ZeroRanger Reviews

Literally my favorite game at the moment

Please play Zero Ranger.

do not play this game unless you value your time and or are unemployed

Pretentious and disrespectful to the player. You must grind xp to unlock continues instead of having unlimited continues like the great Cave shoot em ups from 20 years ago, or other similar games like Blue Revolver or Ikaruga which allow you to set unlimited continues in the option menu. Read other reviews to learn that it deletes your save file if you lose to the final boss. No bombs, slow movement, alternate weapons locked behind roguelike upgrades. I am new to shoot em ups and have loved all 7 other games I have played in this genre, mostly from Cave or with a similar design. Zero Ranger took 10 years to develop and it shows, which is not a compliment, as it displays a total disregard for all but the most hardcore players of the genre. It's not a bad game if you are one of the aforementioned hardcore players, but I am baffled at the praise and recommendations this game receives as an entry point for beginners. A beginner is better off playing any other game in the genre except this one.

My feeling is that players who are familiar with shmups won't find much value in my review, but that makes sense, as I am not very experienced with the genre. ZeroRanger is immediately beginner friendly, though definitely not easy. The game has a fairly robust number of continues, and a stage select system, which makes it easy to just play through if you just want the story, or to practice individual levels. The gameplay feels good, shooting and movement are responsive, and what you can do, what the enemy's attack patterns are, and where your hitbox is. The main draws for the game as a non-shmup player are the story and the presentation. The art and music are easy tens out of ten, they perfectly set the mood and make you feel very cool, or helps you to lock in during hard moments. It's hard to think about almost anything else while playing. The story is great too, the story has a couple layers to it and both feel great and entice the player to keep going. The game is fantastic and a steal for twelve dollars, System Erasure make great stuff, and I wish them the most success possible.

Incredible music, unique aesthetic, unique innovative progression mechanics in a shmup. If you're a shmup fan, must play game.

ZeroRanger controls perfectly, the art is gorgeous, it's a lot of fun to play, and it has some interesting meta story elements that you will be a fan of if you like games like Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc. As a casual shmup fan I can say that the difficulty was good. It is decently challenging at parts but also very forgiving with the way the checkpoints work. The final stage/bosses are definitely a *huge* step up in difficulty and to be totally honest I considered giving this a negative review just because of a huge gimmick this game pulls if you fail near the end where it goes from fairly forgiving to completely unforgiving. If you're interested in spoiling yourself just look for negative reviews and I think many of them will spell it out for you.

The prequel to Void Stranger. The difficulty of the game is just enough that mere mortals can play through this and feel like they can actually beat it. The storytelling is phenomenal as expected of SystemErasure. Again, play without looking at spoilers, but don't expect quite as much secret searching as the sequel Void Stranger. I highly enjoyed and recommend this game.

This is one of the hardest games I ever played, not because it's hard, but it's because it shakes your heart in such incomprehensible ways due to the end session and it's themes that you either leave it speechless or with your chest tight, unable to process the amazing experience that awaits you. I do not recommend it for the faint of heart, unless you really wanna test the limits of your faith and spirit

This is sincerely one of the best little bullet hell/schmup games I've ever played. There's actually a great charm in it *not* being obsessively difficult and/or having an online leaderboard; I would recommend no other place for new schmup players. In terms of the content, there's enough for me (someone with probably thousands of bullet hell hours) to be happi and feel like it's worth the pricetag. Despite only having 8 colors in the *entire game*, visibility is perfectly clear (please take notes [every other game created]). You can start from the beginning of every level, so having limited continues is not a problem at all. Every encounter in the game is just wonderfully and seemlessly strung together. Boss design is snappy, doesn't feel like it's always "random attack from attack pool", all attacks and combos feel well adjusted (except for that one on 2-3, YOU KNOW the one), and the soundtrack usually adapts to what's happening in such a clean way. I notice there tends to be a lot of surprise about the very last encounter deleting your save file if you fail it, but it *is* made abundantly clear both visually and through text that you only have one chance. Also, that encounter isn't actually as hard as the final fight, and also losing your save file is... not that horrible of a loss? The game features only the metaprogression from unlocking more continues as more is played, and in general is not that long. The only issue I had is that it's a pretty controller focused game - I am not used to using arrow keys for bullet hells, which is the default keyboard control scheme, and you can't bind any inputs to the mouse unfortunately. Luckily the game literally only needs a stick and three buttons minimum to be played, with a fourth button allowing easier switching between zero ranger and ship mode.