Jet Lancer

Tense and rewarding gameplay + nonserious and fun(ny) plot + dope soundtrack + eye catching visuals that don't negatively impact gameplay + no bugs encountered Mouse and keyboard recommended.

Graphics are absolutely amazing. I love the moe-military-esque narrative as well. And my dear lord, NG+ level 25 and above going for ACE is just not a human task, I had to enable hax (accessability options) to even had a chance on scoring S+, otherwise I would just need 100 (literally) attempts to finish the level (I look at you OP31) and not score even an S, I am not even more a of a skill-disabled person, because I don't think I want to play any more arcade-style games in my life.

Jet Lancer is insanely fun, easy to pick up, and wonderful to watch unfold. The game features a charming cast of cute characters —including a talking-cat engineer—combined with a simple narrative that feels like something one might have discovered on a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon block which endows a sense of coziness to the overall experience. The gameplay strikes an excellent balance between accessibility and challenge. It is challenging enough to remain engaging, but never so difficult that the experience becomes tedious or frustrating. This is aided by the fact that the levels progress in difficulty at an even pace - that is, one is bamboozled by an exponential difficulty increase during the opening levels of the game. Fast, colorful, fast, and immensely repayable, Jet Lancer is a wonderful example of old school arcade mechanics successfully executed and, dare i say, improved upon for an audience that is comprised of both young and OG gamers.

The music, the pace, the super speed combat... aww this soo good! My heartbeat goes to 200 But again THE MUSIC!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA what a game, so much fun.

Cute game, wish the camera wasn't so zoomed in though. 90% of the enemies you kill will be entirely off-screen.

So damn nice I bought it twice (and gifted it to all my friends) in regards to an actual review though, it's hard to put into words what exactly I so enjoy about this game I have about 47~ hours total (45 on another platform) as of writing and I'm still nowhere near conquering it. tl;dr game is fair and feels amazing to play with my only notes on improvement being the story is the weakest link despite still being plenty good. I suppose it feels very fair in an interesting way, enemy jets are about as fragile as you'd expect them to be and the only real advantage they have is numbers rather than being tanky for no good reason. You never die to unwinnable patterns because there aren't any, and you can parry your way through any and all damage you do end up taking if you've got good enough timing for it. Your deaths fall squarely on your shoulders. I've never been able to point at a death of mine and say it was completely inescapable, even in cases where I did checkmate myself (overheating with the dash module equipped therefor losing my ability to dodge) it's always obvious I'm the one who put myself in that situation because I was flying like a lunatic. But taking of my thinking …