If you ever wandered around shmup communities for long enough, you'll see that the mere mention of this game will make some gamers pale and inmediately insult it. Like if it were kusoge and that were an absolute fact, an axiom. Does it really deserve it though?

I took it upon myself to open it and experience this with no external input and purely using keyboard, and there is some cool package in there. This is a game that has taken a lot of previous game decisions and attempted to transform them to a "modern" aspect while also adding an extra focus on graphics to "cater" to a more casual audience, more so with the addition of the story mode.

Don't get me wrong, the game is definitely flawed in a few aspects. But whatever I could encounter... It wasn't really a deal-breaker.
Playing in story mode first instead of going straight to arcade made me appreciate how different the game was while not getting too angry over it.

- Time system being shit? Yeah, I guess it's one way to add an artificial "life-ish" system, while also being pretty much impossible to earn any noticeable advantage throughout your run due to its nature. This simply means it's a low-resources game (as in, few lives/bombs) and you better learn every stage and route it before doing some serious attempts! How many times were there situations on old shmups where if you got hit at bad times it was a run ender? This is the exact same.
- Enviromental hazards being confusing? They're all static, something like this probably happened on old 2D horizontal shmups too, and it also ties back to learning the levels beforehand. The collisions are a bit wonky but they're never unfair. Also disable screen shake.
- The one-hit kill hazards being even more confusing? You better route those too.
- Bad RNG scoring system? Eeh true, I guess. Most of your score comes from staying on Rank A, which involves storing as much time as possible by not getting hit. The multiplier is cool but I personally noticed it does too little for too big risks, specially on any kind of bosses. There is also that milk at the final boss so scoring is ultimately a bit flawed, yeah. And the arcade leaderboards apparently only store your score if you die (at least on the EX version) so that sucks. It doesn't help that no scoring runs exist online.
- The piano pickup? Definitely a remnant of the older era the devs wanted to let us feel. At that time negative pickups were more of a thing I guess. There are rarely any situations where you will instantly grab any pickup nonetheless, so once you get to see it a least once you'll be good.
- Bad shot balance? Yeah, for arcade only use the liberator ship, it's objectively the best. Subweapons are up to your preference (Gemini sucks tho) , and reflection is clearly the best... power or how it was called.

The key part here is that, with knowing that it was a different take on the shmup genre, I had fun. My lowered expectations were met and I appreciated what the devs attempted to bring to the table. I can't speak for the story since I never got too deep into it but I read all what the game has and it was a cool supplement.

So why do people complain that much if it's that similar to old shmups?
Maybe it is because people wanted to go straight to arcade and got crushed by the fact that it's not a blindable game and the fact that arcade mode also starts on a harder difficulty from the get go.
Maybe it comes from the fact that the devs "betrayed expectations" by announcing themselves on that system11 forum on around 2011 or so, making the game seem like a bigger deal than it ultimately was. (That would be a fair complaint but maybe not something to be so resentful for nowadays)
Maybe it's more the fact that after plenty of years people only remain with their negative experiences regarding this. Maybe more so if they only ever touched the original game, which has more fuckups. (Yes, play EX and not the original, there is no positive difference unless you want to use the 360)

Oh yeah, and fair warning: the game is NOT too compatible with Windows 11, it will randomly crash on level transitions. So stick to Windows 10 or lower. I haven't confirmed if this is really the issue but it worked for me.

Not having any experience with "Shmups", I had no idea I would enjoy this one so much. The game looks and plays fantastic, and becomes a game of memorization, which I really enjoyed a ton.

The journey to "Dies Irae", being promoted to General of the Air Force was filled with challenging and rewarding tasks, such as completing a stage on Insane without pickups, destroying 100% of all bosses with the primary weapon only, or completing each stage in Score Attack with a ranking of at least A.

Fantastic experience, and one that made me want to play more Shmups in the future.

Lacks the visual clarity the genre demands, has some interesting ideas in its systems, but it feels like it bungles a lot of them through non-telegraphed instant death attacks in the later levels, as well as just wonky movement and a power-up system that leaves you feeling either over or underpowered basically all the time. I don't think I'll be revisiting, and my compulsion to play as many GHM games as possible is the only reason I saw it through to the end.
Edit: bumping it up half a star in hindsight because of the number of interesting gameplay setpieces I still recall, like the rotating maze, or the branching paths in the waterfall level. More misses than hits, but they're all at least good ideas, even if the execution is sometimes off.

As someone with very little experience in the shmup genre, I found Sine Mora Ex to be an exciting entry to the genre and one that I would definitely recommend if you are not afraid of hard difficulties and losing lots of progress.

I played this game on my Switch in handheld mode from start to finish, but the stellar art direction and beautiful environmental art makes me want to revisit this game on the big screen at 4K/60 on PS5. Some of the backdrops were so incredibly beautiful that I didn't mind dying, because then I could once again marvel at the gorgeous architecture of various cities and the lush natural environments. Unfortunately, the soundtrack is not quite as memorable, with no tracks sticking in my head after the several hours it took to beat the game.

Similarly unremarkable is the jumbled and poorly-paced story, which relies too heavily on multi-minute monologues before and after each mission. A nonlinear, time-traveling tale taking place in several timelines, Sine Mora's narrative rarely justifies its form or function, often being more confusing than revelatory. Moreover, the narrative on its own is both problematic and uninteresting. The generic war story so poorly handles sensitive topics including war crimes, rape, and slavery that I could not tell whether the developers were leaning into parody (which would have been in even poorer taste in my opinion). I am not sure whether I will be able to better unpack the narrative with multiple playthroughs, but I am not sure I care to put forth the seemingly immense effort that would be required to do so.

Despite these flaws, the core of the shmup is gameplay, and Sine Mora Ex does not disappoint. An incredibly challenging but mostly fair experience playing out over seven stages, Sine Mora throws some fun enemies, difficult and engaging bosses, and an insane number of bullets at the player. The bosses in particular deserve praise: the multi-stage fights were a spectacle of bullets, explosions, and transformations that continually escalated in a way I kept thinking impossible. One small complaint is that several one-hit deaths felt poorly communicated and cheap, especially when it meant losing your last life and having to restart a ~10 minute sequence.

Sine Mora's unique mechanic is the timer, which not only influences your score but also serves as your life bar. Taking hits and running into walls subtracts time, while killing enemies, passing checkpoints, and picking up time power-ups will add time. I found myself enjoying my frantic fight against the clock, as it added a layer of strategy and risk that I have found limited in my few previous experiences in the shmup genre. Other power-ups include the ability to briefly slow down time, increased firepower, additional charges to your special, and a shield, amongst others, but I found myself to focused on the bullets to really notice what power-up I had just picked up.

I cannot speak to the changes between this expanded edition and the original version released in 2012, but Sine Mora Ex is a compelling package unto itself. With four difficulty levels, secret endings, arcade and score attack modes, there are many different ways to experience the game that respects player choice. I also found the "boss training" mode to be an excellent way to return to some of my favorite boss fights, and there is an additional challenges mode that tasks the player with completing a certain section of a stage under certain requirements.

I would strongly recommend Sine Mora Ex to anyone looking for a challenging and rewarding spectacle. The failure in its narrative is extremely disappointing, especially with the relative lack of narrative-driven shmup games. However, I definitely plan to return for the game's breathtaking art direction and stellar gameplay because, when Sine Mora Ex shines, it does so spectacularly.

7/10: very good

It's hard and small...





Just like a pocket watch, which makes sense to the game itself