Have to know
What’s it? A Xevious-style shoot ’em up, and an acceptable on-ramp to the bullet hell.
Anticipate to pay $30
Developer Keelworks
Writer Konami
Reviewed on Home windows 11, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 TI, Intel Core i7-12700F, 16 GB RAM
Multiplayer? Sure
Out August 5, 2024
Steam Deck Playable
Hyperlink Official website
The common stage in Cygni: All Weapons Blazing is about quarter-hour lengthy, give or take, but it surely doesn’t really feel that method. It seems like a two-and-a-half hour particular results showcase that should have ended with a fade to black and “Directed by Michael Bay” in large, daring letters. Cygni’s audio-visual bombast is troublesome to overstate, with its Unreal Engine 4-powered hordes of alien jet fighters screaming towards you from above and under. The sheer variety of fashions, bullets, and particle results on display screen is incessantly overwhelming, and in case your consideration lapses for a second, you’ll lose all sense of what’s taking place.
After only a couple hours of taking part in, I felt like my senses had been jackhammered to sludge —and it was intoxicating. That may look like an overreaction to mere motion setpieces, however an extravagant, 16:9, fantastically polished, graphically souped-up shmup like this can be a uncommon factor certainly. Don’t get me mistaken, I really like my pixel artwork, however dodging incoming trains, taking potshots at a flying area whale, and blowing aside modern alien tanks is riotous when it seems to be and feels this good. It runs like a dream, too, except for some body drops within the particularly chaotic remaining stage.
Mechanically, its shoot-’em-up antics will likely be fairly acquainted to any followers of Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun. All of the bedlam of a bullet hell is on provide, however its tempo is a contact extra palatable for individuals who don’t infuse their faucet water with Crimson Bull. In reality, Cygni is kind of accessible for a shmup; in a style the place you usually can solely fireplace straight forward, the sport permits you about 30 levels of leeway to the left or proper, which suggests you possibly can fireplace at cheeky angles and comfortably zoom across the subject prefer it’s a twin-stick shooter. You may also take just a few hits earlier than you die, which could simply come in useful, as essentially the most harmful enemy in Cygni can also be my aforementioned favourite factor about it: visible chaos.
Each second is spent delousing waves of incoming ships with lasers and rockets, which is commonplace fare for the model, however the place a style traditional may prize readability and clear, apparent visible cues, Cygni is keen to drown the participant in heaps of enemies from each angle. However whereas it’s straightforward to overlook just a few photographs and get misplaced within the tapestry of grinding steel and neon lights, it’s forgiving sufficient that it by no means feels inescapable.
Every stage begins you off with sufficient shields to take 5 hits earlier than a sport over, however sure enemies drop further shields once they die. You may also reroute protect energy to your weapons, buying and selling a success level for further injury and spend that energy outright for ultra-powerful rockets, which might hit enemies in your flanks and rear.
You may at all times commerce that injury again for these hit factors, however don’t do it in time and also you’re toast. Since this can be a shmup we’re speaking about, you’re normally making these choices within the span of milliseconds, and it provides a pleasant pinch of high-stakes technique the place I simply anticipated undiluted, twitchy motion. It offers me the type of blazing adrenaline rush I assume a canine experiences once I shake a bag of treats.
Cygni’s fairly beneficiant with these pickups, and admittedly, the wealth of shields littered about trivializes sure sections. Whereas the sport is at its greatest when you’ve gotten simply sufficient shields to make some choices with them, it doesn’t strike this steadiness completely, and also you’ll generally be showered in sufficient to tank every little thing on display screen and keep a full injury increase. Perhaps that is the sport’s method of offering a breather or flexing what number of explosions can occur concurrently, however on repeated playthroughs, these moments bore.
There’s additionally floor warfare (like Xevious, however quite a bit busier) perpetually carrying on beneath the life-or-death dogfights in your aspect of the y-axis. You should use the transient home windows of downtime to attempt to squeeze further factors and free shields out of the cannon fodder under, and also you’ll sometimes fend off big walkers and artillery platforms making an attempt to steal your consideration from the air fight. Each your air weapons and floor weapons can residence in on targets for much less injury or be free-aimed for full injury; one other gold nugget of risk-reward that pays large dividends for efficient multitaskers. Once I had gotten farther than ever on a specific boss struggle that was giving me bother, I opted to instantly intestine my shields and spam rockets at it—whereas it left me susceptible to a sport over if a single bullet grazed me, the additional salvo was sufficient to cinch the struggle.
All these further hit factors and homing weapons imply it’s just a little gentler than among the old-school greats, however I cherished the way it at all times appeared to egg on daredevil habits. Regardless of the torrential downpour of enemy fireplace, I by no means felt like I used to be attempting to find the magic pixel the place a specific bullet sample would by no means hit me; quite the opposite, I wished to fly by the bullet hell to all corners of the display screen, hoover up as many further shields as attainable, and instantly convert them into rockets.
The one main waste of potential I discovered is with its story, which feels odd to say a few shmup. I didn’t go in anticipating a plot in any respect, however the sport sandwiches every stage in-between a pair of cutscenes and even has a lore library the place you possibly can be taught concerning the celestial our bodies you paint with strafing runs over the course of the marketing campaign. Sadly, there’s not a lot distinctive or substantive to dig into, and the cutscenes come off bland—a dispensable little bit of context the sport doesn’t profit from.
On the flipside, Cygni left me itching for extra of its moment-to-moment, regardless of my minor gripes. It’s a lean playthrough with solely seven ranges, however the impulse to enhance boss instances, undergo the sport with a buddy in co-op, and maximize excessive scores ought to lend excessive replayability. Arcade mode is the all-or-nothing endurance take a look at style veterans will need to look into, however there’s extra postgame tinkering in varied equippable upgrades and weapons to your ship. You may even design customized firing patterns to your essential air-to-air gun, which is certain to stimulate the imaginations of anybody seeking to obtain absolute optimization.
This all culminates in a beautiful sport that gives all of the exhilaration of an ideal bullet hell shooter, however provides the participant some distinctive instruments to each make bettering simpler and reward daring gambits from seasoned shmuppers. Taking down every boss was a shot of catharsis, and as quickly because it was over I used to be headed straight again to arcade mode for an additional spherical.