Zone of Lacryma

I can just barely recommend this because I got it on a very steep sale, but even then it has some big caveats. Good stuff: - It really tries to do something new. It's mostly a visual novel with some very old school shooting game stages between its chapters. Very, very old school. - The artistic expression here is genuinely nice. The restrained color palette, the spacious stages, the somber soundtrack, it all feels good together. Neutral stuff: - It's very short. Not necessarily a big deal, most shmups are, but since this is leaning more into the world of being a story that you play through, it's a bit more difficult to accept. I've only played for 30 minutes and I'm more than halfway through the whole game. To keep the runtime down, the writing is extremely blunt. It relies heavily on tropes, and as a result it's a story you've heard many times before. As someone who reads a lot of sci-fi, I can't really get into it. - Increasing weapon power as a result of how high you're keeping your combo is certainly a choice. Rough edges: - If you play games like this, you're not going to like the default control mapping. - You're also not going to like how fast the ship moves. - You're going to be relieved that there's a focus mode that slows down your ship movement, but you're going to be frustrated all over again when you realize that using it slows down how fast the stage scrolls. - You're going to mostly be shooting asteroids, not enemy ships. - You're mostly going to be dodging asteroids, not bullets. - When you do have to dodge bullets, the patterns are very simple. Ultimately, I think that if this came out as a DOS game a few decades ago, we'd all remember it fondly. If you can take that perspective when you play it, you might have a good time.