art style gives the game a simplistic charm, and all the designs feel very faithful to the original designs of the idols. The music is similarly charming, based off of various Hololive songs in a chiptune style. Where the game really shines in presentation is it's clear love for Hololive. Every weapon and item is some kind of reference to the company and its streamers, and its clear that staying faithful and representing the idols is the focus of the game. If you're even remotely a fan of Hololive, I'd say its worth to give the game a shot just to see the cute references and representation.

Extra Bonus - 1/1

The game is entirely free, which is incredible. It's a huge passion project and the creator, Kay Yu, intends to keep the game free even as it updates and expands. It's clear a ton of love has gone into it and I love that.

Overall - 4.5/5

A really fun game packed with a lot of love for Hololive. It's free to play and still updating, so I'd highly suggest just giving it a try. The gameplay is even fun enough that I'd suggest it to people who aren't interested in Hololive or Vtubing in general.

Beat the three stages currently out there, but didn't unlock all characters or fully upgrade. It's fun. First Garliclike I've played, and I'm not super familiar with the subject matter, so a lot of the jokes and references went right over my head, but I really enjoyed it. The item drops are varied enough that you can plan out a decent build from early on, though I wish there were more valid options for collabing maxed out items (I think I only ever got the comet and the rapid molotov bombs).
The slowdown gets pretty intense about halfway into any run. Generally it's helpful, since if there are enough enemies on-screen to slow the game down, it's actually useful to play in slow motion, but it gets pretty excessive, even with damage numbers and visual effects turned off. Not sure how that could be solved, I'm not sure how the game handles all the loaded objects under the hood.
High hopes for future updates.

The only deal better than 5 dollars for Vampire Survivors is 0 dollars for Holocure. The comparison here is pretty much unavoidable as this survivors-like is the most unashamedly similar to VS than all the other imitators in this new subgenre. It's also probably the best out of all of them so far. Pretty much every weapon in VS has a direct correlate in Holocure but it's the additions to the formula that set this fangame apart from the others.

Giving each character their own unique weapon and set of unique abilities makes each run really feel different and the addition of a strafe button is honestly a godsend. The animations are cute and lively as well. I believe the creator was actually the animator for River City Girls and one of the Shantae games which explains the quality. Also, as the game is tailor-made for Hololive fans, literally everything is some kind of inside joke. I had to look up a video explaining all of the references and I've never felt so disconnected to the youth in my life. Even if you're like me and don't understand a lot of the memes the game is just mechanically so fun and addicting that you'll enjoy it anyway. It's also free, so there's pretty much no reason not to just give it a try to see if you'll like it.

Oh boy, I have a lot to say about this one.

Let's start with the good:

Right off the bat, I can tell a lot of love went into the making of this game, from the sprite animation to the large cast of characters to the various in-game references to Hololive lore, the music, etc.

Sadly, all of Holocure's positive aspects are superfluous, and this is because, well, the game is simply not good or fun at all.

You are basically moving very, very slowly while a hoard of enemies try to kill you, getting increasingly larger in number the longer you survive. By defeating enemies and gaining experience points, you can unlock a vast number of upgrades, such as slightly increased moving speed, slightly increased attack and defense, new attacks, etc. But very few of them actually affect the gameplay in any meaningful way, and there's no way to use them at your will since they are set to a timer and your character attacks on its own once the timer is reset with no input from the player. The only thing you can do is move in all eight directions; there's no dash, no parry, no jump, no switching between weapons, no nothing.

The game's level design is very poorly crafted too; you are forced to go through very boring, uninspired, bland maps for 20 minutes before the game offers a true challenge, and if you get killed that far into the level, well, you've got to play through it all over again. Enemies also behave more or less the same, and as good as they look, most of them don't have any interesting patterns. Big enemies help a bit in breaking out of the monotony, but they are very few and far between.

People are calling these types of games "Vampire Survivor-like" or simply ,Survivors." But these remind me more of a very old arcade game released in 1982 called Robotron 2084—a far, far better, more dynamic, visually impressive, and frenetic title than whatever this one released 40 years later is.

There are so many magnificent videogames to spend your time in, and unless you are a massive Hololive fan and are happy to see the talents in a game other than Idol Showdown, I can't see why anyone would prefer this over, let's say, Hades, Isaac, Zombies ate my neighbors, or the already mentioned Robotron 2084.

Except for the waifus. The waifus are great.