PLAY THESE GAMES : store.steampowered.com/app/1975360/DRAINUS/ - If only this had the KONAMI name... store.steampowered.com/app/1175190/Natsuki_Chronicles/ - guns - we want lots of guns store.steampowered.com/app/2882440/DEVIL_BLADE_REBOOT/ - Beautiful and Simple store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/ - Innovative Training and Random Modes store.steampowered.com/app/893900/Astral_Gunners/ - Varied character designs and meaningful stage design with choices store.steampowered.com/app/313400/REVOLVER360_REACTOR/ - Pure 3D Innovation designed to perfection store.steampowered.com/app/1489300/Operation_STEEL/ True Rogue Lite Shmup store.steampowered.com/app/1232100/BroodStar/ Casual Focused Rogue Lite Shmup store.steampowered.com/app/2154760/Schildmaid_MX/ an Innovation on Old School Mechanics store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ approachable twinstick goodness ... and many more .... good reviews: steamcommunity.com/id/xaerock/recommended/1248080/ steamcommunity.com/id/metawaddledoo/recommended/1248080/ www.psu.com/reviews/cygni-all-guns-blazing-review-ps5/
@@2011supergamer yes, legendary game, but definitely a little less shmup and a little more run n gun haha. great game though! could also add Zero Ranger but I'm trying to stick to some of the games that do similar things I guess? good point nevertheless
I feel like shmups have so many traps for non-shmup devs who have an idea of what makes a good game in other genres, but not in this one. You don't want jerky movement and are supposed to be flying a spaceship, so we'll add inertia to make it feel more like you are piloting how a spacecraft should. We want added replay value, so we'll add in progression systems that see you getting stronger and stronger as you play more. One hit deaths are frustrating for players, so we'll add in hull or shields. But now players can brute force encounters, so we'll add in "chip damage" that you are meant to take. A shot type that covers the whole screen will make you too overpowered, and we want the player to think tactically. Small enemies shouldn't die instantly, they should be able to take enough hits to enter the screen long enough to shoot something. We'll have the player start with lower power level, so that they feel rewarded for getting upgraded as they play. These can work with the right implementation. But the ones falling for these traps aren't playing other shmups to see why these are not present, or they are not looking at shmups that do these well to see why it works there.
@@PAN-- I agree I think a good example is Drainus which doesn't fall into these traps in the worst way, it hides all this stuff under relatively amazing game design. You get stronger, there is a shop, you take many hits, but the game then throws more at you. It's still casually marketed but it doesn't lose sight of what a shmup should be. It can be broken easily but it never feels like that's unintentional, more like a reward for breaking it.
@@PAN-- definitely! me too, I now feel a tinge of regret that I didnt just directly compare this game to Drainus but I kind of just wanted to talk about what it was without trying to dilute with our "hardcore shmup koolaid we all drink"
Haha, when I saw that "Rulebook" article I knew there was a storm coming. Thank you for your thoughts Aktane. I wanted to add some Notes: 1. Namedropping old Shmups doesn't have to be bad games journalism. The hard pill is that a lot of really good recent Shmups are just completely unknown outside of the Shmup circles. Drawing more apt comparisons but ones that mean nothing to your audience is a sure way to keep Shmups obscure and insular. "Ikaruga" and "Radiant Silvergun" will resonate with people and might bring them in. So I would leave reviewers off the hook on that. The path to your favorite videogames becoming mainstream is paved with a lot of "Videogames came a long way since Pac Man". Now whether this is the game to light the Ikaruga Bat Signal on is a whole different question, of course. 2. Two designers on a title like this is fine. It is not a sign of game design being a low priority. I've seen much bigger games with smaller design teams. Game Design is not one of those jobs on a project where having more people will necessarily produce a better result. Your points are well taken. I would suggest adding some recommendations at the end of the video in case there are some newcomers finding the video and looking for which shmups to play instead. You know, like "If you like X about Cygni, try this other game that does it better". Cheers!
thank you for these thoughts and clarifications, as always!! Hopefully the pinned comment and descriptions suffice as far as which games to play... I put Drainus at the top of that list as I think if you like Cygni but want something better, Drainus might be the ticket... I should have probably anchord that point in the video - but honestly... I struggled with folks that liked Cygni, thinking maybe that they appreciate the skin deep slosh and grind that I cannot offer in my recommendations.... On #1 - thats tough for me, I feel like its reviewers jobs to educate as well as to relate. Its not JUST relate... counter to your argument is that when will we finally mention a game from the last 20 years? These games ARE out, they do exist, Drainus exists on modern platforms... Eurogamer even reviewed Drainus... and of course all they could say was that " it evokes Treasure " ... what's insular is keeping shmups in the dark ages when you have the opportunity to expand your readers minds by mentioning both... sure mention RSG, Ikaruga, ... why not mention Drainus too? on #2 - I agree more is not better, and maybe this was speculation - probably better left off of the video... maybe those two really actually did spend most of their time on game design, im not sure... but do you think that a dedicated game designer role would be worthwhile? I'm curious on this....
@@AKTANEARCADE Yeah gotta admit. Drainus is a pretty good game to compare this too. And if they did it would probably highlight the weaknesses. Missed opportunity. RE more designers - sure a dedicated designer would be great! But this a luxury only the really big studios can afford. On the other hand, some highly celebrated Shmups have been accomplished with just one designer who also needed to pull double-duty as a artist or a coder. It is a common setup.
I love how the "thoughtful rejection" article abandons the concept of rejections or rulebooks once you get past the title and proceeds to explain how Cygni's big triumph is that people who don't like shmups will find easy mode an amusing way to spend a couple of hours before moving on to the next shiny thing. I could have read this article and it would have killed all my interest in the game from the outset.
Sometimes there's a reason why the design conventions of a genre exist, and if you don't play or understand the genre then you might not know why?.... Hmmm, just a thought.
this one's not quite a dead end, there are some good ideas they're just badly made... I think the twin stick mouse style ground shooting with air bullet hell would actually be mad fun with good movement and sharp design. but I hear you!
that first review saying: "This is what a blockbuster shooter should look like" gives me a migraine. I tried the game recently because it was free on epic, and I honestly think the visual clarity is awful" Too much noise, too little contrast where it's needed. But hey, they use Unreal, so the graphics must be good, right?
ooof thank you for commenting - yeah honestly if everyone said " this is deeply flawed in almost every way but there is fun to be had here and there " - I would be like " cool yep " ... thats the tagline to me lol
someone used another car analogy like “getting a shiny sports car with everything possible and then driving it down the road in Desert Bus where you can’t fall asleep or do anything else other than drive forward”
Cygni and Sine Mora. Evolutionary masterpieces saving the shmup genre. You were a lot nicer to the game than i would've been. I think it's total shyt, in literally every way but graphics.
This is an amazing gamedesign centric breakdown, Aktane. Well done. The EG review was written by Will Freeman who does know his shmups extensively well (and tbh his review reads more 3-star than the 4-stars that the game gets), which makes me realize (perhaps once more) that in the buyer's guide culture of on-release video game reviews there hardly is place for a more granular look at the design of a game. I have a hunch that the people who will like Cygni (mostly not enthusiasts of the genre), will enjoy the explosions and the pretty graphics and the fact that they can tank many a hit (except for maybe in the boss fights) for a breezy playthrough, but even to them, subconsciously, for many a reason you highlight here, it will not have staying power and they'll forget most of it over time.
That is exactly why I highlighted Will's comments because I expect more out of someone who, folks told me, "knew their shmups". After reading his review, it does not read like Will knows their shmups at all... implying that "no shmups in the history" of the genre have encouraged tanking hits, of which there are many - nor backing up claims for example that it is " intently precise bullet-dodging. " ... The review seems to even contradict itself at the end in some effort for maybe "the real Will" to come out? Almost as if the game HAD TO MAKE a positive impression but Will did not examine why, other than the graphics. Will wants me to believe that this game wants me to take my time and absorb its world, but there is no world to absorb, even mentions the scoring system is not great. I am left with a feeling that Will does not know why the Arcade Shmups Rulebook exists, and what makes it meaningful... and therefore the rejection is not well explained as to why this is a good thing.... I would not trust Will's perspective on a shmup given this review of Cygni, which to me is an Anathema to the culture, and has done damage to his platform's reputation as a proponent of the benefits of arcade design. To be more specific - Drainus has the same exact system - you tank hits which decreases your power, and use a special bar to refill your power, and get icons to fill the special bar. Its what breaks that game but also makes that game really fun for casuals, so its a battle of attrition. Did Will even play Drainus?
@@AKTANEARCADE Oh I agree with you. I don’t quite know what to make of this review of his. Like you say, at times it seems to contradict itself and I’m almost inclined to think there was some editorial meddling going on. His articles in Retro Gamer about Toaplan, DDP, Raiden, Shikigami no Shiro, etc. were very good. Yeah, there’s also this game Schildmaid MX were the design goal was to make an STG where taking hits is advantageous lol. Crucially, taking hits there is not “whatever”, but something you want to actively pursue and you’re seeking out enemy bullets with extreme prejudice.
@@michielkroder4031 honestly true and I hope that eurogamer sees this and realizes that this is how it's come across... to me... anyways... NEVER HEARD OF THAT GAME !!! SCHILD WHAT!? (im joking to those reading this, ive cleared schildmaid with all 3 ships) hahaha .... but to be fair ... thats not TANKING hits, that is absorbing a bullet to then take a wonderful beautiful, sensual, bath in the golden hue of scoring bliss... Tanking hits in schildmaid still incurs the wrath of the shmup gods and thee shall be smited... by losing a ship... my poor wivern... and losing some power too ... how dare you MK...
Maybe it’s because I don’t have much of a history with shmups but this game has been a blast. Sticking with me much more than shmups normally do and has actually gotten me in to the genre. Almost feels like a housemarque game tbh
That's great to hear! Maybe you'll like true shmups or maybe you wont, its hard to tell, a lot of shmups are a lot less sloppy and reward precision in addition to resource management. I would be really curious what you feel of a game like Drainus or Devil Blade Reboot. I really like HouseMarque games for the most part and I dont think this meets that mark at all personally, it's just not well designed as a HM game would be, and doesnt have the depth or the curiosity that those games allow for. There's really nothing here to be curious about or to explore, at least there wasnt for me. thanks for chiming in!
Since getting Cygni I’ve played Ketsui, Sol Cresta, Battle Garegga, Radiant silver gun. They’re all great but I think I like Sol Creata and Radiant the most because of how many weapons and mechanics they give their ships. I’m coming from playing a lot of character action games so I do like input heavy games with lots of options on the fly. Will def give Dranius a shot too thanks for the rec Don’t get me wrong you have great criticism here and there’s a lot of sloppiness surrounding the game which is a shame. I wish they took more time with it. But still having more than enough fun to clear all difficulties and go for arcade mode. Idk really I just love how the ship feels. Semi twin stick aiming, weapon swapping, juggling ground shots and air enemies, the speed of it. Lots of cool stuff, just sad to hear it doesn’t hit the mark for a lot of the genre vets. Also even I can tell the difference in precision of ship control in something let Ketsui vs Cygni. I actually 1cc cleared deathtiny mode (I know that’s not impressive lol) and I love how that feels yet I still like how the ship in Cygni feels too. Anyways thanks for the video, you really know your stuff and thanks for the shmup content you do, I always enjoy seeing you on Electric underground, will give you a sub
@@jerm5466 deathtiny 1cc is still really fun! and you're spot on, if you like character action games you GOTTA check out Astral Gunners... each character abilities are SO different, here's an example Green Character has a drone that follows you around, you can then position it wherever you want and leave it there, THEN you can actually teleport to the drone and swap places with it ... then when you do a super a big laser field appears between you and your drone and you can still move it around! crushing everything and deleting bullets in its path. you can also kick the drone forward like a yoyo and that does damage and deletes bullets. This is just one character. Red Character has a charge shot, and also has a little fire bubble that appears around it, but if you hold the charge and hit the bubble you will get an even bigger bubble... Purple Character has a sword... Yellow a big old shield and a way to reflect bullets... etc. etc. I will also absolutely recommend Zero Ranger. That is THE game for me. It has 3 weapons you pick yourself, and then a transformation.. which I wont spoil I guess. and all of it is really kinetic and dynamic - the sword can slow down and reflect bullets, the charge shot can eat bullets, certain shots can shoot background enemies. These are games where the gameplay design takes priority of course, and all the different mechanics and things you can do!
@@jerm5466im on the same spot as you. I really like this game. I also like devil engine, raiden, cave games and all that stuff. I just went in with another mindset. I think this game is not trying to replicate does staples of shmups, its cleary doing is own thing. Yeah, there are things that could be better, but hey, maybe they will learn and take the feedback for a better game later. The movement, the curving of shots, the music is all an experience. Glad you are enjoying it too!
Also yes you can’t attack air and ground at the same time, but following up ground attack with raylight removes the charge time which is a fun mechanic for weapon switching and honestly feels great Also recommend turning move speed all the way down in the menu. It’s still not perfect but made dodging a lot easier for me This is a great video though and I hope the devs take some of it in to account when updating it. Specifically regarding the movement, they need to give the player the option to turn the acceleration off. Also pickups on shields isn’t just for currency - it’s for score too. I think the tutorial mentions this, not sure. But whether or not that’s good design is another question
I turned acceleration to "1" for my play through, just FYI, it was better but not good enough! So you can attack air with missiles and ground with the laser sometimes, but ultimately it just doesnt feel like they give you enough tools to enjoy that. I never got the Raylight btw because I did not want to play the game again to get that weapon, it was too expensive, and instead I opted to use my missiles to complete the game, and therefore I never got that tool... Was that intended? I dont know but I'm NOT gonna sit here and NOT use my Missiles which are the only thing in the game that allows you to do the Air/Ground at the same time, and also I cant IMAGINE fighting those massive whales that take aaages to die without the DPS of the missiles... so yeah Raylight was never gonna be a thing for me because I couldnt stand not to use my resources :(
Hi Aktane, I enjoyed it a lot thanks! You explain all the problems simply and clearly + it's also a very good complement to Mark's video because you approach the subject differently. I hope you do more often "reviews" like this.
thanks Vinu, that means a lot to me :) maybe I will have to do a few more some time ... haha yes Mark and I are quite different in our approach, he's a much better writer, I'm more of a ... "in caveman terms here's what is going on " :P
@@AKTANEARCADE Ha haaaah. I mentioned the shmup troll Mark, & you acted like you were clueless as to who Mark is, yet now you seem to know everything about him lol. Nice try. Now go play a good "euroshmup" lol, & see why euroshmuping dominates sales charts, while nobody enjoys bullethell "dodgemups". We shoot, yall dodge. We win, yall lose 👀🤣🤣😎👍
I wanted to post again to clarify a few things and help boost the video in the algorithm. I think the game is somewhat middling and I agree with a lot of the points you make here. I do like it in an odd way, despite these issues and I would like to see the develoeprs take another stab at it. Cygni isn't the worst shmup I've ever played, and it's far from the best, but it does have a certain charm that I can't quite ignore. Maybe I'm just too soft as a critic, but I had fun with it for a few hours and it inspired me to reinstall a few games that I had given up on, like DOJ and Under Defeat. I hope my initial comment didn't come off as sarcastic or anything. I've always liked the work you do in the community and I like the chance to talk about this somewhat obscure genre. Cheers.
@@thefractalcactus nah! I think it's worth having the discussion, always down to get new perspectives, and honestly if the game is fun, it's fun! If it has charm, then it has charm. If it inspires you to load up other shmups then it has rekindled the fire and done it's job!
I think shmups are one of the trickiest genres to really get “right,” it’s one of the oldest if not the oldest genre of video games next to sports games. However, it’s also one of the most expansive genres because of it, allowing even single developers to create some of the most diverse things out there just as much as the so called masters of the genre like Treasure or CAVE, who also had famously underpowered arcade boards for their time and focused entirely on how to make the gameplay shine from their competitors. Cygni feels like it wanted to be free of any restraints that held shmups back, but in turn this makes it feel really… sterile. Make it longer and longer, because we can now. Make it even higher quality and detailed, because we can now, clarity and contrast be damned. Make the movement fast now, make the expanding upgrade system because we can, etc. In chasing the perfect game to satisfy everyone (and it mostly worked for reviewers), it becomes a mess that doesn’t really do anything unique except presentation.
mmmm yeah I agree with you completely... hmmmmmmm I wish it was this intentional though, but I actually think you're probably even giving more credit here than I would care to give.... I feel like many of the things you mentioned, like length, movement, upgrade systems, have all been done so well in the indie space, and even in the shmup indie space!... some to great effect... really it feels like the developers weren't even expanding intentionally, but rather just trying to make something that they thought was representative of euroshmups they played in their past, and I think honestly they have probably met that criteria... its just that those games had some pretty big issues that they also took along with them, and the stuff they added compounds those issues as well... unfortunately the one thing they added which shmups could use (graphics) is something that is all it took for most people to overlook everything else. Either game design wasnt their goal, or they are just not great game designers (maybe they'll learn from this and get better though!), because that is not something that appears to be the focus. Putting aside graphics, even the style is very jarring, that open cutscene is all playful and supposed to be upbeat but then the rest of the game is dry as a bone... just really bizarre choices that felt lacking a cohesive vision other than " this looks cool doesnt it "
@@AKTANEARCADEWord, I didn’t mean to come off as dismissive of indies which also expand on modern hardware because games like Gunvein, Eschatos and Rolling Gunner come to mind that almost completely get rid of any arcade system limitations but still understand the basics of stage designs and have new gimmicks to master. Cygni just feels like they were so afraid of alienating people that it doesn’t really appeal to existing shmup archetypes. My favorite in the genre is Hellsinker, ironically because that game also defies every convention in a way that rewards every single step you take in trying to learn its huge amount of unique systems.
What's especially hurtful for me about this game is that the last stg I played is NeverAwake, which is very much also unconventional for its genre & intentionaly designed to attract newcommers. But despite lacking an arcade mode (yet), its game design never felt insulting to veteran players, unlike this one...
shit NeverAwake is a wake up call to me, I love that game and I want to play more of it, along with Illvelo Swamp... its in my twinstick stack... need to get to those! good look... and you're spot on btw. 100% agree and added it to the list above
As someone who has also been playing Shmups regularly for the last three or so years, I think the game is... fine. It's a pastiche, and it accomplished what it set out to do. Make an approachable Shmup for people on the fringes of the genre. I'm not of the mindset that Japanese Arcade Shmup design is some holy script that needs to be adhered to with religious devotion. Quite the contrary. Many Japanese Arcade Shmups are well outside the skill set of the average player. Even people who spend time learning or would like to learn may be turned off by how strict and unrelenting many of the foundational titles within the genre are. Hell, as someone who has studied game design, I think most Arcade games are outright bad. Their origins as vehicles for leeching money off of people are all too obvious, and many would have been better as home releases. I wouldn't want every game to be like Cygni, and it has many problems, but as a stand-alone title, it's fine. Certainly not deserving of all the vitriol it's receiving. The game is living rent-free in the communities head.
oh I agree with a lot of what you've said, I constantly rant about arcade design and how bad or harsh it can be, which is why i was so surprised that this somehow went backwards even further. Those same folks who would be turned off by that shmup design COULD have had a good game to play that was nice and welcoming, but instead they got something that they have to wrestle with constantly, that is overly confusing and also overly simple at the same time. Obviously considering the video I made - you know my view on what I think the game deserves and why I think it deserves the feedback. Do you think the movement is good? Do you agree that saving resources to upgrade is a good choice? So you like the grind? Do you then also agree that the level design is interesting? Do you think there's enough to do? Do you like the weapons? Especially the ground laser, does that feel good to you in those moments? If you think all that stuff is fine, then of course, the game is fine in your eyes. I think a lot of that stuff is pretty broken which is why I made the video.
@AKTANEARCADE I meant "fine" as more of a pejorative. It's serviceable considering what it's attempting. The level design is okay. There are some fun moments, like the canals in level 3 and the forced tate area in stage 6. My biggest issue with the level design is all of the downtime. Too many sections where you're just auto firing at hordes of enemies. It's fun the first time around, but they could have made it more interesting / had more enemy variety. The movement doesn't bother me too much tbh. Playing on analog, it feels fine with how they've designed the game, though the same movement system wouldn't work in any other title. It could be patched / improved a little. As far as grinding for upgrades, I don't mind grinding for stuff. I play lots of character action games, and they all, for better or worse, feature much more gratuitous upgrade systems. My issue is that it takes such little time to unlock everything, that making the player do it at all is sort of pointless. They could have had extra ships or different shot types (flame thrower, missles, etc.) to have more things to work toward while also bolstering build diversity. I think I had every upgrade in under an hour. For a developers first game in a difficult genre to pin down, I think they made an honest effort and if they ever do a sequel, they might be able to make something really cool, if different from the standards set by the pillars of the genre. Also, wanted to point out that, while executed poorly, I really like the idea of diverting power to your shields in order to stay alive. Wish they had workshopped that more than any other feature of the game because that's its most interesting design element.
@@thefractalcactus I play a lot of character action games too but I've never once grinded in one, and especially didn't need it to dispatch any bosses or enemies. I'm talking about Devil May Cry Series, Bayonetta, God of War, etc. So while you may have grinded there, I think the grind is additive, not necessary, you certainly don't start off underpowered to the point of having to replay stages to play the next stage. Never ever done that in any of those games.... I'm struggling to find the comparison to cygni, can you elaborate?
@@AKTANEARCADEDevil May Cry absolutely has grinding. Especially the process for upgrading your styles in DMC3. It takes nearly and entire playthrough to get a Style (say Royal Guard) from base to max level. You probably won't have all of your styles upgraded until you start Dante Must Die mode. Each style had specific abilities that are locked to their respective levels, like Sword Master's Dance Macabre being tied to Level 4. I wouldn't argue these skills are necessary for completing the game, but tying tools to arbitrary upgrade systems is bad. I'm agreeing with you. The point that I was trying to make is that there's so little to upgrade that I'm not sure why they included it at all. I had every upgrade after about 45 minutes of play. I fele like if they want an upgrade system, they should go all in or forgo it entirely. I wouldn't have minded some other unlocks like ship colors or visual filters. I think that would have been fine.
@@thefractalcactus interesting 🤔 yeah I didn't have all my styles maxed in DMC3 cuz it didn't really matter, I had the moves I wanted, as far as Cygni... I kept using missiles so I completed the entire game with A couple missile upgrades and the homing and double dps ground upgrade. Didn't have any pods, didn't have the ray thing. And that took me about 2.5 hours roughly with retries (which don't give you any currency) . I'm not sure how you got everything in 45 minutes. Maybe you didn't use missiles? I wasn't gonna do that because I wanted to win 😔
The energy system would be so much better if you actually could dodge properly so you could manage the meter without getting constantly hit and having to move energy back and forth between shields and weapons. And some of the level sections and bosses seem to be artificially made more difficult by not awarding any energy power ups or having large enemies with too much health (Space Whales of Level 5) so you are stuck trying to clumsily dodge attacks just to survive until the popcorn enemies comes back on screen so you can fill your meter back up again.
I didn't understand the energy system at all, it never made sense to the design of the level. I don't mind if it's not obvious and need to learn the level and the mechanics to move forward, but I don't think that's even a thing. I might be wrong, but it almost feels like they just added enemies randomly with no thought to the weaponry, ship movement or any intent of balance with the energy system. This game just made me feel old and stupid.
I think that in regards to the community of shmup fans who frequent the shmup forum, the shmup wiki, the various shmup discords, etc.. We knew this game wasn't gonna be "it". The game never needed to be an evolution or anything. What it needed to be was a stepping stone for the casual gamer to find and use to guide them on the path to the plethora of actually good shmups that are, to be frank, hidden beneath the surface of the topology of media and modern gamer culture. That is the benefit that this game can provide to the shmup community. I mean think about it, the damn SHMUP FEST that steam held didnt even have any shmups on the front page! People cant find gunvein or mushi just out in the wild anymore. The path inward to the shmup heaven of pcb boards, mame emulation, retro console shmups, the indie scene, etc, requires that there be a flashy mainstream big budget graphics thingy to catch someones eye. Then they play it, want more and through their curiosity and exploration, find the gold mine. This happens enough, then the cultural consciousness of the recognition of shmup quality will disseminate, resulting in more accurate journalism, more players, more games, more competitions, more high scores, etc.. This is how me and everyone I know in real life who likes shmups got into them. A lot of the community is full of players who experienced quality shmups on major consoles when they were kids. That isn't how its gonna happen anymore. Even you recognize this to a certain extent because you're doing the service of directly trailing cygni traffic into better shmups.
oh yeah I got some software for this, literally for this video ... uhhh let me see... I had never used it before, but it wasnt too bad to learn - www.ipevo.com/software/annotator#download
I'm not a hardcore shmup player, but I enjoy playing them from time-to-time. I enjoyed playing Cygni, and there's a few points that I see a bit differently: Cygni's movement intertia: I've found this curve useful. Since Cygni uses a 16:9 screen ratio, you need speed to travel through the whole screen. During boss fights dodging is sometimes needed, and you would not want to go full speed there. I was using a keyboard, and this inertia was fine with me: I had to get used to it though. Ground weapon: I've also found this frustrating until I've learned locking on ground targets using the left shift. Upgrades: I hated the upgrade system. But to be fair: most shmups punish the usage of bombs in some ways, and I believe, the developers did think of homing missiles as bombs. Cutscenes (don't know if you mentioned this): The cutscenes where a waste of time. I've seen the devs talking about Cygni being more cinematic, and that they built a storyline around the character. Well: they did not. There simply is no storyline: not as if I cared about it, but apart of the character trailer animation all the other cut-scenes are either like detailed animatics, or just a few planes flying around using the in-game engine.
Thank you!! I'm actually not sure if we disagree on anything :) - you tell me: Movement : I see.! but... If you had access to a slow key like most shmups, you could go fast across the screen and then you hit the slow speed when you want to dodge boss fights. This has been like this since like the early 90s and this feedback was given to the developers which they wilfully ignored. Then you do not need acceleration, and you have full control. That is the point that a person who is not a shmup player might not realize. There was ALREADY a better way, and this was a step backwards in the wrong direction, losing precision... and I guess gaining one button back? Ground Weapon: GOOD POINT, I wanted to use manual targeting because I wanted the most engaging experience possible, so it seems maybe manual targeting is just broken then? Auto would have been better? Usually in game design, manual is harder to use but has benefits and is overall better... Upgrades: Punish is a strong word and could mean different things... because while most shmups punish the use of bombs in the run but ONLY for high scoring NOT for survival, they do NOT punish you in the long term for using a bomb for perma upgrades - which is, in this case the key to survival and scoring for Cygni. Cutscenes : Not even worth mentioning so I didnt lol. There is no storyline, and no depth to the world, its completely surface level, but its not the point I guess so its pretty much neither here nor there... I like the "in engine level intros" tho, the couple levels that have them. Some cutscenes have high fidelity which is nice to look at from a technical standpoint.
@@AKTANEARCADE I see what you mean now with the movement. I'm not a pro in shmups, but played a few: Dodonpachi series, Gradius V, Ikaruga, Borderline, Zero Ranger, Drainus, Asterbreed, Danmaku unlimited, Raiden V, but these are not 16:9 games (or not vertical ones), maybe that's why I was not aware of the movement thing. I thought, you mean the speed difference on using different guns (like in Dodonpachi the laser made you slower, the spreadshot faster).
@@9b0 those are some awesome games! They all have direct movement yeah :) there's very few 16:9 verts, there is Terra Feminarum which is a free bullet hell on steam, and there is Shinorubi which I don't like at all... It doesn't mean it can't be done but there are challenges for sure with it! It's not easy because of the width but I think Cygni does very well here, it just borks the movement unfortunately. I never felt 16:9 was a hindrance but I also never felt it was an asset, I think that's positive for Cygni and probably worth praising.
@@AKTANEARCADE Jamestown is 16:9, but I never played it. Cho Ren Sha is another favourite of mine, and Cygni reminded me of it sometimes. It also had very few enemy types and levels have been a bit repetitive, but I liked the gameplay of Cho Ren Sha a lot more.
To me, more then a shmup, it feels more like a tower defense. I did play (and had fun) with few tower defense games back in the mid 2000'. not my jam at the moment. I think it is okay that devs do not know the genre and experiment with it, sometimes going into something with a "fresh" mind can produce good things (not the case with this game). What I find unacceptable is when reviewers have no clue: comparing this to ikaruga and rsg is straight, all out incompetence.
I had heard this yeah.... honestly real talk this is part of what put me over the edge to make this video... no one seemed to be getting it... Will could have written a good review and maybe... I wouldnt have made this ? but that review is bizarre at best
@@AKTANEARCADE Give it up Sir. Shmuping simply isn't for some folks like you & Mark. Find a genre you find fun , & you wont be so negative about wtf you think is good or bad design. #promice
Interesting vid I have the same issue with roguelikes. Choosing between power this run vs meta currency to make future runs better It really needs to die out design wise
@@saetzero_the_moon_king yeah I think the question is like, is that fun to not use your MAIN resources? I don't like it. Would be like in dead cells if you didn't use your trigger abilities you got more cells or something
@@AKTANEARCADE in dead cells to me its when do you unlock a new weapon Cuz you get it in white at a high rarity on the spot. So you dont wanna unlock it until you got a run you can plan to use it. The amount of things i left on 1 cell to unlock for that reason is..... Mehhhhhh i cant turn off power gamer brain lol
I didn't play this one, but just what I heard about it made me think "mega euro" and kinda not want to play it. The thing about people making shmups who don't normally make shmups, don't play shmups, don't really care about why certain design elements are conventions of the genre, etc... I think these games appeal more strongly to *other* people who don't play shmups. Like, I think that was a big deal with Ikaruga, was that Treasure were known for making Treasure games. And they don't really obey shmup rules, they obey "treasure rules." So people like Ikaruga who maybe don't like other shmups. And then someone like myself, I think Ikaruga is a beautiful game, cool concept... But I can't have *any* fun with Ikaruga. Complete fun vacuum for me. Hate it. But obviously, the mainstream responded to Ikaruga and I think to a lesser extent to Radiant Silvergun. Whereas a game like Eschatos, basically is a celebration of all the amazing design elements of shmups leading to that point, and it's super fun. But Eschatos even now is kinda unknown. I couldn't find any mainstream, high-profile reviews for Eschatos on the switch version, nor could I get one searching IGN for any historical, old reviews on older systems. So on the one hand, there are "non-shmupper shmups" and then there are the "shmup players shmups." The only way for non-shmuppers to "get it" is for them to play these shmupper shmups and get hooked on the "it" factor. I've noticed a lot of shmups that appeal to non-shmuppers sell themselves big on graphics. Just an observation. Graphics or story. That one time travel story shmup thing was big on the presentation angle. Can't remember the name of the game for the life of me though. Looked boring as heck to actually play.
It's not just Shmups though, it's all games. Things with flashy graphics and big production values will always take precedence over smaller, more tightly designed games with a focus on design over fidelity. Devil May Cry always lived in the shadow of God of War. Time is a flat circle.
It absolutely does innovate. And the evidence of that is the fact that it has such success. Its getting the rave reviews from reviewers who haven't heard about Zeroranger or Devil blade. Actually marketing your game matters. It people who haven't played a shmup ever in their lives starting at this because its just on psn and the xbox store. Its not $80 like the Dodonpachi remake. Im going to take a blind guess and assume that the devil blade dev does not have a series of videos talking about how they went about making the game. The Cygni devs do. That matters. That can be shared online. Meanwhile the devil blade devs open the game basically saying they will legally obliterate streamers and youtubers. That matters. Even little stuff like the fact that the bullets actually come out of the ship instead of like a river of missiles larger than the ship pouring out of the area in front of the ship. Like in some shmups. That matters. As a shmup fan I like that weird jank. But for someone new, thats just ugly. It really shows how the shmup genre artificially locks itself out of even the relatively tiny buzz this game is getting over just little weird bs that can be fixed.
@@Theyungcity23 oh yeah marketing definitely matters. From a business standpoint if you want to say they innovated by pouring money into it, absolutely. The gameplay is not very well thought through, but many mediocre games gain lots of success from being cosigned by Konami and having lots of shiny graphics and marketing. That doesn't make the game good. And actually some of the best shmup devs are way more approachable than the Cygni devs. They're easier to talk to and get this, they actually take feedback. Many of them are my personal friends, such as the developer of Astral Gunners, Schildmaid MX, or Broodstar,.they do lots and lots of streams. Krystman from Lazy Devs academy literally has done a ton of tutorials on making a game in this genre on pico 8, boghog, who made gunvein, has done a FULL series on how to develop a good shmup. We do lots of content on this stuff. They don't get nearly as much exposure, because we don't have Konami cosigning and shiny graphics. We don't have marketing dollars. If you think having money and shiny graphics engineers is innovation for our community, I guess sure. We don't care about that, we develop games for tight and amazing gameplay that are engaging throughout and will stand the rest of time. You're effectively saying Taylor Swift is the best musician of all time with your argument, and that she innovates due to her marketing and popularity. It means nothing to me. Btw most shmups are much cheaper than Cygni. I think every single one I linked is cheaper and the ones that aren't have way way WAY more content. Astral Gunners has about 20x the content and replayability that Cygni does. So yeah I concede that marketing matters. Doesn't mean anything to me tho, good is good, and sloppy, and boring is what it is. Popular doesn't mean good, that's why critical analysis is important, not just buzzwords without meaning.
I found a new shmup called Elite Exorcist Mako. Its a twin stick shmup. Its inspired from Suguri and I think its alot more solid than Cygni in terms of how it is designed.
On "wobble," it's really had to do right. Thunder Force IV, R-Type Delta, Einhander all have larger stages where you move the camera around, but in doing that you can't have a lot of bullets, it has to be more formation/setpiece focused. GRev. is also really good at making it work, but they're all often setpieces/larger boss enemies.
Yeah it's okay to move the camera around but you can't have it be a vertical scrolling that is so extreme in a vertical shmup. Or in the case of a horizontal shmup, it would then be horizontal scrolling. In TF4 for example there isn't any horizontal scrolling, only vertical scrolling. There is no wobble there, I don't think? 🤔 It's been a while since I played it.
@@AKTANEARCADE It's been a while since I really dug into it, but I recall the desert stage having both, but only on that stage. it's also not that extreme in comparison to cygni
@@MotWhinnana I wouldn't doubt it, also get hit by stuff when I'm scrolling up and down in thunder force 4. I'm not a fan of the game 😞 I can't do memorizers haha
So some of my all time favorites have been the American release of Squadron 88, most R-Type, The Raiden series, 1942 and a bunch of variants. I am glad came across this video because holy molly I want to like Cygni but the flow feels weird - now I know why.
@@WaltzActual yeah I'm not a huge fan of most of these super old school style games because theyre too memorization focused for me to 1CC and my brain is too smooth. I like flailing around like an idiot. Cygni let's me do that but also puts so many barriers to fun along the way, and yeah that movement is cracked.
Amazing analysis and review of the game as a whole, highlighting the issues and potentials with each aspect of it. Based on your description, I find the whole thing really contradictory in its design, like the gameplay design guys weren't really on the same page while working on this. ・It *almost* has solid fundamentals, but some baffling quirk kind of ruins it at each point. ・It could have a decent and fun risk-reward mechanic, but the whole thing is undermined by the currency system (which honestly should just be based off performance). ・They say dodging is not the focus, but deliberately design segments and boss-fights with a dodge-heavy focus. (and then micro-movements and dodging feels awful due to the movement) ・The levels are long with a ton of reused and boring patterns, no secrets or points of interest, but then also throw in some nice looking and interesting set-pieces. It feels like a rollercoaster ride where you're bored like 90% of the way. It's quite sad to see, because like you said there is potential here, and the spectacle is truly great, but everything else seems underdeveloped, under-researched and disorganized. Tbh, besides the boring level design, I'd say a lot of these issues could be somewhat easily fixed/reworked, but I also have my doubts they'd do that considering the publisher is konami. Even then I definitely wouldn't say it's the next step for shmups, but at least it could be called a decent game. Also, thanks for the shoutout in the description! :)
This is really well said, you're spot on... also your game does the "fun" aspect so much better... I tried to mention some of these things as well... the truth is ... nobody WANTED this game to be bad! thats the thing thats so sad, because yeah a few little tweaks - a little bit more care and attention to the design, and less "rejection" of things that just work... I think it would have been a solid 8/10 shooting gallery... and then further could have been improved to make an even better game! But they really ignored a lot of feedback and pushed back on a lot of it... which is frustrating
Even their steam page says "CYGNI the vanguard for the next generation of shoot-em ups", they're better at marketing than making a game I feel they wanted to make a shmup, because it looks simple to make, and then they wanted to improve and modernize the genre, so they ignored when people wanted old ideas They had fans, shmup devs and Konami to help them out, and they ignored them all, for making a resource manager game, they sure managed to waste all their resources...
I've had this game on my Steam wishlist for six months. As soon as I saw the weird slightly directional shots, I decided that I no longer wanted the game. Now youre telling me it has inertia too? lol I'm good, thanks.
Lol - I cannot recommend this game for $30 on Steam, I got it for free and I didnt mention in my video that I physically fell asleep during the last stage... unfortunately it doesnt even have inertia, that would make sense, it has like acceleration and then immediately the ship stops (no sliding, so no inertia)... its quite bizarre... its some middle ground... all it needed was fast movement with a slow button like every other game.. but the innovation award from Eurogamer was at hand...
Wonderful breakdown of the issues!!! The diagrams are perfect… really feel like the game was pointing those things at me hahaha Also love how you explain the “hold R” issue in general. It’s really not a strategic choice to be efficient, and forcing people away from being efficient in the game to be efficient in the economy layer… why!?!? If you insist, tie currency to score and be done with it.
Why indeed, It just feels so forced, like most of the game. It doesn't feel like game design to me, it feels like a retailer trying to balance a profit margin.
@@AKTANEARCADE 100% great metaphor!!! I feel myself being told by the regional manager I have to make customers use the shield system or we won’t hit our KPIs lol
@@martinwohrle7887 I'm not too interested to tell you the truth because it's not like anyone who worked on a single Konami Shmup had any say in this game, so Konami is just a front...
@@AKTANEARCADE That is true, what I meant though is that the name creates some buzz that might draw in players who otherwise would never have come in contact with something shmup-like. And then they might stumble across your review, and Mark will probably put something out as well, and with any chance discover the wider world of shmups.
Hmm, Jazz is a rejection of the music rule book. Thanks for the thoughtful insights, this is easily my favorite video of yours this month. :) Also, thanks for the reminder to buy Astral Gunners, done! Also games are IMO about control. Lack of control (not counting for gameplay that modifies this control for better to worse) is a cardinal fundamental rule of gameplay. It's a shame that the gameplay and core game loops along with the meta game isn't well baked. Passionate soap box for doing better @aktanearcade mode toggled to ON! I LOVE THAT DUDE!
I'm old. I've been playing shmups for a long time, I get the basic mechanics and get that it can take a bit to grasp the design of different games. I don't understand this game. If someone could show me how the mechanics and design make sense, I'd love to give it another try. I just don't get it, I don't get the strategy that I'm supposed to utilize to play this game. I subbed, you're one of the least annoying game content I've found on youtube in a while. Thanks for the video man.
yeah no worries - I tried to explain it in the video but it might not have landed - The whole strategy of this game relies in the resources and getting your ship powered up with perma upgrades - it really has very little to do with dodging. Once your ship is powered up, use the homing shot for most of the run, and especially use AUTO TARGETING on the ground enemies, they are completely broken ( this is DIFFERENT from the homing shot, another confusing design decision). Now here's the kicker, you can either a.) never use missiles and simply focus on shields ( the icons that drop down) - and you will never lose DPS and you'll be good to go, OR you can b.) do what I do in the video, fire a missile, immediatly hit the button labeled " transfer shields to weapon power " - and THEN grab the shield icon. that is the BEST case scenario for survival, and theres NO reason not to do it ( other than to PURPOSEFULLY tank the run for CURRENCY for FUTURE runs) does that help at all? If it doesnt I would say, flush the game honestly haha
Sine Mora got some attention back in the day as well, but almost no one talks about it now except to dunk on it. I think the same thing will happen here. This game honestly looks like what a Fortune 500 CEO thinks a shmup should be in 2024 in order to appeal to the 18-35 demographic, without any understanding of the most basic principles of shmup design obviously. And remember, Konami has their name on this. A company that used to be synonymous with arcade game design put their name on this. But this is far from rock bottom considering what's happened over the last 10 years with them, like Kojima leaving.
@@psymagearcade yeah we're definitely not at rock bottom, it's mid to low mid but it is bizarre exactly the way you state. Just kinda weird... All around... Thanks for watching I hope you got something outta this one
"Cygni is not well optimized", is the only objective critic I have heard so far, and only from Electric Underground. The rest is just subjective. It's been long since any shmup ever proposed true analog movement to match the modern stick design, mastering this type of movement is fun in itself and some of the games out there like Elite Dangerous and other space sims base all their gameplay around that (flying FAOff in Elite Dangerous being the most challenging thing in the entire game). Wobbly screens with stuff shooting outside the screen => same as RType on PCEngine. Shield to tank fast bullets depending on gathered resources => same idea as RType's module. The more you use missiles, the more stuff you kill to gather resources, you just need to choose when to proritize farming, and just doing the missions one or two times will be enough to max the bank. And playing on easy and completing the game and enjoy the scenery was fun. Just like starting Pulstar on diff level 1 and slowly work to 1CC diff level 4 was fun. It just seems that hardcore bullet hell shmupers are being played by marketing, really, as the media outlets loaded their clown reviews with nonsense they knew they would have an epidermic reaction from you guys. They killed your fun and made sure you would never play Cygni with an open mind, and now you're all rambling. So far Cygni has been modded to play tate, and in 3D VR with UEVR. I hope it's successful enough for modders to keep tweaking the game and make overhauls. Because I don't think there's a future for the genre when the only other relevant shmup released this summer made you sign a NDA just for playing it, I'll never spend any money on that.
@@_oBSOLEte_ I'm glad you enjoy the game and the movement, but there's a good way to do inertia and a way that doesn't feel good to me. I like inertia based games like Galak Z, Luftrausers, JetLancer. The way the movement feels in Cygni is just sloshy. It was not fun for me to master. There have been many shmups with analog movement btw, this is not exactly innovative and I don't think it's well executed here. The patterns and attacks don't do anything that regular movement can't dodge, and there is nothing precise or specific to analog movement in the level design to make that an enjoyable experience. If that was the goal, I don't think it succeeded. Regarding wobble, Rtype has no wobble. Rtype has no horizontal scrolling when you move left to right. As far as stuff moving and shooting outside the screen from shmups that were made in the 80s, weve mode on past that to much more fair gameplay. I like your point on the missiles, that's interesting 🤔 but ultimately I still think it's clunky and not well explained or fun. I want to kill things, I don't want to hold back. Marketing aside, my opinion on the game is that it's pretty boring compared to the shmups that have come out the last few years, and reading this, it is apparent that it takes inspiration from games that is actually pretty old school design. Mark made this point as well. It's really odd because the innovations don't work for me, but the design itself is very old school shooting gallery (like shmups in the 80s) which I find boring. Just to be clear I don't like R Type, and haven't dug into Pulstar. I'm not big on memorizer games.
@@AKTANEARCADE I like memorizer games, they're part puzzle, part rythm games, but I dont think Cygni is one of those either. RType on PCEngine has vertical wobble on all levels because the console had less vertical resolution than the arcade version so when you fly on the bottom of the screen you dont see the upper part of the level. R-Type is a classic, many discovered the genre with it and it's still cited for the innovations it brought. At least we should all agree it's not an euroshmup. I dont know what happened during development but there's vestigial Oculus dlls in the game file. Cygni has a dynamic camera, some sections are a bit zoomed in so you'll have that wobble effect you describe when going around. Other parts, like boss from level 2 for example are zoomed out and you'll have blue lines on the HUD that show the delimitations of the play area. If you launch the game with the UEVR mod, you can zoom the camera way out and see those lines all the time. Practically, in VR, the game has no aspect ratio but the whole field of view. Launching the game like that you can see the enemies spawning well ahead and disappearing very late, and the whole geometry of the level seems to be loaded and several screens wide => Seems like bad optimization. That being said, you could mod it to play on the aspect ratio you want, Unreal Engine is a strength there and future shmups who want to go the full 3d route will likely have to do with it anyway.
@@_oBSOLEte_ yeah that's interesting! 🤔 Rtype is not a euro shmup. But it also doesn't have wobble. It has scrolling Adjacent to the way the game moves. That's the same as DoDonPachi for example. So if a game is horizontal, it's allowed to scroll up and down. That's the same as if a game is vertical, it can scroll left or right. If you stay on the left side of a Raiden level, you won't see the right. Thats okay. That's adjacent to the scroll. It's the other direction (WITH the scrolling) that both looks and feels weird that you really don't want to do!
You articulated everything I felt while playing this very well. The inertia on movement, the lame stage design and bullet vomit patterns, the annoyingly manual shield mechanic, useless twin-stick controls and useless differentiation between air and ground shots... Hated everything about it to be honest, even the graphics look overwrought and tasteless to me, like a tech-demo designed to showcase the power of a new console. At least I didn't spend money on it, just time and 20GBs of hard drive space.
I really tried to like it too. I don't like to shit on devs when they take a stab at the genre. Maybe it's all the talk of "evolving the genre" that makes me heated when reviewing it lol
@@SegFaultMatt the apple is in space, fuck the tree... but why didn't they at least give some feedback, my thinking is they couldn't. Seems anyone who cares about the rich history of Konami shmups is either not in the company or did not care about this project...
Awesome review or overlook of the game, glad I saw it and found the channel. I'm a shmup novice, want to get into more shmups, been having a great time with gunvein in particular, and wishlisted all the other games in the pinned comment that I didn't already know about. Still, even with my novice experience, I think the genre really speaks for itself in terms of it's strengths and qualities. I think I can tell this kind of game isn't really the evolution the critics are claiming. I don't like wonky ship control, I don't like meta upgrades, and it's a shame. I really have been wanting a game where you can move with keys and shoot with mouse aiming like you can with the ground weapon, that's really sick, but man they do not do anything to really prove to me this is a fun and well thought out game. Hope to see more fun and interesting shmups get made, and hope to see more cool people talk about em!
@@AKTANEARCADE love that game, one of my favorites! I meant more in a vertical or a linear stage based sense, but I do agree that that games plays great!
@@KarnovJr gotta be careful with that mentality. Zero Ranger is Finnish, Astral Gunners is American, Schildmaid MX is Netherlands and Germany, and so on! Some of the best shmups are being made in the west ;)
This game is still really confusing to me (I haven't put in a lot of time at all) - & think I really want to like it! I just don't :'( I think I've been hitting my head against a lot of the "this is different without realizing *why*" criticisms you have. They definitely "rejected the arcade rulebook", that much is clear. But your point about needing to understand the rules / norms in order to subvert them is very well taken! Notably - all of my non-shmup enjoying friends who've played this seem to bounce off for many of the same reasons they don't like more thoughtfully designed games, which is interesting. So I don't really know who this game *is for* in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully Konami greenlights more shmups in the future, but it kind of sucks "to support" something bc a giant company made up of business scumbags loosely imply it could be a step towards licensing out their beloved IPs to devs who care. That feels equally shitty to the Cygni devs as it does to Gradius / Parodius fans.
so well said - thanks for this perspective - I think games can be both but certainly shmup devs dont feel like we have to cater to casuals so we kind of dont... we try but we dont end up doing it well because we dont want people to "not interact" with most of the game because we spend so much time designing a good game. Sort of like chess where the pawns fire lasers is fun, but if you're designing chess, you're probably not gonna design that easy laser pawn mode, even tho casuals might love it and eventually get into chess.. without lasers... eventually... haha. its tough for sure. Drainus and Devil Blade Reboot both do a great job of this btw - Drainus in particular I think is a good pick for non-shmup-friendos
Could have solved that resource = upgrade debacle if they just also made resources metals and tied metals to rank, with higher rank = more curency for upgrades. Basic ass stuff. Personally the kicker about this game is that it looks like a poor man's HouseMark game. Has more a wiff of "we're just competent with UE" then any real technical wizardry.
@@explodingrabbit51 yeah I can't comment as a person who primarily has developed games in Pico and Love2D hahahaha... But I do think the boss intros and the general spectacle is nice. The opening city is very pretty, simple but pretty nice looking.
This is why I 1cc shmups, sometimes to my own detriment, to help me cook ;) You may (not) want to check Burst Fighter. Similar claims, similarly suck, different problems.
I find crazy that some of the "revolutionary features" of the game are stuff that have always seen as bad gameplay on ANY genre, and even worse on shmups and none of them are really "new" I really disliked the game a lot. The graphics are awesome and that's it. It reminds me of when I got project-x for the Amiga decades ago. You have the initial "wow" for the graphics wearing down very quickly with the bad gameplay. I like when you say we are a community that values game design. I usually say we are guys who play stuff that looks like Noiz2sa. We of course love great graphics, but we usually will play anything that's good.
@@rafaellima83 true!!! I think that's important context for the viewer because obviously I didn't spend time discussing the orchestra or the audio width or the in depth technical graphics of the unreal engine... Good point 😎😝
11:24 the only shmup(some doesnt even consider this as a shmup) series I know that managed to be well made and fun is from the Suguri series. I cant believe that an archaic 2005 low budget indie game felt more revolutionary than something like Cygni. . . . . . . . Check out either Jaimers or Chris playthrough to see how good Suguri and Sora is. . Sorry for bombarding your video with my comments. I am just too engaged with stating my thoughts on this video.
Fun how many comments mention the graphics are the one good thing. It looks very generic and bland to me at best. A question of style more than graphics perhaps.
@@bloyamind it isn't winning any awards for new ideas here for sure but I think it's executed pretty well yeah... Definitely agree it's a style vs graphics question. I think like example, the explosions look objectively very nice and volumetric.
I would embrace, for THIS game, all the other bullshit... but not only is the movement bricked in the way you describe, I've also been told that the diagonal movement is significantly faster than the lateral movement.. which I HATE! It's so easy to just normalize the movement speed.
sooo I am a defender of diagonal faster movement, in fact all my games so far have diagonal faster movement. I think depends on the type of game, in this case, I wouldnt mind it... a popular game that does this for example is Battle Garegga.... in this game I would keep the diagonal faster movement, but the acceleration is a nightmare.
@@AKTANEARCADE I've played all your games and I never realized the diagonals were faster 0.o I normally can tell in games that just add the x and y speeds together without any normalization, making the diagonals literally twice as fast. Is that what you're doing? Or just making them slightly faster purposefully?
How can developers innovate in a genre that they themselves seem to barely understand or interact with? You need to first understand the rulebook very well to then be able to successfully rewrite it.
Fun now or fun later?? Loool. Doesn't Konami have experience in the shmup genre? Why did they choose this game out of all the indie titles to fund. A single screenshot of this game should've been a huge red flag for anything shmup
because Konami is only a shell company at this point, they must be looking at profit dollars, this clearly aint for the love of the game, and certainly not the games they used to make... They obviously didnt advise the studio in any way - which I feel bad for the studio to some extent... but yeah the K word meant nothing to me... its sad that Journalists see this as a good thing for Konami, because I cant even get close to that type of conclusion given their history in the genre...
@@tournaline3448 yeah which ... I don't need them to be amazing gamers necessarily, I mean I'm actually not that good at games, but I would like it if they paid attention and actually commented on the design! And kept their absolutely pointless comparisons off the page. Just be honest instead of sensationalizing a review as a poser.
What a waste of an opportunity to bring some modern aesthetic spectacle to this otherwise humble genre. Could have had the pick ups be for weapons and spend them on health as opposed to the other way round.
@@Some-Ryan that would be one way to handle it! But then they can't force you to use their "move shields to weapons" mechanic... I guess it's just that these mechanics aren't thought through. It also doesn't FEEL good to move back and forth between the two, it doesn't feel dynamic, it just feels like a chore, there's so many ways games handle resource defense, but this just feels sloshy...like especially in the heat of battle, the pace of the game isn't like X Wing where you go for a dog fight and then have some time to reorganize your shields for the next pass, so the same system doesn't work here. It's not like the game pauses or slows down while you sort out your ship...theres so many solutions that a typical, semi experienced indie game designer could have come up with.
@@Some-Ryan actually no that works because jazz rejects normy standards in the same way shmups do! So to evolve upon that is mighty difficult, unless you go the other way and turn jazz back into pop... Which is what Cygni effectively attempts but without the jazz... So I guess it turns into what... Avante Garde Noise?
Yeah, I'm not saying it would fix the whole mess, but it seems like an obvious way to keep the 'fun' of using the secondary weapon. Then use the weapons to convert on shields instead. Keep it real 😎
@@shmuproom1293 oh for sure - I guess I expected that from them... I didnt expect it from Eurogamer necessarily, or Will Freeman in particular... that was mega disappointing to me.
Yeah defo get that bro,these big studios are never gonna make a good shmup,especially when they abandon the arcade fundamentals which made the genre so great.,enjoyed the video btw💪
@@ronniepatterson2827 who's mark? Did you watch the video? These are my own experiences with this game. I am good, I completed the game before my review and it has nothing to do with skill... I can't have fun with this because it's badly designed and not very fun. Its quite boring, there's not a lot to do. I'm playing astral gunners right now because there's like 6 characters with differing abilities, lots of cool variance in the stages, better music, and a lot better gameplay, very precise movement. And lots of creativity, you can like save characters in the levels and they'll return the favor in the next level. There's extra level unlocks based on your score, and there's leaderboards... this game doesn't even have leaderboards, so not sure why score even exists in Cygni...And it is an underpowered slog through the same waves of enemies for roughly 90 minutes. I'm good lol nothing to do with skill. If you have seen the clears on my channel, I would say I have considerable skill compared to most.
@@AKTANEARCADE you absolutely did. i haven't played the game, but i got the exact vibe you're describing from it from the first moment i saw videos of it.
![[4K] RAINCHASER DEMO (STEAM) - FIRST PLAY - A FUTURE LEGENDARY SHMUP!?](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1qaKYRPUL-k/mqdefault.jpg)
![[4K] RAINCHASER DEMO (STEAM) - FIRST PLAY - A FUTURE LEGENDARY SHMUP!?](/img/tr.png)
PLAY THESE GAMES :
store.steampowered.com/app/1975360/DRAINUS/ - If only this had the KONAMI name...
store.steampowered.com/app/1175190/Natsuki_Chronicles/ - guns - we want lots of guns
store.steampowered.com/app/2882440/DEVIL_BLADE_REBOOT/ - Beautiful and Simple
store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/ - Innovative Training and Random Modes
store.steampowered.com/app/893900/Astral_Gunners/ - Varied character designs and meaningful stage design with choices
store.steampowered.com/app/313400/REVOLVER360_REACTOR/ - Pure 3D Innovation designed to perfection
store.steampowered.com/app/1489300/Operation_STEEL/ True Rogue Lite Shmup
store.steampowered.com/app/1232100/BroodStar/ Casual Focused Rogue Lite Shmup
store.steampowered.com/app/2154760/Schildmaid_MX/ an Innovation on Old School Mechanics
store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ approachable twinstick goodness
... and many more ....
good reviews:
steamcommunity.com/id/xaerock/recommended/1248080/
steamcommunity.com/id/metawaddledoo/recommended/1248080/
www.psu.com/reviews/cygni-all-guns-blazing-review-ps5/
Star Of Providence too!
@@2011supergamer yes, legendary game, but definitely a little less shmup and a little more run n gun haha. great game though! could also add Zero Ranger but I'm trying to stick to some of the games that do similar things I guess? good point nevertheless
DUDE! Great list. Wish I would have had this 6 months ago when I got into shmups. I have played these and many many more.....
@@tyelwell9 There's so many more too! Yeah I just threw a few up here so hopefully folks can get an idea of some excellent design.
obligatory Bullet Hell Monday Recommendation.
Great for beginners. ‘Nuff said.
I feel like shmups have so many traps for non-shmup devs who have an idea of what makes a good game in other genres, but not in this one.
You don't want jerky movement and are supposed to be flying a spaceship, so we'll add inertia to make it feel more like you are piloting how a spacecraft should.
We want added replay value, so we'll add in progression systems that see you getting stronger and stronger as you play more.
One hit deaths are frustrating for players, so we'll add in hull or shields. But now players can brute force encounters, so we'll add in "chip damage" that you are meant to take.
A shot type that covers the whole screen will make you too overpowered, and we want the player to think tactically.
Small enemies shouldn't die instantly, they should be able to take enough hits to enter the screen long enough to shoot something.
We'll have the player start with lower power level, so that they feel rewarded for getting upgraded as they play.
These can work with the right implementation. But the ones falling for these traps aren't playing other shmups to see why these are not present, or they are not looking at shmups that do these well to see why it works there.
@@PAN-- I agree I think a good example is Drainus which doesn't fall into these traps in the worst way, it hides all this stuff under relatively amazing game design. You get stronger, there is a shop, you take many hits, but the game then throws more at you. It's still casually marketed but it doesn't lose sight of what a shmup should be. It can be broken easily but it never feels like that's unintentional, more like a reward for breaking it.
@@AKTANEARCADE Drainus is a great example of implementing them right. As I was typing my comment, I'm like "Oh I'm just talking about Drainus" haha.
@@PAN-- definitely! me too, I now feel a tinge of regret that I didnt just directly compare this game to Drainus but I kind of just wanted to talk about what it was without trying to dilute with our "hardcore shmup koolaid we all drink"
Haha, when I saw that "Rulebook" article I knew there was a storm coming. Thank you for your thoughts Aktane.
I wanted to add some Notes:
1. Namedropping old Shmups doesn't have to be bad games journalism. The hard pill is that a lot of really good recent Shmups are just completely unknown outside of the Shmup circles. Drawing more apt comparisons but ones that mean nothing to your audience is a sure way to keep Shmups obscure and insular. "Ikaruga" and "Radiant Silvergun" will resonate with people and might bring them in. So I would leave reviewers off the hook on that. The path to your favorite videogames becoming mainstream is paved with a lot of "Videogames came a long way since Pac Man". Now whether this is the game to light the Ikaruga Bat Signal on is a whole different question, of course.
2. Two designers on a title like this is fine. It is not a sign of game design being a low priority. I've seen much bigger games with smaller design teams. Game Design is not one of those jobs on a project where having more people will necessarily produce a better result.
Your points are well taken. I would suggest adding some recommendations at the end of the video in case there are some newcomers finding the video and looking for which shmups to play instead. You know, like "If you like X about Cygni, try this other game that does it better". Cheers!
thank you for these thoughts and clarifications, as always!! Hopefully the pinned comment and descriptions suffice as far as which games to play... I put Drainus at the top of that list as I think if you like Cygni but want something better, Drainus might be the ticket... I should have probably anchord that point in the video - but honestly... I struggled with folks that liked Cygni, thinking maybe that they appreciate the skin deep slosh and grind that I cannot offer in my recommendations....
On #1 - thats tough for me, I feel like its reviewers jobs to educate as well as to relate. Its not JUST relate... counter to your argument is that when will we finally mention a game from the last 20 years? These games ARE out, they do exist, Drainus exists on modern platforms... Eurogamer even reviewed Drainus... and of course all they could say was that " it evokes Treasure " ... what's insular is keeping shmups in the dark ages when you have the opportunity to expand your readers minds by mentioning both... sure mention RSG, Ikaruga, ... why not mention Drainus too?
on #2 - I agree more is not better, and maybe this was speculation - probably better left off of the video... maybe those two really actually did spend most of their time on game design, im not sure... but do you think that a dedicated game designer role would be worthwhile? I'm curious on this....
@@AKTANEARCADE Yeah gotta admit. Drainus is a pretty good game to compare this too. And if they did it would probably highlight the weaknesses. Missed opportunity.
RE more designers - sure a dedicated designer would be great! But this a luxury only the really big studios can afford. On the other hand, some highly celebrated Shmups have been accomplished with just one designer who also needed to pull double-duty as a artist or a coder. It is a common setup.
@@LazyDevs True true - agreed and makes sense, totally valid point. Probably better left off the table. thank you!
I love how the "thoughtful rejection" article abandons the concept of rejections or rulebooks once you get past the title and proceeds to explain how Cygni's big triumph is that people who don't like shmups will find easy mode an amusing way to spend a couple of hours before moving on to the next shiny thing. I could have read this article and it would have killed all my interest in the game from the outset.
@@Kira-ji2ft ah good point so ... "A thoughtless rejection..."
@@AKTANEARCADE Oh, that's good.
the thing about evolution is it's not always good. sometimes it's a dead end.
Sometimes there's a reason why the design conventions of a genre exist, and if you don't play or understand the genre then you might not know why?.... Hmmm, just a thought.
this one's not quite a dead end, there are some good ideas they're just badly made... I think the twin stick mouse style ground shooting with air bullet hell would actually be mad fun with good movement and sharp design. but I hear you!
that first review saying: "This is what a blockbuster shooter should look like" gives me a migraine. I tried the game recently because it was free on epic, and I honestly think the visual clarity is awful" Too much noise, too little contrast where it's needed. But hey, they use Unreal, so the graphics must be good, right?
ooof thank you for commenting - yeah honestly if everyone said " this is deeply flawed in almost every way but there is fun to be had here and there " - I would be like " cool yep " ... thats the tagline to me lol
Cygni is a car driving towards a cliff and claiming it's "making progress"
I liken it to sculpting with dynamite vs a chisel and going " look we revolutionized sculpture with this cool explosion "
someone used another car analogy like “getting a shiny sports car with everything possible and then driving it down the road in Desert Bus where you can’t fall asleep or do anything else other than drive forward”
Cygni and Sine Mora. Evolutionary masterpieces saving the shmup genre.
You were a lot nicer to the game than i would've been. I think it's total shyt, in literally every way but graphics.
haha. I tried to be fair. im not a full shmup hardcore...
This was "Style Over Substance: The Shmup", but the style isnt even good.
@@kaishmuper some of the boss fights are kinda cool 😎 haha
This is an amazing gamedesign centric breakdown, Aktane. Well done. The EG review was written by Will Freeman who does know his shmups extensively well (and tbh his review reads more 3-star than the 4-stars that the game gets), which makes me realize (perhaps once more) that in the buyer's guide culture of on-release video game reviews there hardly is place for a more granular look at the design of a game.
I have a hunch that the people who will like Cygni (mostly not enthusiasts of the genre), will enjoy the explosions and the pretty graphics and the fact that they can tank many a hit (except for maybe in the boss fights) for a breezy playthrough, but even to them, subconsciously, for many a reason you highlight here, it will not have staying power and they'll forget most of it over time.
That is exactly why I highlighted Will's comments because I expect more out of someone who, folks told me, "knew their shmups". After reading his review, it does not read like Will knows their shmups at all... implying that "no shmups in the history" of the genre have encouraged tanking hits, of which there are many - nor backing up claims for example that it is " intently precise bullet-dodging. " ... The review seems to even contradict itself at the end in some effort for maybe "the real Will" to come out? Almost as if the game HAD TO MAKE a positive impression but Will did not examine why, other than the graphics. Will wants me to believe that this game wants me to take my time and absorb its world, but there is no world to absorb, even mentions the scoring system is not great. I am left with a feeling that Will does not know why the Arcade Shmups Rulebook exists, and what makes it meaningful... and therefore the rejection is not well explained as to why this is a good thing.... I would not trust Will's perspective on a shmup given this review of Cygni, which to me is an Anathema to the culture, and has done damage to his platform's reputation as a proponent of the benefits of arcade design.
To be more specific - Drainus has the same exact system - you tank hits which decreases your power, and use a special bar to refill your power, and get icons to fill the special bar. Its what breaks that game but also makes that game really fun for casuals, so its a battle of attrition. Did Will even play Drainus?
@@AKTANEARCADE Oh I agree with you. I don’t quite know what to make of this review of his. Like you say, at times it seems to contradict itself and I’m almost inclined to think there was some editorial meddling going on. His articles in Retro Gamer about Toaplan, DDP, Raiden, Shikigami no Shiro, etc. were very good.
Yeah, there’s also this game Schildmaid MX were the design goal was to make an STG where taking hits is advantageous lol. Crucially, taking hits there is not “whatever”, but something you want to actively pursue and you’re seeking out enemy bullets with extreme prejudice.
@@michielkroder4031 honestly true and I hope that eurogamer sees this and realizes that this is how it's come across... to me... anyways...
NEVER HEARD OF THAT GAME !!! SCHILD WHAT!? (im joking to those reading this, ive cleared schildmaid with all 3 ships) hahaha .... but to be fair ... thats not TANKING hits, that is absorbing a bullet to then take a wonderful beautiful, sensual, bath in the golden hue of scoring bliss... Tanking hits in schildmaid still incurs the wrath of the shmup gods and thee shall be smited... by losing a ship... my poor wivern... and losing some power too ... how dare you MK...
@@AKTANEARCADE Hahaha, much
@@michielkroder4031does Schildmaid got a demo?
Maybe it’s because I don’t have much of a history with shmups but this game has been a blast. Sticking with me much more than shmups normally do and has actually gotten me in to the genre. Almost feels like a housemarque game tbh
That's great to hear! Maybe you'll like true shmups or maybe you wont, its hard to tell, a lot of shmups are a lot less sloppy and reward precision in addition to resource management. I would be really curious what you feel of a game like Drainus or Devil Blade Reboot.
I really like HouseMarque games for the most part and I dont think this meets that mark at all personally, it's just not well designed as a HM game would be, and doesnt have the depth or the curiosity that those games allow for. There's really nothing here to be curious about or to explore, at least there wasnt for me.
thanks for chiming in!
Since getting Cygni I’ve played Ketsui, Sol Cresta, Battle Garegga, Radiant silver gun. They’re all great but I think I like Sol Creata and Radiant the most because of how many weapons and mechanics they give their ships. I’m coming from playing a lot of character action games so I do like input heavy games with lots of options on the fly.
Will def give Dranius a shot too thanks for the rec
Don’t get me wrong you have great criticism here and there’s a lot of sloppiness surrounding the game which is a shame. I wish they took more time with it. But still having more than enough fun to clear all difficulties and go for arcade mode.
Idk really I just love how the ship feels. Semi twin stick aiming, weapon swapping, juggling ground shots and air enemies, the speed of it. Lots of cool stuff, just sad to hear it doesn’t hit the mark for a lot of the genre vets.
Also even I can tell the difference in precision of ship control in something let Ketsui vs Cygni. I actually 1cc cleared deathtiny mode (I know that’s not impressive lol) and I love how that feels yet I still like how the ship in Cygni feels too.
Anyways thanks for the video, you really know your stuff and thanks for the shmup content you do, I always enjoy seeing you on Electric underground, will give you a sub
@@jerm5466 deathtiny 1cc is still really fun! and you're spot on, if you like character action games you GOTTA check out Astral Gunners... each character abilities are SO different, here's an example
Green Character has a drone that follows you around, you can then position it wherever you want and leave it there, THEN you can actually teleport to the drone and swap places with it ... then when you do a super a big laser field appears between you and your drone and you can still move it around! crushing everything and deleting bullets in its path. you can also kick the drone forward like a yoyo and that does damage and deletes bullets. This is just one character.
Red Character has a charge shot, and also has a little fire bubble that appears around it, but if you hold the charge and hit the bubble you will get an even bigger bubble...
Purple Character has a sword... Yellow a big old shield and a way to reflect bullets... etc. etc.
I will also absolutely recommend Zero Ranger. That is THE game for me. It has 3 weapons you pick yourself, and then a transformation.. which I wont spoil I guess. and all of it is really kinetic and dynamic - the sword can slow down and reflect bullets, the charge shot can eat bullets, certain shots can shoot background enemies.
These are games where the gameplay design takes priority of course, and all the different mechanics and things you can do!
@@jerm5466im on the same spot as you. I really like this game. I also like devil engine, raiden, cave games and all that stuff.
I just went in with another mindset. I think this game is not trying to replicate does staples of shmups, its cleary doing is own thing.
Yeah, there are things that could be better, but hey, maybe they will learn and take the feedback for a better game later.
The movement, the curving of shots, the music is all an experience.
Glad you are enjoying it too!
Also yes you can’t attack air and ground at the same time, but following up ground attack with raylight removes the charge time which is a fun mechanic for weapon switching and honestly feels great
Also recommend turning move speed all the way down in the menu. It’s still not perfect but made dodging a lot easier for me
This is a great video though and I hope the devs take some of it in to account when updating it. Specifically regarding the movement, they need to give the player the option to turn the acceleration off.
Also pickups on shields isn’t just for currency - it’s for score too. I think the tutorial mentions this, not sure. But whether or not that’s good design is another question
I turned acceleration to "1" for my play through, just FYI, it was better but not good enough! So you can attack air with missiles and ground with the laser sometimes, but ultimately it just doesnt feel like they give you enough tools to enjoy that. I never got the Raylight btw because I did not want to play the game again to get that weapon, it was too expensive, and instead I opted to use my missiles to complete the game, and therefore I never got that tool... Was that intended? I dont know but I'm NOT gonna sit here and NOT use my Missiles which are the only thing in the game that allows you to do the Air/Ground at the same time, and also I cant IMAGINE fighting those massive whales that take aaages to die without the DPS of the missiles... so yeah Raylight was never gonna be a thing for me because I couldnt stand not to use my resources :(
Hi Aktane, I enjoyed it a lot thanks! You explain all the problems simply and clearly + it's also a very good complement to Mark's video because you approach the subject differently.
I hope you do more often "reviews" like this.
thanks Vinu, that means a lot to me :) maybe I will have to do a few more some time ... haha yes Mark and I are quite different in our approach, he's a much better writer, I'm more of a ... "in caveman terms here's what is going on " :P
@@AKTANEARCADE haha I love the caveman style of review😂, straight to the point👍
@@AKTANEARCADE Ha haaaah. I mentioned the shmup troll Mark, & you acted like you were clueless as to who Mark is, yet now you seem to know everything about him lol. Nice try. Now go play a good "euroshmup" lol, & see why euroshmuping dominates sales charts, while nobody enjoys bullethell "dodgemups". We shoot, yall dodge. We win, yall lose 👀🤣🤣😎👍
I wanted to post again to clarify a few things and help boost the video in the algorithm.
I think the game is somewhat middling and I agree with a lot of the points you make here. I do like it in an odd way, despite these issues and I would like to see the develoeprs take another stab at it.
Cygni isn't the worst shmup I've ever played, and it's far from the best, but it does have a certain charm that I can't quite ignore. Maybe I'm just too soft as a critic, but I had fun with it for a few hours and it inspired me to reinstall a few games that I had given up on, like DOJ and Under Defeat.
I hope my initial comment didn't come off as sarcastic or anything. I've always liked the work you do in the community and I like the chance to talk about this somewhat obscure genre.
Cheers.
@@thefractalcactus nah! I think it's worth having the discussion, always down to get new perspectives, and honestly if the game is fun, it's fun! If it has charm, then it has charm. If it inspires you to load up other shmups then it has rekindled the fire and done it's job!
I think shmups are one of the trickiest genres to really get “right,” it’s one of the oldest if not the oldest genre of video games next to sports games. However, it’s also one of the most expansive genres because of it, allowing even single developers to create some of the most diverse things out there just as much as the so called masters of the genre like Treasure or CAVE, who also had famously underpowered arcade boards for their time and focused entirely on how to make the gameplay shine from their competitors. Cygni feels like it wanted to be free of any restraints that held shmups back, but in turn this makes it feel really… sterile. Make it longer and longer, because we can now. Make it even higher quality and detailed, because we can now, clarity and contrast be damned. Make the movement fast now, make the expanding upgrade system because we can, etc. In chasing the perfect game to satisfy everyone (and it mostly worked for reviewers), it becomes a mess that doesn’t really do anything unique except presentation.
mmmm yeah I agree with you completely... hmmmmmmm I wish it was this intentional though, but I actually think you're probably even giving more credit here than I would care to give.... I feel like many of the things you mentioned, like length, movement, upgrade systems, have all been done so well in the indie space, and even in the shmup indie space!... some to great effect... really it feels like the developers weren't even expanding intentionally, but rather just trying to make something that they thought was representative of euroshmups they played in their past, and I think honestly they have probably met that criteria... its just that those games had some pretty big issues that they also took along with them, and the stuff they added compounds those issues as well... unfortunately the one thing they added which shmups could use (graphics) is something that is all it took for most people to overlook everything else. Either game design wasnt their goal, or they are just not great game designers (maybe they'll learn from this and get better though!), because that is not something that appears to be the focus. Putting aside graphics, even the style is very jarring, that open cutscene is all playful and supposed to be upbeat but then the rest of the game is dry as a bone... just really bizarre choices that felt lacking a cohesive vision other than " this looks cool doesnt it "
@@AKTANEARCADEWord, I didn’t mean to come off as dismissive of indies which also expand on modern hardware because games like Gunvein, Eschatos and Rolling Gunner come to mind that almost completely get rid of any arcade system limitations but still understand the basics of stage designs and have new gimmicks to master. Cygni just feels like they were so afraid of alienating people that it doesn’t really appeal to existing shmup archetypes. My favorite in the genre is Hellsinker, ironically because that game also defies every convention in a way that rewards every single step you take in trying to learn its huge amount of unique systems.
What's especially hurtful for me about this game is that the last stg I played is NeverAwake, which is very much also unconventional for its genre & intentionaly designed to attract newcommers. But despite lacking an arcade mode (yet), its game design never felt insulting to veteran players, unlike this one...
shit NeverAwake is a wake up call to me, I love that game and I want to play more of it, along with Illvelo Swamp... its in my twinstick stack... need to get to those! good look... and you're spot on btw. 100% agree and added it to the list above
Thats because NeverAwake is not an STG per se but a Twin Stick Shooter, and a great game, great OST too
As someone who has also been playing Shmups regularly for the last three or so years, I think the game is... fine. It's a pastiche, and it accomplished what it set out to do. Make an approachable Shmup for people on the fringes of the genre.
I'm not of the mindset that Japanese Arcade Shmup design is some holy script that needs to be adhered to with religious devotion. Quite the contrary. Many Japanese Arcade Shmups are well outside the skill set of the average player.
Even people who spend time learning or would like to learn may be turned off by how strict and unrelenting many of the foundational titles within the genre are. Hell, as someone who has studied game design, I think most Arcade games are outright bad. Their origins as vehicles for leeching money off of people are all too obvious, and many would have been better as home releases.
I wouldn't want every game to be like Cygni, and it has many problems, but as a stand-alone title, it's fine. Certainly not deserving of all the vitriol it's receiving. The game is living rent-free in the communities head.
oh I agree with a lot of what you've said, I constantly rant about arcade design and how bad or harsh it can be, which is why i was so surprised that this somehow went backwards even further. Those same folks who would be turned off by that shmup design COULD have had a good game to play that was nice and welcoming, but instead they got something that they have to wrestle with constantly, that is overly confusing and also overly simple at the same time. Obviously considering the video I made - you know my view on what I think the game deserves and why I think it deserves the feedback.
Do you think the movement is good? Do you agree that saving resources to upgrade is a good choice? So you like the grind? Do you then also agree that the level design is interesting? Do you think there's enough to do? Do you like the weapons? Especially the ground laser, does that feel good to you in those moments?
If you think all that stuff is fine, then of course, the game is fine in your eyes. I think a lot of that stuff is pretty broken which is why I made the video.
@AKTANEARCADE I meant "fine" as more of a pejorative. It's serviceable considering what it's attempting. The level design is okay. There are some fun moments, like the canals in level 3 and the forced tate area in stage 6. My biggest issue with the level design is all of the downtime. Too many sections where you're just auto firing at hordes of enemies. It's fun the first time around, but they could have made it more interesting / had more enemy variety. The movement doesn't bother me too much tbh. Playing on analog, it feels fine with how they've designed the game, though the same movement system wouldn't work in any other title. It could be patched / improved a little.
As far as grinding for upgrades, I don't mind grinding for stuff. I play lots of character action games, and they all, for better or worse, feature much more gratuitous upgrade systems. My issue is that it takes such little time to unlock everything, that making the player do it at all is sort of pointless.
They could have had extra ships or different shot types (flame thrower, missles, etc.) to have more things to work toward while also bolstering build diversity. I think I had every upgrade in under an hour.
For a developers first game in a difficult genre to pin down, I think they made an honest effort and if they ever do a sequel, they might be able to make something really cool, if different from the standards set by the pillars of the genre.
Also, wanted to point out that, while executed poorly, I really like the idea of diverting power to your shields in order to stay alive. Wish they had workshopped that more than any other feature of the game because that's its most interesting design element.
@@thefractalcactus I play a lot of character action games too but I've never once grinded in one, and especially didn't need it to dispatch any bosses or enemies. I'm talking about Devil May Cry Series, Bayonetta, God of War, etc. So while you may have grinded there, I think the grind is additive, not necessary, you certainly don't start off underpowered to the point of having to replay stages to play the next stage. Never ever done that in any of those games.... I'm struggling to find the comparison to cygni, can you elaborate?
@@AKTANEARCADEDevil May Cry absolutely has grinding. Especially the process for upgrading your styles in DMC3. It takes nearly and entire playthrough to get a Style (say Royal Guard) from base to max level. You probably won't have all of your styles upgraded until you start Dante Must Die mode. Each style had specific abilities that are locked to their respective levels, like Sword Master's Dance Macabre being tied to Level 4.
I wouldn't argue these skills are necessary for completing the game, but tying tools to arbitrary upgrade systems is bad. I'm agreeing with you.
The point that I was trying to make is that there's so little to upgrade that I'm not sure why they included it at all. I had every upgrade after about 45 minutes of play. I fele like if they want an upgrade system, they should go all in or forgo it entirely. I wouldn't have minded some other unlocks like ship colors or visual filters. I think that would have been fine.
@@thefractalcactus interesting 🤔 yeah I didn't have all my styles maxed in DMC3 cuz it didn't really matter, I had the moves I wanted, as far as Cygni... I kept using missiles so I completed the entire game with A couple missile upgrades and the homing and double dps ground upgrade. Didn't have any pods, didn't have the ray thing. And that took me about 2.5 hours roughly with retries (which don't give you any currency) . I'm not sure how you got everything in 45 minutes. Maybe you didn't use missiles? I wasn't gonna do that because I wanted to win 😔
The energy system would be so much better if you actually could dodge properly so you could manage the meter without getting constantly hit and having to move energy back and forth between shields and weapons. And some of the level sections and bosses seem to be artificially made more difficult by not awarding any energy power ups or having large enemies with too much health (Space Whales of Level 5) so you are stuck trying to clumsily dodge attacks just to survive until the popcorn enemies comes back on screen so you can fill your meter back up again.
I didn't understand the energy system at all, it never made sense to the design of the level. I don't mind if it's not obvious and need to learn the level and the mechanics to move forward, but I don't think that's even a thing. I might be wrong, but it almost feels like they just added enemies randomly with no thought to the weaponry, ship movement or any intent of balance with the energy system. This game just made me feel old and stupid.
I think that in regards to the community of shmup fans who frequent the shmup forum, the shmup wiki, the various shmup discords, etc.. We knew this game wasn't gonna be "it". The game never needed to be an evolution or anything. What it needed to be was a stepping stone for the casual gamer to find and use to guide them on the path to the plethora of actually good shmups that are, to be frank, hidden beneath the surface of the topology of media and modern gamer culture.
That is the benefit that this game can provide to the shmup community. I mean think about it, the damn SHMUP FEST that steam held didnt even have any shmups on the front page! People cant find gunvein or mushi just out in the wild anymore. The path inward to the shmup heaven of pcb boards, mame emulation, retro console shmups, the indie scene, etc, requires that there be a flashy mainstream big budget graphics thingy to catch someones eye. Then they play it, want more and through their curiosity and exploration, find the gold mine. This happens enough, then the cultural consciousness of the recognition of shmup quality will disseminate, resulting in more accurate journalism, more players, more games, more competitions, more high scores, etc..
This is how me and everyone I know in real life who likes shmups got into them. A lot of the community is full of players who experienced quality shmups on major consoles when they were kids. That isn't how its gonna happen anymore. Even you recognize this to a certain extent because you're doing the service of directly trailing cygni traffic into better shmups.
one can only hope
What do you use to draw on top of footage?
oh yeah I got some software for this, literally for this video ... uhhh let me see... I had never used it before, but it wasnt too bad to learn -
www.ipevo.com/software/annotator#download
I'm not a hardcore shmup player, but I enjoy playing them from time-to-time. I enjoyed playing Cygni, and there's a few points that I see a bit differently:
Cygni's movement intertia:
I've found this curve useful. Since Cygni uses a 16:9 screen ratio, you need speed to travel through the whole screen. During boss fights dodging is sometimes needed, and you would not want to go full speed there. I was using a keyboard, and this inertia was fine with me: I had to get used to it though.
Ground weapon:
I've also found this frustrating until I've learned locking on ground targets using the left shift.
Upgrades:
I hated the upgrade system. But to be fair: most shmups punish the usage of bombs in some ways, and I believe, the developers did think of homing missiles as bombs.
Cutscenes (don't know if you mentioned this):
The cutscenes where a waste of time. I've seen the devs talking about Cygni being more cinematic, and that they built a storyline around the character. Well: they did not. There simply is no storyline: not as if I cared about it, but apart of the character trailer animation all the other cut-scenes are either like detailed animatics, or just a few planes flying around using the in-game engine.
Thank you!! I'm actually not sure if we disagree on anything :) - you tell me:
Movement : I see.! but... If you had access to a slow key like most shmups, you could go fast across the screen and then you hit the slow speed when you want to dodge boss fights. This has been like this since like the early 90s and this feedback was given to the developers which they wilfully ignored. Then you do not need acceleration, and you have full control. That is the point that a person who is not a shmup player might not realize. There was ALREADY a better way, and this was a step backwards in the wrong direction, losing precision... and I guess gaining one button back?
Ground Weapon: GOOD POINT, I wanted to use manual targeting because I wanted the most engaging experience possible, so it seems maybe manual targeting is just broken then? Auto would have been better? Usually in game design, manual is harder to use but has benefits and is overall better...
Upgrades: Punish is a strong word and could mean different things... because while most shmups punish the use of bombs in the run but ONLY for high scoring NOT for survival, they do NOT punish you in the long term for using a bomb for perma upgrades - which is, in this case the key to survival and scoring for Cygni.
Cutscenes : Not even worth mentioning so I didnt lol. There is no storyline, and no depth to the world, its completely surface level, but its not the point I guess so its pretty much neither here nor there... I like the "in engine level intros" tho, the couple levels that have them. Some cutscenes have high fidelity which is nice to look at from a technical standpoint.
@@AKTANEARCADE I see what you mean now with the movement. I'm not a pro in shmups, but played a few: Dodonpachi series, Gradius V, Ikaruga, Borderline, Zero Ranger, Drainus, Asterbreed, Danmaku unlimited, Raiden V, but these are not 16:9 games (or not vertical ones), maybe that's why I was not aware of the movement thing. I thought, you mean the speed difference on using different guns (like in Dodonpachi the laser made you slower, the spreadshot faster).
@@9b0 those are some awesome games! They all have direct movement yeah :) there's very few 16:9 verts, there is Terra Feminarum which is a free bullet hell on steam, and there is Shinorubi which I don't like at all... It doesn't mean it can't be done but there are challenges for sure with it! It's not easy because of the width but I think Cygni does very well here, it just borks the movement unfortunately. I never felt 16:9 was a hindrance but I also never felt it was an asset, I think that's positive for Cygni and probably worth praising.
@@AKTANEARCADE Jamestown is 16:9, but I never played it. Cho Ren Sha is another favourite of mine, and Cygni reminded me of it sometimes. It also had very few enemy types and levels have been a bit repetitive, but I liked the gameplay of Cho Ren Sha a lot more.
Great vid! I think the 25gb download is just so brutal.
@@kurtyclaymore least of my concerns but simply food for the fire 🥲
To me, more then a shmup, it feels more like a tower defense. I did play (and had fun) with few tower defense games back in the mid 2000'. not my jam at the moment.
I think it is okay that devs do not know the genre and experiment with it, sometimes going into something with a "fresh" mind can produce good things (not the case with this game).
What I find unacceptable is when reviewers have no clue: comparing this to ikaruga and rsg is straight, all out incompetence.
@@Marco-00 agreed and well said
The reviewer you used as an example, Will Freeman, -definitely- plays shmups and is a big advocate of the genre 🤷♂️
You would never guess that by reading it. Perhaps there was some editorial meddling there?
I had heard this yeah.... honestly real talk this is part of what put me over the edge to make this video... no one seemed to be getting it... Will could have written a good review and maybe... I wouldnt have made this ? but that review is bizarre at best
@@AKTANEARCADE Give it up Sir. Shmuping simply isn't for some folks like you & Mark. Find a genre you find fun , & you wont be so negative about wtf you think is good or bad design. #promice
Interesting vid
I have the same issue with roguelikes. Choosing between power this run vs meta currency to make future runs better
It really needs to die out design wise
@@saetzero_the_moon_king yeah I think the question is like, is that fun to not use your MAIN resources? I don't like it. Would be like in dead cells if you didn't use your trigger abilities you got more cells or something
@@AKTANEARCADE in dead cells to me its when do you unlock a new weapon
Cuz you get it in white at a high rarity on the spot. So you dont wanna unlock it until you got a run you can plan to use it. The amount of things i left on 1 cell to unlock for that reason is..... Mehhhhhh i cant turn off power gamer brain lol
I didn't play this one, but just what I heard about it made me think "mega euro" and kinda not want to play it.
The thing about people making shmups who don't normally make shmups, don't play shmups, don't really care about why certain design elements are conventions of the genre, etc... I think these games appeal more strongly to *other* people who don't play shmups. Like, I think that was a big deal with Ikaruga, was that Treasure were known for making Treasure games. And they don't really obey shmup rules, they obey "treasure rules." So people like Ikaruga who maybe don't like other shmups. And then someone like myself, I think Ikaruga is a beautiful game, cool concept... But I can't have *any* fun with Ikaruga. Complete fun vacuum for me. Hate it.
But obviously, the mainstream responded to Ikaruga and I think to a lesser extent to Radiant Silvergun. Whereas a game like Eschatos, basically is a celebration of all the amazing design elements of shmups leading to that point, and it's super fun. But Eschatos even now is kinda unknown. I couldn't find any mainstream, high-profile reviews for Eschatos on the switch version, nor could I get one searching IGN for any historical, old reviews on older systems. So on the one hand, there are "non-shmupper shmups" and then there are the "shmup players shmups."
The only way for non-shmuppers to "get it" is for them to play these shmupper shmups and get hooked on the "it" factor.
I've noticed a lot of shmups that appeal to non-shmuppers sell themselves big on graphics. Just an observation. Graphics or story. That one time travel story shmup thing was big on the presentation angle. Can't remember the name of the game for the life of me though. Looked boring as heck to actually play.
I cant disagree with this at all, this is pretty well put, thanks for this thoughtful comment!
@@AKTANEARCADE Sine Mora was the name of the game I couldn't remember.
It's not just Shmups though, it's all games. Things with flashy graphics and big production values will always take precedence over smaller, more tightly designed games with a focus on design over fidelity.
Devil May Cry always lived in the shadow of God of War. Time is a flat circle.
This is such an excellent title
ty ty , makes up for my wordy words in the actual content of the video haha :)
It absolutely does innovate. And the evidence of that is the fact that it has such success. Its getting the rave reviews from reviewers who haven't heard about Zeroranger or Devil blade. Actually marketing your game matters.
It people who haven't played a shmup ever in their lives starting at this because its just on psn and the xbox store. Its not $80 like the Dodonpachi remake.
Im going to take a blind guess and assume that the devil blade dev does not have a series of videos talking about how they went about making the game. The Cygni devs do. That matters. That can be shared online. Meanwhile the devil blade devs open the game basically saying they will legally obliterate streamers and youtubers. That matters.
Even little stuff like the fact that the bullets actually come out of the ship instead of like a river of missiles larger than the ship pouring out of the area in front of the ship. Like in some shmups. That matters. As a shmup fan I like that weird jank. But for someone new, thats just ugly.
It really shows how the shmup genre artificially locks itself out of even the relatively tiny buzz this game is getting over just little weird bs that can be fixed.
@@Theyungcity23 oh yeah marketing definitely matters. From a business standpoint if you want to say they innovated by pouring money into it, absolutely. The gameplay is not very well thought through, but many mediocre games gain lots of success from being cosigned by Konami and having lots of shiny graphics and marketing. That doesn't make the game good. And actually some of the best shmup devs are way more approachable than the Cygni devs. They're easier to talk to and get this, they actually take feedback. Many of them are my personal friends, such as the developer of Astral Gunners, Schildmaid MX, or Broodstar,.they do lots and lots of streams. Krystman from Lazy Devs academy literally has done a ton of tutorials on making a game in this genre on pico 8, boghog, who made gunvein, has done a FULL series on how to develop a good shmup. We do lots of content on this stuff.
They don't get nearly as much exposure, because we don't have Konami cosigning and shiny graphics. We don't have marketing dollars. If you think having money and shiny graphics engineers is innovation for our community, I guess sure. We don't care about that, we develop games for tight and amazing gameplay that are engaging throughout and will stand the rest of time.
You're effectively saying Taylor Swift is the best musician of all time with your argument, and that she innovates due to her marketing and popularity. It means nothing to me.
Btw most shmups are much cheaper than Cygni. I think every single one I linked is cheaper and the ones that aren't have way way WAY more content. Astral Gunners has about 20x the content and replayability that Cygni does.
So yeah I concede that marketing matters. Doesn't mean anything to me tho, good is good, and sloppy, and boring is what it is. Popular doesn't mean good, that's why critical analysis is important, not just buzzwords without meaning.
I found a new shmup called Elite Exorcist Mako. Its a twin stick shmup. Its inspired from Suguri and I think its alot more solid than Cygni in terms of how it is designed.
On "wobble," it's really had to do right. Thunder Force IV, R-Type Delta, Einhander all have larger stages where you move the camera around, but in doing that you can't have a lot of bullets, it has to be more formation/setpiece focused. GRev. is also really good at making it work, but they're all often setpieces/larger boss enemies.
Yeah it's okay to move the camera around but you can't have it be a vertical scrolling that is so extreme in a vertical shmup. Or in the case of a horizontal shmup, it would then be horizontal scrolling. In TF4 for example there isn't any horizontal scrolling, only vertical scrolling. There is no wobble there, I don't think? 🤔 It's been a while since I played it.
@@AKTANEARCADE It's been a while since I really dug into it, but I recall the desert stage having both, but only on that stage. it's also not that extreme in comparison to cygni
@@MotWhinnana I wouldn't doubt it, also get hit by stuff when I'm scrolling up and down in thunder force 4. I'm not a fan of the game 😞 I can't do memorizers haha
9:49 "Revolution" 😭
@@RuV9999 👾
So some of my all time favorites have been the American release of Squadron 88, most R-Type, The Raiden series, 1942 and a bunch of variants. I am glad came across this video because holy molly I want to like Cygni but the flow feels weird - now I know why.
@@WaltzActual yeah I'm not a huge fan of most of these super old school style games because theyre too memorization focused for me to 1CC and my brain is too smooth. I like flailing around like an idiot. Cygni let's me do that but also puts so many barriers to fun along the way, and yeah that movement is cracked.
Love the design talk videos
thanks sage
Judge, jury and Aktane-utioner! You tell em!
*insert judge dredd gif*
All you really needed to say was "the ship auto accellerates" for me to understand what the issue is.
Great video thogugh.
The problems dont end there my friend... I wish they did... would have been a short video...
Amazing analysis and review of the game as a whole, highlighting the issues and potentials with each aspect of it.
Based on your description, I find the whole thing really contradictory in its design, like the gameplay design guys weren't really on the same page while working on this.
・It *almost* has solid fundamentals, but some baffling quirk kind of ruins it at each point.
・It could have a decent and fun risk-reward mechanic, but the whole thing is undermined by the currency system (which honestly should just be based off performance).
・They say dodging is not the focus, but deliberately design segments and boss-fights with a dodge-heavy focus. (and then micro-movements and dodging feels awful due to the movement)
・The levels are long with a ton of reused and boring patterns, no secrets or points of interest, but then also throw in some nice looking and interesting set-pieces. It feels like a rollercoaster ride where you're bored like 90% of the way.
It's quite sad to see, because like you said there is potential here, and the spectacle is truly great, but everything else seems underdeveloped, under-researched and disorganized.
Tbh, besides the boring level design, I'd say a lot of these issues could be somewhat easily fixed/reworked, but I also have my doubts they'd do that considering the publisher is konami.
Even then I definitely wouldn't say it's the next step for shmups, but at least it could be called a decent game.
Also, thanks for the shoutout in the description! :)
This is really well said, you're spot on... also your game does the "fun" aspect so much better... I tried to mention some of these things as well... the truth is ... nobody WANTED this game to be bad! thats the thing thats so sad, because yeah a few little tweaks - a little bit more care and attention to the design, and less "rejection" of things that just work... I think it would have been a solid 8/10 shooting gallery... and then further could have been improved to make an even better game! But they really ignored a lot of feedback and pushed back on a lot of it... which is frustrating
Even their steam page says "CYGNI the vanguard for the next generation of shoot-em ups", they're better at marketing than making a game
I feel they wanted to make a shmup, because it looks simple to make, and then they wanted to improve and modernize the genre, so they ignored when people wanted old ideas
They had fans, shmup devs and Konami to help them out, and they ignored them all, for making a resource manager game, they sure managed to waste all their resources...
@@samhein321 ouch... Shots fired
I've had this game on my Steam wishlist for six months. As soon as I saw the weird slightly directional shots, I decided that I no longer wanted the game. Now youre telling me it has inertia too? lol I'm good, thanks.
Lol - I cannot recommend this game for $30 on Steam, I got it for free and I didnt mention in my video that I physically fell asleep during the last stage... unfortunately it doesnt even have inertia, that would make sense, it has like acceleration and then immediately the ship stops (no sliding, so no inertia)... its quite bizarre... its some middle ground... all it needed was fast movement with a slow button like every other game.. but the innovation award from Eurogamer was at hand...
@@AKTANEARCADE That may be even worse. That would mess with my head so bad. Damn... this game looked really cool too...
Wonderful breakdown of the issues!!!
The diagrams are perfect… really feel like the game was pointing those things at me hahaha
Also love how you explain the “hold R” issue in general. It’s really not a strategic choice to be efficient, and forcing people away from being efficient in the game to be efficient in the economy layer… why!?!? If you insist, tie currency to score and be done with it.
Why indeed, It just feels so forced, like most of the game. It doesn't feel like game design to me, it feels like a retailer trying to balance a profit margin.
@@AKTANEARCADE 100% great metaphor!!! I feel myself being told by the regional manager I have to make customers use the shield system or we won’t hit our KPIs lol
@@SpidersSTG 🤣🤣🤣
Great review, thanks! I'm quite interested to see how this game does commercially, with Konamis name behind it.
@@martinwohrle7887 I'm not too interested to tell you the truth because it's not like anyone who worked on a single Konami Shmup had any say in this game, so Konami is just a front...
@@AKTANEARCADE That is true, what I meant though is that the name creates some buzz that might draw in players who otherwise would never have come in contact with something shmup-like. And then they might stumble across your review, and Mark will probably put something out as well, and with any chance discover the wider world of shmups.
Hmm, Jazz is a rejection of the music rule book. Thanks for the thoughtful insights, this is easily my favorite video of yours this month. :) Also, thanks for the reminder to buy Astral Gunners, done! Also games are IMO about control. Lack of control (not counting for gameplay that modifies this control for better to worse) is a cardinal fundamental rule of gameplay.
It's a shame that the gameplay and core game loops along with the meta game isn't well baked.
Passionate soap box for doing better @aktanearcade mode toggled to ON! I LOVE THAT DUDE!
@@DrBossKey Well said sensei 😎
I'm gonna go play Aces of luftwaffe some more
@@rerunracing classic game
I'm old. I've been playing shmups for a long time, I get the basic mechanics and get that it can take a bit to grasp the design of different games. I don't understand this game. If someone could show me how the mechanics and design make sense, I'd love to give it another try. I just don't get it, I don't get the strategy that I'm supposed to utilize to play this game.
I subbed, you're one of the least annoying game content I've found on youtube in a while. Thanks for the video man.
yeah no worries - I tried to explain it in the video but it might not have landed -
The whole strategy of this game relies in the resources and getting your ship powered up with perma upgrades - it really has very little to do with dodging. Once your ship is powered up, use the homing shot for most of the run, and especially use AUTO TARGETING on the ground enemies, they are completely broken ( this is DIFFERENT from the homing shot, another confusing design decision).
Now here's the kicker, you can either a.) never use missiles and simply focus on shields ( the icons that drop down) - and you will never lose DPS and you'll be good to go, OR you can b.) do what I do in the video, fire a missile, immediatly hit the button labeled " transfer shields to weapon power " - and THEN grab the shield icon. that is the BEST case scenario for survival, and theres NO reason not to do it ( other than to PURPOSEFULLY tank the run for CURRENCY for FUTURE runs)
does that help at all? If it doesnt I would say, flush the game honestly haha
That was a good design discussion - swiz stuff.
@@TheGacko ty ty fam 🙏🏽 btw you making more games or what!
Sine Mora got some attention back in the day as well, but almost no one talks about it now except to dunk on it. I think the same thing will happen here. This game honestly looks like what a Fortune 500 CEO thinks a shmup should be in 2024 in order to appeal to the 18-35 demographic, without any understanding of the most basic principles of shmup design obviously.
And remember, Konami has their name on this. A company that used to be synonymous with arcade game design put their name on this. But this is far from rock bottom considering what's happened over the last 10 years with them, like Kojima leaving.
@@psymagearcade yeah we're definitely not at rock bottom, it's mid to low mid but it is bizarre exactly the way you state. Just kinda weird... All around... Thanks for watching I hope you got something outta this one
new konami shmup hype???
yeah super hype
But goddamn, it is beautiful.
its also free on epic so all that beauty could be yours on PC for free.99! go grab it! hahah
"Cygni is not well optimized", is the only objective critic I have heard so far, and only from Electric Underground. The rest is just subjective. It's been long since any shmup ever proposed true analog movement to match the modern stick design, mastering this type of movement is fun in itself and some of the games out there like Elite Dangerous and other space sims base all their gameplay around that (flying FAOff in Elite Dangerous being the most challenging thing in the entire game). Wobbly screens with stuff shooting outside the screen => same as RType on PCEngine. Shield to tank fast bullets depending on gathered resources => same idea as RType's module. The more you use missiles, the more stuff you kill to gather resources, you just need to choose when to proritize farming, and just doing the missions one or two times will be enough to max the bank. And playing on easy and completing the game and enjoy the scenery was fun. Just like starting Pulstar on diff level 1 and slowly work to 1CC diff level 4 was fun.
It just seems that hardcore bullet hell shmupers are being played by marketing, really, as the media outlets loaded their clown reviews with nonsense they knew they would have an epidermic reaction from you guys. They killed your fun and made sure you would never play Cygni with an open mind, and now you're all rambling.
So far Cygni has been modded to play tate, and in 3D VR with UEVR. I hope it's successful enough for modders to keep tweaking the game and make overhauls. Because I don't think there's a future for the genre when the only other relevant shmup released this summer made you sign a NDA just for playing it, I'll never spend any money on that.
@@_oBSOLEte_ I'm glad you enjoy the game and the movement, but there's a good way to do inertia and a way that doesn't feel good to me. I like inertia based games like Galak Z, Luftrausers, JetLancer. The way the movement feels in Cygni is just sloshy. It was not fun for me to master. There have been many shmups with analog movement btw, this is not exactly innovative and I don't think it's well executed here. The patterns and attacks don't do anything that regular movement can't dodge, and there is nothing precise or specific to analog movement in the level design to make that an enjoyable experience. If that was the goal, I don't think it succeeded.
Regarding wobble, Rtype has no wobble. Rtype has no horizontal scrolling when you move left to right. As far as stuff moving and shooting outside the screen from shmups that were made in the 80s, weve mode on past that to much more fair gameplay.
I like your point on the missiles, that's interesting 🤔 but ultimately I still think it's clunky and not well explained or fun. I want to kill things, I don't want to hold back.
Marketing aside, my opinion on the game is that it's pretty boring compared to the shmups that have come out the last few years, and reading this, it is apparent that it takes inspiration from games that is actually pretty old school design. Mark made this point as well. It's really odd because the innovations don't work for me, but the design itself is very old school shooting gallery (like shmups in the 80s) which I find boring.
Just to be clear I don't like R Type, and haven't dug into Pulstar. I'm not big on memorizer games.
@@AKTANEARCADE I like memorizer games, they're part puzzle, part rythm games, but I dont think Cygni is one of those either. RType on PCEngine has vertical wobble on all levels because the console had less vertical resolution than the arcade version so when you fly on the bottom of the screen you dont see the upper part of the level. R-Type is a classic, many discovered the genre with it and it's still cited for the innovations it brought. At least we should all agree it's not an euroshmup.
I dont know what happened during development but there's vestigial Oculus dlls in the game file. Cygni has a dynamic camera, some sections are a bit zoomed in so you'll have that wobble effect you describe when going around. Other parts, like boss from level 2 for example are zoomed out and you'll have blue lines on the HUD that show the delimitations of the play area. If you launch the game with the UEVR mod, you can zoom the camera way out and see those lines all the time. Practically, in VR, the game has no aspect ratio but the whole field of view. Launching the game like that you can see the enemies spawning well ahead and disappearing very late, and the whole geometry of the level seems to be loaded and several screens wide => Seems like bad optimization. That being said, you could mod it to play on the aspect ratio you want, Unreal Engine is a strength there and future shmups who want to go the full 3d route will likely have to do with it anyway.
@@_oBSOLEte_ yeah that's interesting! 🤔 Rtype is not a euro shmup. But it also doesn't have wobble. It has scrolling Adjacent to the way the game moves. That's the same as DoDonPachi for example. So if a game is horizontal, it's allowed to scroll up and down. That's the same as if a game is vertical, it can scroll left or right. If you stay on the left side of a Raiden level, you won't see the right. Thats okay. That's adjacent to the scroll.
It's the other direction (WITH the scrolling) that both looks and feels weird that you really don't want to do!
You articulated everything I felt while playing this very well. The inertia on movement, the lame stage design and bullet vomit patterns, the annoyingly manual shield mechanic, useless twin-stick controls and useless differentiation between air and ground shots... Hated everything about it to be honest, even the graphics look overwrought and tasteless to me, like a tech-demo designed to showcase the power of a new console. At least I didn't spend money on it, just time and 20GBs of hard drive space.
I really tried to like it too. I don't like to shit on devs when they take a stab at the genre. Maybe it's all the talk of "evolving the genre" that makes me heated when reviewing it lol
same - I encourage devs to try new things but... you have to sort out whats fun and whats just you adding water to the vodka to make more vodka... :P
If Konami selected this game, then what does Konami know about shmup dev?
Can’t believe how far they have fallen.
@@SegFaultMatt the apple is in space, fuck the tree... but why didn't they at least give some feedback, my thinking is they couldn't. Seems anyone who cares about the rich history of Konami shmups is either not in the company or did not care about this project...
Awesome review or overlook of the game, glad I saw it and found the channel. I'm a shmup novice, want to get into more shmups, been having a great time with gunvein in particular, and wishlisted all the other games in the pinned comment that I didn't already know about. Still, even with my novice experience, I think the genre really speaks for itself in terms of it's strengths and qualities. I think I can tell this kind of game isn't really the evolution the critics are claiming. I don't like wonky ship control, I don't like meta upgrades, and it's a shame. I really have been wanting a game where you can move with keys and shoot with mouse aiming like you can with the ground weapon, that's really sick, but man they do not do anything to really prove to me this is a fun and well thought out game. Hope to see more fun and interesting shmups get made, and hope to see more cool people talk about em!
Hey, take a look at Sophstar, I heard it's pretty good too.
@@mistermamamia oh if you want a great "move with keys shoot with mouse", look no further than : store.steampowered.com/app/603960/Star_of_Providence/
@@AKTANEARCADE love that game, one of my favorites! I meant more in a vertical or a linear stage based sense, but I do agree that that games plays great!
If a shmup isnt Japanese developed i usually don't bother.
@@KarnovJr gotta be careful with that mentality. Zero Ranger is Finnish, Astral Gunners is American, Schildmaid MX is Netherlands and Germany, and so on! Some of the best shmups are being made in the west ;)
Are you talking about shoot ‘em ups?
@@eustacequinlank7418 take a guess!
This game is still really confusing to me (I haven't put in a lot of time at all) - & think I really want to like it! I just don't :'(
I think I've been hitting my head against a lot of the "this is different without realizing *why*" criticisms you have. They definitely "rejected the arcade rulebook", that much is clear. But your point about needing to understand the rules / norms in order to subvert them is very well taken!
Notably - all of my non-shmup enjoying friends who've played this seem to bounce off for many of the same reasons they don't like more thoughtfully designed games, which is interesting. So I don't really know who this game *is for* in the grand scheme of things.
Hopefully Konami greenlights more shmups in the future, but it kind of sucks "to support" something bc a giant company made up of business scumbags loosely imply it could be a step towards licensing out their beloved IPs to devs who care. That feels equally shitty to the Cygni devs as it does to Gradius / Parodius fans.
so well said - thanks for this perspective - I think games can be both but certainly shmup devs dont feel like we have to cater to casuals so we kind of dont... we try but we dont end up doing it well because we dont want people to "not interact" with most of the game because we spend so much time designing a good game.
Sort of like chess where the pawns fire lasers is fun, but if you're designing chess, you're probably not gonna design that easy laser pawn mode, even tho casuals might love it and eventually get into chess.. without lasers... eventually... haha. its tough for sure.
Drainus and Devil Blade Reboot both do a great job of this btw - Drainus in particular I think is a good pick for non-shmup-friendos
as I expected
I hope you enjoy the discussion never the less haha
Could have solved that resource = upgrade debacle if they just also made resources metals and tied metals to rank, with higher rank = more curency for upgrades. Basic ass stuff. Personally the kicker about this game is that it looks like a poor man's HouseMark game. Has more a wiff of "we're just competent with UE" then any real technical wizardry.
@@explodingrabbit51 yeah I can't comment as a person who primarily has developed games in Pico and Love2D hahahaha... But I do think the boss intros and the general spectacle is nice. The opening city is very pretty, simple but pretty nice looking.
This is why I 1cc shmups, sometimes to my own detriment, to help me cook ;)
You may (not) want to check Burst Fighter. Similar claims, similarly suck, different problems.
@@weebnerdgaming4908 oh look who the Cygni brought in! Hahaha what's up buddy! Yeah 😂👍🏽
2:37
Random reviewer who havent played a shmup: other shoot em up can only shoot straight ahead.
Under Defeat: casuals.
@@soratheorangejuicemascot5809 zero Gunner : ultra mega casuals
@@AKTANEARCADE Cygni: I am the only shmup with good graphical fidelity.
Astebreed: *clench fist
WARNING FOREVER
I find crazy that some of the "revolutionary features" of the game are stuff that have always seen as bad gameplay on ANY genre, and even worse on shmups and none of them are really "new"
I really disliked the game a lot. The graphics are awesome and that's it. It reminds me of when I got project-x for the Amiga decades ago. You have the initial "wow" for the graphics wearing down very quickly with the bad gameplay.
I like when you say we are a community that values game design. I usually say we are guys who play stuff that looks like Noiz2sa. We of course love great graphics, but we usually will play anything that's good.
@@rafaellima83 true!!! I think that's important context for the viewer because obviously I didn't spend time discussing the orchestra or the audio width or the in depth technical graphics of the unreal engine... Good point 😎😝
11:24 the only shmup(some doesnt even consider this as a shmup) series I know that managed to be well made and fun is from the Suguri series. I cant believe that an archaic 2005 low budget indie game felt more revolutionary than something like Cygni.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Check out either Jaimers or Chris playthrough to see how good Suguri and Sora is.
.
Sorry for bombarding your video with my comments. I am just too engaged with stating my thoughts on this video.
please continue your commentary, I dont mind! everyone should have their own thoughts!
damn so disappointing.. i was actually hyped for this before release
you can still get it for free on epic and enjoy it! fwiw...
@@AKTANEARCADE from everything ive seen and heard, i can tell im not gonna like it. ill probably still try it on epic since its free tho
Fun how many comments mention the graphics are the one good thing. It looks very generic and bland to me at best. A question of style more than graphics perhaps.
@@bloyamind it isn't winning any awards for new ideas here for sure but I think it's executed pretty well yeah... Definitely agree it's a style vs graphics question. I think like example, the explosions look objectively very nice and volumetric.
The only shmups I've played are NieR Automata and Drakengard 3, this wasn't too bad but when does the full game comes out?
I would embrace, for THIS game, all the other bullshit... but not only is the movement bricked in the way you describe, I've also been told that the diagonal movement is significantly faster than the lateral movement.. which I HATE! It's so easy to just normalize the movement speed.
sooo I am a defender of diagonal faster movement, in fact all my games so far have diagonal faster movement. I think depends on the type of game, in this case, I wouldnt mind it... a popular game that does this for example is Battle Garegga.... in this game I would keep the diagonal faster movement, but the acceleration is a nightmare.
@@AKTANEARCADE I've played all your games and I never realized the diagonals were faster 0.o I normally can tell in games that just add the x and y speeds together without any normalization, making the diagonals literally twice as fast. Is that what you're doing? Or just making them slightly faster purposefully?
Yeah that’s funny, a developer who doesn’t play shmups making a shmup for people who don’t play shmups
@@chasepalumbo2929 cosigned by a publisher who used to make the gnarliest shmups around but now mostly focused on ... Pachinko?
How can developers innovate in a genre that they themselves seem to barely understand or interact with? You need to first understand the rulebook very well to then be able to successfully rewrite it.
@@crawlingamongthestars3736 you definitely get it 🤔😅👍🏽
i dodged a bullet not gettin this game lol
@@desmaku87 a bullet you wouldn't have dodged inside the game that's for sure...
Fun now or fun later?? Loool. Doesn't Konami have experience in the shmup genre? Why did they choose this game out of all the indie titles to fund. A single screenshot of this game should've been a huge red flag for anything shmup
because Konami is only a shell company at this point, they must be looking at profit dollars, this clearly aint for the love of the game, and certainly not the games they used to make... They obviously didnt advise the studio in any way - which I feel bad for the studio to some extent... but yeah the K word meant nothing to me... its sad that Journalists see this as a good thing for Konami, because I cant even get close to that type of conclusion given their history in the genre...
You have reviewers who suck at games that are writing these reviews. It’s an absolute joke today.
@@tournaline3448 yeah which ... I don't need them to be amazing gamers necessarily, I mean I'm actually not that good at games, but I would like it if they paid attention and actually commented on the design! And kept their absolutely pointless comparisons off the page. Just be honest instead of sensationalizing a review as a poser.
What a waste of an opportunity to bring some modern aesthetic spectacle to this otherwise humble genre. Could have had the pick ups be for weapons and spend them on health as opposed to the other way round.
Also, jazz is already a rejection of musical standards by it's nature so maybe not the best example for your metaphor (sorry, I'm a snob ❤)
@@Some-Ryan that would be one way to handle it! But then they can't force you to use their "move shields to weapons" mechanic... I guess it's just that these mechanics aren't thought through. It also doesn't FEEL good to move back and forth between the two, it doesn't feel dynamic, it just feels like a chore, there's so many ways games handle resource defense, but this just feels sloshy...like especially in the heat of battle, the pace of the game isn't like X Wing where you go for a dog fight and then have some time to reorganize your shields for the next pass, so the same system doesn't work here. It's not like the game pauses or slows down while you sort out your ship...theres so many solutions that a typical, semi experienced indie game designer could have come up with.
@@Some-Ryan actually no that works because jazz rejects normy standards in the same way shmups do! So to evolve upon that is mighty difficult, unless you go the other way and turn jazz back into pop... Which is what Cygni effectively attempts but without the jazz... So I guess it turns into what... Avante Garde Noise?
Yeah, I'm not saying it would fix the whole mess, but it seems like an obvious way to keep the 'fun' of using the secondary weapon. Then use the weapons to convert on shields instead. Keep it real 😎
Ffs,if it says it’s like ikaruga or rsg it’s gonna suck!who the fk pays attention to msm!
msm!?
Basically shills like ign
@@shmuproom1293 oh for sure - I guess I expected that from them... I didnt expect it from Eurogamer necessarily, or Will Freeman in particular... that was mega disappointing to me.
Yeah defo get that bro,these big studios are never gonna make a good shmup,especially when they abandon the arcade fundamentals which made the genre so great.,enjoyed the video btw💪
@@shmuproom1293 ty ty
Game journos seem to not olay ANY games
looks nice, but terribly designed.
@@BuzzaB77 Konami : yes this is how we roll these days
@@AKTANEARCADE I suppose as far as konami goes it's actually quite good by recent standards!
@@BuzzaB77 huzzah!
#not4mepewpew
#pewpewIkarugapewpew
2 things. First, don't listen to toxic shmupers like Mark. Second, get good & you'll have fun.
@@ronniepatterson2827 who's mark? Did you watch the video? These are my own experiences with this game. I am good, I completed the game before my review and it has nothing to do with skill... I can't have fun with this because it's badly designed and not very fun. Its quite boring, there's not a lot to do. I'm playing astral gunners right now because there's like 6 characters with differing abilities, lots of cool variance in the stages, better music, and a lot better gameplay, very precise movement. And lots of creativity, you can like save characters in the levels and they'll return the favor in the next level. There's extra level unlocks based on your score, and there's leaderboards... this game doesn't even have leaderboards, so not sure why score even exists in Cygni...And it is an underpowered slog through the same waves of enemies for roughly 90 minutes. I'm good lol nothing to do with skill. If you have seen the clears on my channel, I would say I have considerable skill compared to most.
big gaming site reviewers are absolutely clueless? color me surprised.
in other news - water still wet, pope still catholic ;)
haha I hear you, I wish I didnt have to mention that, but I hope I made some good points after that...
@@AKTANEARCADE you absolutely did. i haven't played the game, but i got the exact vibe you're describing from it from the first moment i saw videos of it.