GRAND CROSS: ReNOVATION Reviews

Welp, I'm gonna have to recommend you give this one a pass. My first playthru was cool. Very cinematic , very epic, not hard at all to 1cc, yet was engaging. However, each playthru is like 35mins long, and the there's really no rhyme or reason to the bullet patterns and it is very flashy (flashing lights that is), so it took a bit of motivation to get around to a second playthru and try a new ship bc i was afraid of it ruining my experience. So what's wrong with the game.... well, the game has a very heavy risk/reward scoring format but.... there is no online leaderboards smh . This then ties into the , "Why get a high score if I'm not competing?," which ties into the reason it is easy to 1CC the game... your scoring multiplier is tied to your health. Your health is primarily drained by using the Sun Blade laser... enemy bullets do little to no damage so everything falls apart without a leaderboard. Next, I was right. The second playthrough has left a sour taste in my mouth. I tried a new ship that primarily uses swords.... Swords that can't reach certain boss parts ... smh again. So you have to really on these very underpowered homing discs bc u take damage if you are hovering over certain bosses. idk maybe I am missing something with that ship???? Anyways, that 2nd playthru froze up on me. The stage 5 boss kept flashing into a huge floating white square that was basically off screen at the top of the screen... I guess the pixel actor was hitting an invisible boundary that kept "destroying the actor" or some sort of "z-axis battling" (game dev terminology). Then I took a screen pic and the screen went black. Tried to start a 3rd playthru with the 3rd ship, but for whatever reason the change ship button stopped working even after reloading lmao. The game is made with directX9... not sure if you are keeping track but we are on directX12 now so some ppl may have compatibility issues also. The Steam achievements are a big "F U" to Steam fans begging for achievements bc the achievements are ridiculous... like every single one is basically do a playthru without getting touched for 35mins? lol okay. So all in all: You have a special shmup here that is good for a play-through but has some glaring flaws and little replay-ability. And with that it's a Meh rating from me.