Raiden NOVA | 雷電NOVA | 雷電新星

The Raiden franchise and Vampire Survivors had a baby and it's called Raiden NOVA. This game is a lot of fun. It takes the Raiden franchise off the upward scrolling limitations of games past and lets you fly around levels freely which feels great. In fact, I think most future Raiden titles should be designed like this instead of the oldschool upward scrollers. Raiden Nova also introduces survivorlike mechanics to the franchise where you level up after killing enough enemies and can choose from multiple options to upgrade your ship during a run. You also collect coins which can be spent in the powerup section of the main menu to add meta upgrade to each ship (and you can purchase other ships). Make sure to figure out which ship you like best before buying upgrades, because the upgrades apply to each individual ship. The difficulty feels a little on the easy side for a Raiden game, probably because you have a life bar instead of 1 hit deaths. Arcade mode only has 6 stages, but they are well done with fun bosses. I wish Arcade mode was 10 stages. While it's cool you can roam around the levels freely, they are basically just backgrounds with different enemies each time. It would have been great if the stages themselves had interactable elements to set them apart more. There is also an Unlimited mode. I was excited to try this at first, but unfortunately it is broken: apparently they forgot to make the difficulty increase with each wave in unlimited mode... so you just keep going and going and going. My first run in Unlimited mode I lasted for over 2 hours and got to level 102 with a fully upgraded ship. My run only ended because I let my ship die just to end it and get my coins to buy more upgrades. Raiden NOVA could use the following improvements: 1. Fix Unlimited mode - make each wave harder than the last 2. Increase the difficulty - it only took me 5 tries at Arcade mode before beating it 3. Add 4+ extra stages - currently the game is a little short 4. Make interactable elements in stages - impassable terrain, level-based bonus objectives etc. 4. Increase the grind with more unlocks, ships and secrets 5. Allow stage select for Arcade mode - I would like to play an individual stage and face the boss for that stage, but this is only possible by playing through the entire campaign 6. Add native 4K resolution support If they addressed everything in the list above, Raiden NOVA would be a 9+ out of 10. As it stands currently, it's an 8 out of 10. Absolutely worth a purchase if you're a fan of the Raiden franchise and/or Survivorlikes.