Fun, if not shallow, lil' CBT ballbuster. The Moldenhauers have a keen eye for platforming as a static brainteaser, dashing in just the right combination of hazards to throw you out of complacency, but sadly little of it has much emergent value as an actual shooter. The risk-reward gradient you usually see in these games is muted: chasing down a boss with a high-damage-but-short-range shot pattern has barely any effect versus just hanging back with a pea shooter, and since attack phases are rarely interruptible, you’re pretty much on a timer waiting for the boss to die rather than having any real agency. This really gets illuminated when going for A/S-ranking bosses, whose bizarre scoring criteria (like performing a set amount of parries or special attacks) in addition to time limits turn much of this into joyless hopping on coals.
Audiovisual design’s good, but you don’t need me to tell you that. I was actually worried going into this that it’d throw itself into one of two quagmires - either A) it’d be an accurate but stilted recreation of its source material, having a certain cold passion to it, or B) it’d have a flamboyant, obnoxious Adult Swim-ish edge, consciously poking at the source material’s kitsch with “”humorous”” tonal incongruence. You get a little of the latter at times, but thankfully this weaves a path between the two for the most part, and I’m surprised at how consistently charismatic it is. Love how surreal and psychedelic this gets with bosses like Djimmi. A rat hellbent on frying your ass with random scrap, only to get eaten by a cat halfway through the fight? Inspired Shit. Not a very big fan, though, of the visual clarity of battles. The amount of little bullets and enemies that hide beneath the foreground layer is just too much, especially in co-op. I’m confident that clarity in these games is some sort of arcane art: I see games like this and Crimzon Clover that leave me confused where stuff is, yet I can pick up any Cave shooter at all and have, like, a perfect read on what’s going on. What’s up with that?
DLC is a noticeable jump in quality. There’s less downtime, way more to keep you on your toes, and it never feels like shit is just thrown in for no reason: each hazard has more of a calculated feel in how it pressures you, and can throw you in some real nasty pins. It’s still ultimately muscle memory, but I found what’s here to be more satisfying than the base game. Subtracting a point for including Sergeant O’Fera as one of the most dangerously effective vectors into the furry community I’ve seen in a while. Don’t do this to me, man.