I have just completed all Achievements, got all h-scenes, and had my first Extreme clear (as of 14 May 2024). First, I hate rougelites/likes. Something about dying and getting stronger rubs me the wrong way. I'm a pretty big shmup lover, and a connoisseur of h-games/stories/etc for gentleman that are of the animated kind. When combined, magical things happen. And this is one such example of how to mash multiple genres together with some incredibly delectable scenes to interact(!) with! Because GOG's character limit cap is stupid, I'll go through bullet points of what I like v dislike. Like: -A gameplay loop that's actually fun, and fairly tough for the first few playthroughs since I refuse to play Casual. Took me 3 or 4 tries to actually get my first clear. -LOTS of Achievements to obtain, which in turn unlocks items and passives. -A surprisingly banging soundtrack, especially in The Shimmering Passage. Those tunes really ramp up the energy! -Many playable characters who are unique in how you should play. Tons of different ideas for weapons and passives. -H-scenes were done SUPERBLY. :chef_kiss: Absolute masterpieces. Some of the best nukige material with some of the sexiest eyes I've ever seen. Dislike: -Nothing to do past Very Hard. I dislike how there's no reason besides personal challenge to play Extreme. I dislike that Casual mode exists, though I fundamentally agree with its implementation. -Achievements are WAY TOO EASY to obtain. Like, you'll get pretty much all but 3 within the first 5~8 hours. The last 3 takes time and effort to get. -Music looping is not done well at all with lots of long silent breaks, but at least no poorly done cutoffs. -Last 5 women don't have h-scenes at all. ;( I honestly couldn't put this game down, which shocked me. The bullet hell + nukige combo, along with some incredibly sexy women, really makes this game one of the best I've played in years. There's not enough GREAT games with SEXY women! I wish more devs would do this!
I was one of them unlucky saps who didn't bother looking into H2 Interactive, nor even wait for reviews when I bought this game years ago. This is very clearly one of the most incompetently ported PC games I've ever seen. Knowing that these dipsh*ts were also the ones who ported the BlazBlue Calamity Trigger PC port, it all makes sense. I'll be honest here: the ONLY thing that keeps me from playing this PC port is the fact it's locked to 720p and completely screws up my entire desktop setup. I run triple-monitor and the center is 1440p, which I play games on. Fullscreen literally locks the desktop to 720p, moving all my windows around. Complete. Deal. Breaker. I hate vsync, so I don't care about screen tearing. I actually like responsive games without additional input lag (which is what vsync introduces, by the by). But locked 720p is just bs. Literally any game that has stupid resolution locking in fullscreen, or inability to turn off vsync makes it literal garbage. Do NOT buy this game on PC. Your money is better spent grabbing the PS4 version. And if you don't have a PS4, I honestly think this game is worth grabbing one since it's such a unique STG with utterly amazing replay value in its various modes. This port legit makes me sad because it's an awesome STG completely ruined by idiots who don't know anything about PC gaming.
This is abandonware by garbage devs from a failed Kickstarter project. Yet another game in the massive pile of failed Kickstarter games that never went anywhere. It's games like this that is the reason why I had always been so hesitant in Early Access games (In Development, as it's called on GOG). There is no guarantee that we will actually get the product we paid money for. GOG should honestly be ashamed of themselves for keeping this game on the store and not refunding all the people who bought this unfinished mess. Make no bones about it: this game is unfinished. Devs abandoned this game years ago, and it's quite literally in an unplayable state. Literally the only good thing about this piece of software (because I can't even consider its broken state a game) is all the beautiful assets within and the amazing art design. Whoever the art designer and art director were really went above and beyond, for the most part. There are some truly heinous designs as well, but I also chock that up to this game being in what I consider the early Alpha stage. This game sits in my library as a warning to myself to NEVER PURCHASE ANOTHER EARLY ACCESS/IN DEV GAME EVER AGAIN. My single lapse in judgement of wanting to give this game the benefit of the doubt burned me, and I won't make that mistake again. As for the game itself, I think the devs wanted to do something different, and failed massively. What they should've done was look back to older strategy games and went with what worked instead of the convoluted mess that we got here. There are so many turn-based tactics games out there (Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen, Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together, Final Fantasy Tactics, Might and Magic, the list goes on and on) they could've drawn from, but went with... whatever this mess is. I hate that this game is in my library, and am disappointed in myself that I got lured in with the extremely pretty artwork. This game is literally only good to harvest the assets from.
Beamdog is the scourge of "Enhanced Editions" of amazing games. They don't deserve any support at all and all of their games should be pirated if people wants to play them. GOG, I used to love you and praise your DRM free platform but if you keep removing great games and replacing them with shitty alternatives like this "Enhanced Edition", I'm going to stop buying games on GOG altogether and just continue to apply no-DRM patches to Steam games so that the games become disconnected to Steam (because fuck DRM clients). It's ridiculous to remove PS:T entirely with it being the #1 bestseller on GOG and replacing it with a mod that's even worse than the original. Now the "Enhanced Edition" is on page 11 if sorting by "Bestselling". Not so much of a bestseller is it now that Beamdog "Enhanced" it, huh?
