Divine Orders Reviews

good game

It could very well be a nice hidden gem for those who enjoy the genre.

Divine Orders is a very niche STG game with RPG and resource collection elements. Brilliant idea of merging two genres. 100% worth trying for whom fancies STG and RPG style gamers.

Astlibra meets STG. The shmup part takes inspiration from Progear and Espgaluda. From Progear you have cancelling enemy bullets by leading them into explosions left by other enemies. This fills your hyper meter. Once you activate hyper, destroying enemies cancels their bullets, giving you gold. Destroying enemies gives you exp and items. With exp you can level up yourself, your weapons, gold upgrades your weapons and allows you to sleep at the inn. You can also exchange materials for gold or craft passive bonuses and spells. You have limited stamina per day and each stage drains some part of it. Once your stamina is drained you need to rest at the inn (and pay for it, also the cost increases). This advances the day. And you only have so many days before the cutoff day for good ending. All those mechanics come together in a strange but somehow working mixture. Soon you'll be maximizing profits per day, farming materials while unlocking new levels and become a master of resource management. The bullet patterns are slightly too dense for a casual player and I have no idea how you're supposed to finish the hardest difficulty. To my surprise dev included slowdown (like in arcade games) when there are too many bullets on the screen, and this is a very nice addition, shows that the dev knows what they're doing. Graphics are ok, they just work. But I liked the music. I didn't care about the plot at the beginning, but it got interesting at one point. There are some charming elements, like NPCs telling you you're almost dead when you're low on hp in town, there are rumors in the background of the town, giving an illusion that the city is populated. Game encourages multiple playthroughs - finishing the game once displays some ending conditions in the menu and also unlocks new gameplay modes. Getting another ending unlocks more weapons. Edit after finishing hardest difficulty: at first I was thinking Abyss difficulty is impossible, but once I unlocked final weapon and started using all mechanics the game offers (and there are surprisingly many of those, I can point to at least 5 ways to extend your hyper duration) then the levels started flowing really nicely and with a little effort I was able to chain hyper from the beginning to the end of each stage. And I'm not even good at STGs. The levels and bullet patterns seem chaotic at first but once you get familiar with enemies and levels it all becomes really structured.

Love this game, Such a breath of fresh air in the shooter genera. Its a Bullet Hell RPG haven't finished it yet but its totally bodacious so far. Thank you Angel M team for reals