ASTROLANCER

This game is incredible, I didn't expected it to be this good. The top-down + shootem'up gameplay is something I want to make myself someday, and this game did it incredibly. Nice graphics and ost, and the story actually got pretty interesting at the end, and I want to know more about this world, Lancer TWO and Lancer ONE. If the dev is reading this, thank you for the amazing game you made, and I hope you can make a sequel someday, because I'm really interested in seeing how the story will develop and how you will evolve the gameplay. That was a really good time! JOGAÇO

Billed as a spiritual successor to The Guardian Legend, it fails to recapture the energy of that NES cult classic but succeeds in other ways. The fun comes from the shmup levels and spectacular, bullet-hell boss fights. The exploration sections can't really be called that, as they're too linear- you need to keep an eye out for hidden doors and side-paths containing upgrades, but there's generally only a single path to the goal. And some substantial effort in designing the combat system was wasted. In one of the classic NES-era pitfalls, you get plenty of sub-weapons, but they don't matter because the main gun (and unlimited-use Homing weapon) suffice in 95% of all situations. Upgrades barely seem to matter, and I don't think I ever used the rechargeable dash attack. It's bog-standard run-and-gun the whole way. None of this makes Astrolancer a bad game, exactly. It's short- maybe a one-afternoon game. But it is good, mindless fun, with a decent enough story and some serious challenge in the bullet-happy bosses. If they had cut out the exploration bits and just made a pure shmup, it might have been a better game for it. Instead, it feels like it was aiming higher, and fell short. Pity.

Really enjoyed this game, all its aspects were nicely executed (OST, graphics, mechanics...)

Great old school top-down shooter/shmup

An absolute blast. Short and sweet and totally worth navigating through the maze of bullets. Would highly recommend. Also: the soundtrack absolutely slaps.

I was definitely most interested in the bosses, just 'cause of my proclivities, but the other parts of the game's stages were honestly really nice. I quite liked looking around for all of the secrets hidden everywhere—that was actually like a third of the game for me—and the little intro screens at the start of each stage did a lot more than i would've expected them too. It's honestly just a really good game.

Is this game TGL 2/TGL Zero? I'm going to go against the grain and Say no despite the majority of reviews saying otherwise. This does disappoint me since The Guardian Legend is no contest my favorite NES game and this game is marketed as a spiritual successor. However That doesn't mean Astrolancer is by any means a bad game, No it's quite good! But I cant avoid heavily comparing the two and it does not favor Astrolancer It keeps the Action, some of the Aesthetic, and the carryover of weapons from Top down to SHUMP. However It removes a lot of the wandering exploration/need to take notes (You had to explore around to find shops, hints, coordinates, etc) and the RPG mechanics. The leveling system in TGL naturally scaled you with how well you scored in the game, which encouraged you to do better in the SHUMP stages in particular and the game forced you to explore to find the tools you would need to tackle the next SHUMP Challenge. Astrolancer does have SOME exploration but its more about filling out a skill tree to create a playstyle and poking around designated off the main path areas, which is not bad, but not as graceful in my opinion. The Top down is more linear which again is fine, It reminds me more of Blaster Master/Zero Trilogy which again is good! But its not TGL I find the SHUMP stages is less compile and more Touhou which is fine and good in isolation. But I think OG TGL handled it a bit more gracefully where it was about tactically using weapons you found on the overworld to handle different situations. I think Hexeye tried to evoke it but I dont think it hit the mark since Hexeye clearly was trying to make it more bullet hell and more about dodging intracate patterns in boss fights and blowing through enemies with the Thrust mechanic and subweapons rather than exploring the land to find the right tools for the next challenge. To be fair the bullet hell segments are fun and the weapons are pretty fun. I still think TGL did it more elegantly I like the story, its simple but solid and the droids gave me some good laughs and the art direction is solid. The in game manual in particular is cute. Only complaint is I think the plane the Robot lady transforms into looks silly (She's fine in her humanoid form though). I still recommend it, Its fun still, its well worth the five bucks (I would have happily spent ten or maybe fifteen). But It doesnt compare favorably to TGL in my eyes