I've been on the verge of getting it, since I really liked Edelweiss' previous titles. However the end of the month will see a large influx of games, and I probably end up not playing it at all. Based on the developer's pedigree, I'd say it's a must buy.
However the end of the month will see a large influx of games, and I probably end up not playing it at all.
Yeeeah, right. Bought it.
I think I prefer Ether Vapor over this, but the games share many similarities.
Astebreed is a shoot'em'up that likes to change its point of view, sometimes it's horizontal, sometimes it's third person, few other times it's vertical. It likes to change so much that it's hard to get used to it: Ginga Force (X360) used the same trick, but it was more focused in its vertical scrolling, while Astebreed comes out as indecisive in what it wants to be.
Graphics are pretty busy, and most of the times borderline unreadable: Ether Vapor had a more tasteful look, and was easier to read. A pet peeve of mine is that against bosses and large enemies you can't discern what's an hotspot at first glance, and you need to use the lock-on to understand what can be destroyed or not.
On the plus side, the game runs at a solid framerate at any occasion, with FSAA turned on, at 1920x1080. Unfortunately only 16:9 resolutions are supported, but the engine can scale up to 4K (!!!).
The mecha you pilot has a life bar that recharges after not getting hit for few seconds, but due to how the graphics look, it's hard to understand what's your status. However, health is plentiful, and at normal difficulty, I've cleared the game without continuing at my first try.
There are three types of attack: a close range blade, and two shot types, wide and narrow. The blade can be used multiple times in a short combo that locks the mecha in place until done, and holding down the shot buttons creates a lock-on area (a circle for the wide shot, a cone for the narrow) to unleash homing lasers against enemies; it's possible to fire and swing the blade at the same time, as a single press of the shot button will fire a salvo of projectiles.
The two shot types also cancel out one type of enemy bullets each, with the blade cancelling both; red enemy attacks cannot be cancelled.
Cancelling shots increase the EX attack gauge, and once full, it's possible to unleash a special attack, and its nature is different depending if you have locked enemies or not, how many enemies you locked on and lock-on type.
The system sounds easy enough, but due to the clash of neon-coloured projectiles and enemies on screens, it's kinda hard to pull off exactly what you want when you want...at least during the first playthrough.
The multiplier mechanic is very simple: lock-ons increase the multiplier, normal attacks (narrow/wide shots and blade) use the multiplier. The multiplier goes down very fast, but the game isn't shy of throwing in plentiful waves of mooks for the player to build his multiplier on, although switching between lock-ons and normal attacks is a bit tricky, as one attacks with pressing a button, and locks on while holding the same button; this setup is confusing in the beginning, and after one playthrough I'm still not entirely sold on it, as the game requires to quick actions, and messing up an input (which is quite easy), can mess up eventual score runs.
After the first run, I can say I had fun, though Astebreed is unpolished, there are many pitfalls that could have been avoided (first and foremost the messy graphics), and considering that some of these mistakes were not present in Edelweiss' previous title, it's quite disappointing. Then again, these are "hot" impressions after a first run.
Oh, there's a story as well, with some nice illustrations scattered throughout the game. The voice acting for one character is hilarious, the rest of the cast do their job without any big lows or downs. The story itself is pretty disjointed, and there's dialogue during missions, only that spoken lines taken the backseat to sound effects (good thing) and most of the time are impossible to hear (bad thing); the dubbing is in Japanese only, so I wouldn't have been able to understand it anyway, there are subtitles (good thing) displayed on the lower left side of the screen, out of the action (good thing) but hard to read when playing (bad thing). I really wish that Japanese developers would stop putting dialogues in the midst of furious battles, they can be destrimental for the game or left completely ignored.
Anyway, I'd say it's a buy only after playing Ether Vapor (available on Steam in English or on various Japanese download sites).
Is out on Steam now, and coming to PS4 at some point, is getting some stonking reviews and highest scoring PC release of 2014 on Metacritic apparently.
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