Project AETHER: First Contact Reviews

This is a good game

Really enjoying the game, alot of fun! ★★★★★

Excellent graphics and plenty of movement to keep you on your toes. Looking forward to playing more! Just finished first play through on easy. Very enjoyable!

An enjoyable twin-stick shooter, Project Aether has done the impossible (or improbable) of making me kinda want to try for scoring in a shmup (especially on my first playthrough), with the addition of wave based rankings a la DMC. Blowing up half the screen with a chain of EMP explosions is immensely satisfying, as does dashing through a sheet of bullets. Playing on hard, a few stages in, I'd say the game is pretty well balanced, the game expects you to use it's mechanics, but compared to other shmups you may or may not be familiar with, the difficulty feels about right (importantly for me, it doesn't feel too easy, I desire at least some [strike]pain[/strike] challenge)

Tight controls, satisfying combat (using the EMP blast to chain explosions is particularly fun) and good visuals make Project AETHER one of the better bullet hell games I've played. Especially for newcomers to the genre!

Tl;dr: real diamond in the rough. Doom-style executions in a unique vertical scroller/twin stick shooter format. B-Everything about this game is cheap. It looks and sounds like a budget ps2 title from a no-name studio. Fortunately, it's also about as expensive as one of those games would be today. Actual effort was put into this game: enemy patterns are well designed, as are the bosses.It's also got a fairly unique mechanic, where you shoot an enemy until a circle indicating they've become vulnerable to your EMP appears around them. The more damage you've caused, the bigger the circle. If you move into the circle and activate EMP, the enemy will be instakilled and explode, possibly taking nearby foes with it. Getting that close is a gamble, so there's a bit of a risk-reward dynamic going on.Another interesting dynamic is that you usually want to get enemies to the max EMP level without killing them so they can serve as bombs. You can also cause chain reactions if enemies' circles intersect, so you can take out whole squadrons with some well placed shooting and EMP.Y'know, I've kind of talked myself into liking this game much more. Let's go with B+

I haven't played many twin stick shooters in my life, but Project AETHER is a great place to dive in. Very polished and enjoyable. Playing NieR: Automata recently and seeing the twin-stick shooter bullet hell style sections in that game made me want to play a more fleshed out version of that kind of thing, and Project AETHER scratched that itch. For being a seemingly limited game with its brief (albeit well-voiced and polished) campaign, there is a lot of bonus content, unlockables, playstyles and an immense skill ceiling. I really do love this game. My only real criticism/feedback is that I wish there was more visual feedback when i-frames were active during the dash, especially the default basic one that I prefer using.

Project Aether is a pretty fun shooter. Great mix of ranged and melee combat. Decent amount of customization, 2 weapon slots, a few special abilities, and colors Don't ignore the trials. Some of them are a ton of fun and unlock items. Also has an acid thrower.