i ended up being VERY surprised by this game! i'm not a huge shooter fan, and i've had a bit of burnout in the roguelite genre for the past couple years, but somehow this ended up hooking me like crazy!
visually i love it, absolutely nails the cel shaded style and has a ton of really fun visual flair! things like little onomatopoeia being next to the gun as you shoot or reload is very charming, enemies stand out visually pretty well (although when there's a fuck ton in some rooms it can be pretty overwhelming) and attacks are pretty visually clear. there's cute little robots/friends that are super charming as well. the whole style is so sick and appealing it's hard to not just appreciate it. the music was fine, but i ended up just playing some of my own music that kinda dominated the music while i got into a flowstate so i don't have a very strong opinion on it. the sound design is amazing though, the guns sound really satisfying and the little pings for getting critical hits were always a treat!
gameplay wise this genuinely might be some of my favorite gunplay and movement in a shooter i've played! especially once you get more gadgets and movement items it really opens up and feels a ton of fun to explore the verticality of some areas and just zoom around! most guns were very fun and satisfying, but obviously i had a few that really stuck with me. i always lean towards like fast shooting smgs/assault rifles and they're all pretty solid here, i also like the big beams/explosion weapons. i didn't click super hard with the snipers/shotguns/melee weapons especially the shotguns/melee weapons the later areas didn't feel designed around those particularly well even if they were pretty fun just cause of the damage you take and the extra health not really balancing that out well enough in my experience. the enemies had decent enough variety, and there's a surprising amount of bosses and none of them were bad either! the final boss was a bit of a difficulty spike compared to the rest but it felt real satifsying to finally beat it. speaking of difficulty, it is a roguelite so the early game feels pretty rough and throwing yourself at a wall. once you get a few areas in you just take so much damage from any little hit because of the lack of upgrades that it's pretty frustrating to get too deep in runs. it's hard to criticize that too much since it's a roguelite and that's often common but less so than something like hades or gungeon which feel like the you can make significant progress with just learning and getting better. but since it's 3d it's so much more common to have things behind you or out of sight that shoot you and just absolutely demolish you that it can feel more impossible and frustrating early game.
i also find the permanent upgrades at the to be a bit inconsequential and boring, just small percent changes/more options at shops/etc which obviously in the grand scheme are helpful but don't really feel like things i'm excited to buy and look forward to getting. the upgrades in the actual runs though have a lot of synergies and build potential and help making runs interesting! i do think like most of these games you'll find a couple upgrades you like and will grab almost everything time but it's still fun experimenting with very different ones. the only ones i thought were lame were the "corrupted" augments, they usually come with a downside and to be fair i didn't experiment with them a ton but the downside almost never seemed worth it so i just skipped them. i don't think any class is straight up bad, but i did much prefer recon, elementalist, and commando. they had the most fun syngeries to me and i'm a more offense orriented guy in these types of games and they facilitate that the most.
multiplayer is really fun plus too, the using health to revive each other gimmick can be a little frustrating (there is an item that fixes that though) and it was a ton of fun exploring the world and discovering data logs, secret areas, and finishing quests and finding new gadgets together. i was surprised at how many secrets and little bits of permanent progression there was, like the power gems and new paths, felt super fun to discover that stuff and feel the effects of it the rest of the time after not just in that one run.
again, this game was a huge surprise for me! it looked fun and i knew i'd enjoy it fine enough, it's why i played it in the first place. that being said, i was not expecting to love my time as much as i did! i have a couple small problems i detailed but the joy of the movement and gunplay and the rush of beating the game for the first time makes those not a big deal whatsoever to me, highly recommend this one! even moreso if you have a buddy to run through it with.
visually i love it, absolutely nails the cel shaded style and has a ton of really fun visual flair! things like little onomatopoeia being next to the gun as you shoot or reload is very charming, enemies stand out visually pretty well (although when there's a fuck ton in some rooms it can be pretty overwhelming) and attacks are pretty visually clear. there's cute little robots/friends that are super charming as well. the whole style is so sick and appealing it's hard to not just appreciate it. the music was fine, but i ended up just playing some of my own music that kinda dominated the music while i got into a flowstate so i don't have a very strong opinion on it. the sound design is amazing though, the guns sound really satisfying and the little pings for getting critical hits were always a treat!
gameplay wise this genuinely might be some of my favorite gunplay and movement in a shooter i've played! especially once you get more gadgets and movement items it really opens up and feels a ton of fun to explore the verticality of some areas and just zoom around! most guns were very fun and satisfying, but obviously i had a few that really stuck with me. i always lean towards like fast shooting smgs/assault rifles and they're all pretty solid here, i also like the big beams/explosion weapons. i didn't click super hard with the snipers/shotguns/melee weapons especially the shotguns/melee weapons the later areas didn't feel designed around those particularly well even if they were pretty fun just cause of the damage you take and the extra health not really balancing that out well enough in my experience. the enemies had decent enough variety, and there's a surprising amount of bosses and none of them were bad either! the final boss was a bit of a difficulty spike compared to the rest but it felt real satifsying to finally beat it. speaking of difficulty, it is a roguelite so the early game feels pretty rough and throwing yourself at a wall. once you get a few areas in you just take so much damage from any little hit because of the lack of upgrades that it's pretty frustrating to get too deep in runs. it's hard to criticize that too much since it's a roguelite and that's often common but less so than something like hades or gungeon which feel like the you can make significant progress with just learning and getting better. but since it's 3d it's so much more common to have things behind you or out of sight that shoot you and just absolutely demolish you that it can feel more impossible and frustrating early game.
i also find the permanent upgrades at the to be a bit inconsequential and boring, just small percent changes/more options at shops/etc which obviously in the grand scheme are helpful but don't really feel like things i'm excited to buy and look forward to getting. the upgrades in the actual runs though have a lot of synergies and build potential and help making runs interesting! i do think like most of these games you'll find a couple upgrades you like and will grab almost everything time but it's still fun experimenting with very different ones. the only ones i thought were lame were the "corrupted" augments, they usually come with a downside and to be fair i didn't experiment with them a ton but the downside almost never seemed worth it so i just skipped them. i don't think any class is straight up bad, but i did much prefer recon, elementalist, and commando. they had the most fun syngeries to me and i'm a more offense orriented guy in these types of games and they facilitate that the most.
multiplayer is really fun plus too, the using health to revive each other gimmick can be a little frustrating (there is an item that fixes that though) and it was a ton of fun exploring the world and discovering data logs, secret areas, and finishing quests and finding new gadgets together. i was surprised at how many secrets and little bits of permanent progression there was, like the power gems and new paths, felt super fun to discover that stuff and feel the effects of it the rest of the time after not just in that one run.
again, this game was a huge surprise for me! it looked fun and i knew i'd enjoy it fine enough, it's why i played it in the first place. that being said, i was not expecting to love my time as much as i did! i have a couple small problems i detailed but the joy of the movement and gunplay and the rush of beating the game for the first time makes those not a big deal whatsoever to me, highly recommend this one! even moreso if you have a buddy to run through it with.