It honestly feels like they weren't confident enough to commit to anything.
Like the writing is a great example. The storytelling aspect of this game is actually quite good. The Senu and the Veil, with the slow realization they originally weren't religious fanatics, but created the Veil to protect themselves due to their awful birth rates. And just slowly morphed into what we see today. The lingering questions of what happened to Earth, what happened to the Solars. The where is he actually at with Erark, whose side is he actually on.
There's a lot of good writing here! But they aren't confident in it at all and constantly feel the need to fall back to porn game tropes. So you constantly get pop culture references that were dated when this hit EA. You constantly have fourth wall breaking cringy moments. You've constantly got porn game ass dialogue to fill in the gaps. There's a few moments where they actually let the writing try to hold it's own, and it's strong enough to do so but they almost immediately panic and try to make light of it again.
The gameplay is another example. They wanted to move past just being a VN to make it an actual game. And in a lot of cases this works! As a SHMUP fan this is actually quite a good one. Good varied enemies, lots of focus on solid dodging mechanics, nice mixed ships and some actually well designed boss fights. The ground combat is way too basic, but the ship stuff is quite good if repetitive.
But they never let it shine. It's instead tied to the Mass Effect style stuff and becomes a repetitive grind alongside the ground combat. It's given some leeway in that you get a couple of great boss fights during it, but it's rarely a core pillar. The ship upgrades are awful, and they never do anything more then wave clearing and the occasional boss fight.
It's a weird mix at best throughout. If you come here just for the porn it's not enough. There's only really the recruitment and the devotion scenes, with Pandora being basically another sidegame to distract when bored with the grind. If you are here for the game, it's also not enough. The SHMUP stuff works but ends up incredibly basic at the end of the day, and the constant cringe porn game dialogue will take you out of the actual writing.
It's basically hyper designed for a very specific person. The person who really likes lore and worldbuilding, is a huge pervert who can put up with porny dialogue, and also loves SHMUPs AND VNs. That's the target audience for this game. And that audience is remarkably small I have to imagine.
I don't think it's as awful as this thread is making it out to be. I had enough fun going through the story/boss fights, the devotion scenes were good, and there's enough in Pandora + getting to know the characters through the story to get my moneys worth. It's a good enough first attempt, and I imagine a Subverse 2 would have quite a lot of potential to be excellent. I just don't think it's going to really take off, and is going to be largely disliked here where the most common poster is just asking for a 1.0 save so they can browse Pandora.
Like the writing is a great example. The storytelling aspect of this game is actually quite good. The Senu and the Veil, with the slow realization they originally weren't religious fanatics, but created the Veil to protect themselves due to their awful birth rates. And just slowly morphed into what we see today. The lingering questions of what happened to Earth, what happened to the Solars. The where is he actually at with Erark, whose side is he actually on.
There's a lot of good writing here! But they aren't confident in it at all and constantly feel the need to fall back to porn game tropes. So you constantly get pop culture references that were dated when this hit EA. You constantly have fourth wall breaking cringy moments. You've constantly got porn game ass dialogue to fill in the gaps. There's a few moments where they actually let the writing try to hold it's own, and it's strong enough to do so but they almost immediately panic and try to make light of it again.
The gameplay is another example. They wanted to move past just being a VN to make it an actual game. And in a lot of cases this works! As a SHMUP fan this is actually quite a good one. Good varied enemies, lots of focus on solid dodging mechanics, nice mixed ships and some actually well designed boss fights. The ground combat is way too basic, but the ship stuff is quite good if repetitive.
But they never let it shine. It's instead tied to the Mass Effect style stuff and becomes a repetitive grind alongside the ground combat. It's given some leeway in that you get a couple of great boss fights during it, but it's rarely a core pillar. The ship upgrades are awful, and they never do anything more then wave clearing and the occasional boss fight.
It's a weird mix at best throughout. If you come here just for the porn it's not enough. There's only really the recruitment and the devotion scenes, with Pandora being basically another sidegame to distract when bored with the grind. If you are here for the game, it's also not enough. The SHMUP stuff works but ends up incredibly basic at the end of the day, and the constant cringe porn game dialogue will take you out of the actual writing.
It's basically hyper designed for a very specific person. The person who really likes lore and worldbuilding, is a huge pervert who can put up with porny dialogue, and also loves SHMUPs AND VNs. That's the target audience for this game. And that audience is remarkably small I have to imagine.
I don't think it's as awful as this thread is making it out to be. I had enough fun going through the story/boss fights, the devotion scenes were good, and there's enough in Pandora + getting to know the characters through the story to get my moneys worth. It's a good enough first attempt, and I imagine a Subverse 2 would have quite a lot of potential to be excellent. I just don't think it's going to really take off, and is going to be largely disliked here where the most common poster is just asking for a 1.0 save so they can browse Pandora.
