Nienix: Cosmic Warfare

The game is very clear about what it is: an Action-RPG first and foremost. And it executes this quite well. While it has a good dollop of bullet-hell, and some sprinkles of physics based ship-shenanigans a la Ring Runner (a fantastic game you've probably never heard of and should go check out!), if you go expecting anything but an ARPG with all its trappings, you've made your own bed of disappointment and will have to sleep in it. Now, for all of you who have stuck around after the ARPG warning sign, what awaits you in Nienix is a genuinely solid, varied and pretty well thought out game. Its main flaw is probably the somewhat slow game/level progression, but the actually speed of gameplay can only be slow if YOU go out of your way to make it so - the (at the time) only other reviewer complaining about this was either high as a kite or actively choosing the slowest ship, worst engine, slowest projectiles, and taking out each trash mob one at a time! Otherwise, you can expect fairly fast paced play akin to mid/lategame D2, with elite/boss mobs being the biggest danger and requiring focused dodging of their attack patterns - here in a more bullet-hell style way - and large hordes can wear you down if you're careless or too focused on the elite/boss you're fighting. Game design & itemization is a blend of classic and modern ARPG styles, with pretty great QoL all around (though there are some annoyances and sore points, like tooltips obstructing the cursor), and a focus on item builds rather than skills. The skill tree is robust enough and can be respecced for a small sum, but it's secondary to the items and serves to guide and gate your build with passives or passively activated abilities rather than strictly defining it - in essence, your weapons and augs are your primary & active skills. Overall, this adds a lot of flexibility to building, and leads you into engaging with the fairly robust crafting & modding system. Do expect a good bit of inv. management though!

It's not a bad game but this is a rare instance where I find myself not liking the game without knowing exactly why. I think the main issue might be pacing. The game feels slow, not performance-slow but move-slow, fire-slow, progress-slow. It has all the makings of a bullet-hell but lacks the fast-pacing of a bullet-hell. Slow-firing weapons, slow-moving projectiles, slow-rotating turrets, slow-moving ships. SLOOOOOOW everything. The same seems balanced for someone who has nothing better to do than spending the next 200 hours doing nothing but moving mindlessly from A to B shooting everything in the way. Not for me.