This game has potential to be great, although I think it will always be niche.
The concept of the game is to choose a character, enter aThis game has potential to be great, although I think it will always be niche.
The concept of the game is to choose a character, enter a stage, then strike left or right depending on where the enemies have come in from. A very simple concept. As you progress through stages more enemies appear that take more hits to down. A charge bar increases until you unleashes a special move. Each enemy killed returns a soul, which is the games currency. Souls can be used to improve your characters stats or to buy outfits and the like.
The graphics are lovely and well animated, which is the games strongest point. The background music for stages and the menu is well done. The sound effects are okay, although the opening "Kawaii Death Desu" is a bit cringe and some stock effects I recognise from every single Youtube video my 6 year old watches which diminishes the experience for me on a personal level (wowwowoww sound at the end of every level, eugh)
So on to the gameplay, I have seen some reviewers say the gameplay is too simplistic. I tend to agree, that there could be more depth to the game, and the later levels require some extreme mashing to get through. But! This isn't the games biggest issue for me, the simplistic gameplay would be okay, especially at he price point, if the game scaled as you progressed.
Once I completed all the stages with my character, I was still getting a fixed number of souls per level. It didn't matter that I had got better at the game, or levelled my character up. it's a fixed amount of souls per level, and the gameplay isn't interesting or complex enough to make it worthwhile. I usually don't mind a grind but not when it feels like a kick in the face.
You can unlock new characters, which are nice to see and look at, but gameplay wise offer little to get excited for or increase progression.
The menu system is very clunky, with buttons to enter some menu items re-used to cycle inside the inner menu and odd choices like that. The UI does tell you what to do, but its so unnecessarily unintuitive it's made it into my review as a negative point.
If I were to suggest modifications to the game:
* Replace/remove stock sound effects
* Add an extra gameplay layer past 'specials' or add 'combos'
* Scale up the souls rewards as play continues
If the game fixed the scaling alone, I think for the price of the game I would have given an 8/10.… Expand
