Bladestar Reviews

Fairly good looking game, but with sluggish gameplay. Every level has 10 waves. After each wave a dude starts talking for several seconds, then you wait for the wave to start another few seconds. It completely breaks the immersiveness and slows down the overall pacing tremendously. In later levels it becomes a visual clusterfuck. Falling powerups, asteroids, exploding enemies and mines, projectiles all over the place - it's hard no to lose lives without even knowing what hit you. Controls aren't the best also. You can only move with WASD and shoot with your mouse.

This game is super hard. I only could complete 3 levels by chance. I repeated the level 20 tiimes until I survived. Plus, there is no mode changing to easy, medium or hard. I believe the game is set to hard or very hard automatically and cannot be changed

Old school vertical shooter with some more modern skillup features.

I got this game because I was in the mood for a good-old-fashioned shooter, but I was tired of all the "retro" pixel or SNES graphics that seem to plague this genre. I understand this is an old-fashioned genre, but I like flashy graphics and I want to have my cake and be able to eat it too! I am pretty pleased with this game overall. I have an older laptop (still runs with Vista) and this game played very well, there may have been some lag with the bosses, I'm not entirely sure, it was ever-so-slight if it was lag. And the game feels like a pretty solid shooter. Lots of fire on screen, lots of moving targets to hit and avoid, powerups to collect all while the game gets increasingly faster and more difficult. This is a more old-school type shooter difficulty-wise as it is fairly unforgiving with one-hit kills, no more than one shield able to be stored at a time and no mid-way save points, so if I don't beat the boss of a level, I start all the way back at square one for that level. I do like that each wave is randomly generated, though, rather than just trying to remember a certain pattern to beat each wave every time. The weapon system took a bit to get used to. Three different weapon types randomly appear throughout each wave, and the more of each specific weapon type I pick up, the stronger that weapon type becomes. However, there is no way to choose between the different weapons, so every time I pick up a weapon I am not currently using, it switches to that specific weapon. This makes for a game of go for the "good" weapon upgrades whilst trying to dodge the "bad" weapon upgrades (defined by personal preference) all while at the same time trying to collect the blue resource, dodge asteroids and enemy ship fire, and gain bonuses. But at least there is unlimited fire with each weapon type, as I hate having to be stingy with my ammo. I really like the graphics though. They are sharp and colorful and pleasing to look at. Sometimes it's just nice to have a little eye-candy while destroying everything on screen. The music is nice and fluid as well, and I enjoy the rock music that plays, signalling the boss fights. I'm also glad that this game comes with partial controller support (you still need your mouse for menu options) as I found it easier to play with the controller than with the keyboard and mouse. It seemed like there was some slight drifting when I played with the keyboard, the controller felt more solid. Although I would have liked a help page that told me what buttons did what. I had an issue with pressing "Pause" instead of "Options" whilst in-game because, when paused, I could not go back to the main menu, but when I pressed optons, then I could. Even though both of those buttons bring up the same options menu, when the game is paused, the "Main Menu" button is disabled for some reason. All in all, I got this game to be a fun, old-school shooter with pleasing eye candy, and I got exactly what I was hoping for. Yay! Finally has Steam Achievements!

I tried to really like this game but in the end failed to convince myself to play through any more than a few minutes. On the plus side, the graphics are really nice and the speech is a plus for the game. On the bad side, the ship momentum feels off and makes control feel awkward while the upgrades don't give a good sense of achievement for your efforts at all. Perhaps more stable control, more meaningfully different weapons, preferably switchable from one to the next, and an upgrade system that is better thought of would make this game sign, but at its present form I can't recommend it to anyone that isn't looking for something that tries to satisfy his eyes and ears alone while lacking in strong game-play elements.

There's something missing from this game -- seems empty. This is no Jets 'n' Guns. Definitely not worth the price tag. Get the demo first (in other words: watch your play time for refund barier) This is another poor game with lots of positive reviews. I wonder -- did my standards skyrocket, or everyone else's erode? Would some REAL person that played and liked this care to elaborate in the comments what did he/she like about this game? What other shmups does this person like?

Like most independent productions, the game becomes extremely difficult as you level up in this game. Since these kinds of games are short, they tried to satisfy the player in a try and die repeat style. If you have plenty of time, you can end the game by trying

Bladestar is an OK game that has so much wasted potential unfortunately. Let's suspend the disbelief that this tiny ship can store and fire infinite amount of ammo (and missiles in space mind you) since this is a shoot-em-up game by design. It still has several unfair design choices/flaws with unfavorable outcomes that will make you rage-quit if you aren't a masochist or a very stubborn person that doesn't know how/when to quit like me: [list] [*] There are no difficulty settings. [*] You can't save your progress manually. When you die in Story Mode, you are sent back to the beginning of the level (each level is comprised of 10 Waves). You can continue from the beginning of the last level you reached in Story mode. So if you die at Wave 50, you'll start from Wave 41 again and you'll learn to love it (!). [*] During several waves, the enemy fire and the debris/rocks match the the background, parts of which is blindingly bright or just too dark, making it nigh impossible to see the incoming fire/objects on time to respond. [*] In Story mode, you can only upgrade one weapon between the levels and the other weapon upgrades are locked when you do upgrade one. Why? You can still upgrade them during the waves. [*] You will find out the Cannon is pretty much useless during Waves 41-50 against the debris unless it's maximized (Lvl10). [*] All weapons are onboard the ship, but for some reason you can't choose which weapon you will use by pressing a button manually. You have to wait for the right icon to appear on the screen and get it. And the weapon automatically switches when you go through an unwanted icon by accident/coercion. These issues put you in a very hard spot during some boss fights, where there will be no weapon icons incoming. [*] You can't choose when to use a super bomb. You have just one choice: Use it when it appears or lose it forever. [*] When you do use the super bomb it basically blinds you and you won't see incoming fire/objects briefly. [*] Enemy mines (both the EMP and the counter-laser ones) are ridiculously powerful and have infinite range. For instance, during the whole Wave 53 and 57, you are better off not shooting at all due to excessive amount of mines. Makes you wonder why they included these in a shoot-em-up game... [*] Incoming sneaky debris, rocks, and enemy shots are usually tougher to handle than the bosses. [*] The final level (Level 6 or Waves 51-60) is hidden (?!) in the Upgrades section. You have to buy it with the XP you earn during gameplay and you have to complete it to get the final achievement... [*] No collisions between enemies, space rocks, mines and debris whatsoever. So they can occupy the same space freely and even shoot at your ship while they are behind/under/on top of something else. [*] There is just one type of ship you can control. Others are just paint jobs. Even the Stingray you command during Waves 51-60 moves and shoots the same way as the Manta. [*] The voice acting is not terrible but it gets old very quickly. After all this is a very short game and its value is in replayability. Being unable to skip these dialogs is infuriating when you inevitably have to restart after experiencing a horrible death due to a tiny little thing you missed. At least spare us the pep-talk in Arcade Mode, damn it! [*] Level design is not balanced at all. Some waves are just too easy and some are too hard. Most of my play time was spent on Waves 41~50 & 51~60 and rarely because of the bosses, mostly because of the debris & mines. See the previous points. [*] During Wave 41-50, the movement of the objects / enemy fire weren't smooth anymore in highest quality setting on my 4K gaming system. I had to dial it down to Fastest and lower resolution 1920x1080 to make it smooth again. I think there are some optimization issues here. [/list] Despite all these flaws, you can still enjoy this game if you lower your expectations and curb your competitiveness. If you are a competitive person by nature then do yourself a favor and stay away from this game or get a controller made of adamantium but don't throw it in my direction. You have been warned fair and square. Now go have some fun!

I think that this game might be OK for casual shoot 'em up players. I grew up iin the 1980's playing them and they are my favourite genre of games ( I dislike bullet hell ). I thought that I would like this but you can tell that the game is aimed at the casual gamer market, based on the frequent shield pickups and "entire screen destruction" smart bombs ( every few seconds ). Things that I disliked: - The neon colour scheme is blinding. The bullets are neon, the background planets have bloom and neon, the pickups are neon. The developer needs to tone down on the LSD lighting. - In story mode, when you repeat a section, you hear the same voiceovers, with no way to skip past them. I was rolling my eyes at one point. Things that I liked: - The controls are smooth. I was going to give this a thumbs up ( for the casual gamers ) but the blinding neon colours, with no way to actually differentiate the bullets from the background planet in wave 20-30 made me uninstall in disgust and request a refund.

Bladestar pros: fast game with modern day graphics with easy controls that moves from location A to B to C and so on, good amount of action and special effects, cons: alot of difficult battles/stages. good game. Personal Suggested Purchase Price: $0.49 Or Less During Sale