CYGNI: All Guns Blazing

Kept saying my controller was disconnected and even after trying to reconnect it, It just stay's frozen.

[b]Rating:[/b] ★★★★ - Great [b]Time Played:[/b] 3 hours [b]Difficulty:[/b] Easy \ Normal [b]Gameplay:[/b] - The energy system inverts normal shmup instinct: pickups only bank as permanent upgrade currency when your shields are already full, so playing greedy-defensive actually starves your long-term progress. Optimal play is keeping weapons maxed and topping shields off kills, and the tutorial never tells you this. - "Dual-plane" air/ground combat keeps things interesting but you can only fire one plane at a time, so ground targets often become a secondary you ignore when under fire rather than a genuine second layer except for when they're firing up at you. - Rich-get-richer economy is the core flaw: skilled runs bank more upgrade points, strugglers bank fewer, so the curve widens the skill gap instead of easing you in. - Single life on Normal+ across 15-20 minute checkpointless stages means a handful of stray bullets at a boss erases the whole run. The shield buffer softens the classic one-hit death, but no continues keep it brutal. - Missiles double as a defensive smart-bomb and also a convert to shield, so using them well is about panic-clearing walls of enemies b…

Finished the game on Easy, maxed out my build, got around 4 hours of playtime, but I had a blast! The visuals and audio effects are top notch, the gameplay is fun and engaging. Having to switch between attacking ground and air units is a new mechanic for me and it was a fun addition to the whole set of things you can do in this game. Don't really get the use case for "Railgun" since it's not powerful enough for me to justice it's reload time even with full energy, so I just gave up on using it. Other than that I like the limited but solid weapon choice, and the setup options. I recommend the game.

I bounced off of this game a couple of times. I wanted to like it, but it just didn't click. After finishing the game on Easy today I feel this is a very misunderstood title. You basically have to play it on Easy to start. All the mechanical pieces will fall into place. You'll grasp the shield\power and air\ground mechanics and upgrade your ship along the way in Easy which enables you to handle Medium (default) difficulty. Had they just started you off on the "Easy" setting but named the difficulty levels something like Normal, Hard, Extreme and set Normal as the default instead it would have made all the difference in reviews. Once this game clicked with me, it is an outstanding game and shmup. The graphics are spectacular! The controls are outstanding once you wrap your head around what you're doing. The sound is masterful; the echo of the explosions and depth of it is so cool. Upgrades to the ship are game changing and deceptively simple. Take a moment to understand how to set your gun width combinations, it makes a huge difference. It's not your typical shmup; you will get hit, it's impossible not to (for mortals) it's about balancing your shot width\angle, shields, and missile…

Shmup purists might not like it, but a modern graphical spectacle shooter is the star here, and it's fun. 8/10

good visuals, Axelay feelings.