Bought this yesterday & already put a lot of hours into it. I like the game but agree with most of the things BulletMagnet said.
Rushed through all the modes to unlock everything, and got a deathless run of Stage 1 on the highest difficulty (you die in one hit). Will try and get good scores on the other stages when I have time again.
edit:
video of Stage 1 on Nightmare Cursed
some impressions:
+ I love the presentation and the synchronization with the music. Some of the synchronization on the final stage is really cool. Got a big Rez/Child of Eden vibe from the first stage.
+ Spirit system works well and is interesting. Some of the Spirits I thought were very nicely designed, like Fortune and Master which change how the game plays a whole lot. I like how the spirits force you to play to the music.
+ Scoring system is nice and indepth. It's basically dodonpachi-style enemy chaining for a multiplier except melee attacks substitute the laser as the attack that can maintain the chain without killing. The Spirits add a lot of complexity to it too. Melee does less damage if you're at the edge of it's range, which I thought was clever.
+ Destroying enemies with the melee attack is satisfying. The relic that boosts melee damage seems risky for score though, since you often need to maintain the multiplier by dealing more melee hits.
+ bullet and enemy patterns change a lot between difficulties. Always a great thing.
+ The 'cursed' difficulties that add a gimmick to the stage are a nice idea. Some of them change enemy patterns as well.
+ I enjoyed it a lot overall, though wish there were more stages. I hope you guys get to work on another shmup sometime.
- I wish there was something to encourage attacking to the beat of the music. There's no reason to not fire all the time unless you want to keep enemies alive. Some immediate ideas that came to mind: Perhaps there could be a melee attack on a separate button that increases in power if you use it to the music. Or the shot could 'overheat' if you keep firing it off-beat.
- not a fan of the dash. You're vulnerable during it and cannot attack until its recovery is over. After getting the speed-boost relic I only found myself using it to get away from enemies from very close range (since enemies will shoot you point blank). If there was something to promote using it for attacking that could be interesting. Dash mechanics in shmups seem like a very difficult thing to balance though.
- There seems to be some inertia/acceleration if movement is set to d-pad. It makes dodging dense patterns weird since you can't tap-dodge and have to pre-emptively accelerate to go through gaps in the pattern. I started really noticing this while doing the stage where you die in one hit. It makes the animation look smoother but I agree with most people on this forum that inertia makes dodging feel unresponsive.
- The players shot 'feels' weak, there isn't much feedback for landing hits & medium-size enemies can very long to kill long range. The relic that boosts shot speed can help with this though.
- As BulletMagnet said enemies can pass through your shot because it doesn't have constant fire. The shots also fire out far from your hitbox so enemies can also slip in from the side. This makes popcorn enemies more dangerous, but it's strange to me that you can get killed by popcorn ramming into you even if you're moving laterally and holding the shot towards them. easy to test in the start of stage 1 on nightmare.
- namely on stage 3 there are many very fast laser attacks that are nearly impossible to dodge on reaction. Some of them deal very little damage to you to compensate, but if that has to be done maybe the attacks shouldn't exist. In some sections if enemies spawn or boss forms change right on a beat in the music you can get shot at very quickly without warning.
- bullet patterns are a bit simple. that doesn't mean they're not difficult enough, but it would be interesting to see enemies that switch up their attacks or fire multiple patterns at once: say they fire aimed bullets, but also a not aimed spread shot. Stage 1 for example has most enemies shooting aimed shots, so you can easily avoid most things by just constantly moving and circling around enemies.
Some of the large enemies with a ton of health only have a single attack pattern even though they have a lot of screen time. I find it weird that a lot of the threat of these enemies comes from being able to take a lot of hits in a row. Usually attacks with a lot of bullets are harder because it's more complicated to get through unscathed, not because it can also cause way more lives/health lost at once.
An arcade or story mode that goes through all stages could be fun. I thought the no healthbar challenge on stage 1 felt like arcade-level difficulty (if you had lives on top of it) and having something similar for the whole game could be neat. Or a special mode where all relics are active simultaneously, but difficulty is increased to compensate.
Some of of those gripes are just small things. I enjoyed the game so far and really like some of the ideas in it.
