Even when every hour of your job is devoted to game titles, will still be impossible to be familiar with all of the releases that come out on any given day/week/month/year-and that was true for me with Sky Force Reloaded. I knew it was a top-down shooter (of the “shoot 'em up” variety), and I knew some form of the game (or a predecessor) had recently received a limited-run physical release, but that was about this.
Delving into the game felt similar to being tossed right into a lake and being told to understand how to swim on my own, partly since i didn't realize a non-repeatable intro segment was going to play out the moment I began the sport (which I quickly failed since i was off getting something to drink). Still, with years of shooter experience under my belt, I was ready for the challenge.
What I wasn't ready for-in part due to that exact experience-was how pathetic my ship felt as I descended in to the game's first stage. Sky Force Reloaded is built upon an intricate upgrade system, and before you embark into exploring it, your ship only has a laughably weak single-shot main cannon, no additional weapons of any kind, and zero special attacks (for example bombs or whatnot). After not making it very far into that first stage, a “hanger” option begged for my attention back around the main menu, and I began to understand my first set of goals. By collecting stars that are dropped from defeated enemies, crates, or other destroyed background objects, you can beef up your primary cannon and health, add secondary wing cannons and homing missiles, or unlock three manual-activation bonus tools: a focused laser, an energy shield, along with a screen-clearing bomb.
Shooters have long been built round the concept of upgrading and adding new weaponry and options, and Sky Force Reloaded's deep dive into those idea makes it feel like something legitimately different from other entries within the genre out there. Instead of attempting to choose the one-credit run, you take each one of the game's many stages (which engage in more like Raiden or other slower-paced experiences and less like Japanese bullet hells) as something which you'll be playing again and again more for the personal progress. Of course, score is definitely important, and stages provide specific goals-such as saving all of the hostages or beating the stage if you don't take any damage-to help boost your numbers, there is however also that RPG-esque attitude to everything. As one example, dying before downing the stage boss does not mean you've failed, because you have inevitable still earned stars to make use of to make your next run just a tad easier.
In fact, Sky Force Reloaded's dedication to giving players several things you can do when playing each stage is definitely its best feature. In addition to gradually upgrading your ship, there are also ship parts to unlock additional planes or complete overall missions (like downing X quantity of enemies through the game) to earn Technicians, selectable crew members that'll give you bonuses (for example enhancing the quantity of stars in a stage or letting you take a bit of damage without losing the “no hit” bonus). Joining Technicians are cards, which randomly show up on stages that then give passive benefits, have an effect on certain aspects of specific stages, or give a limited amount of “bonus time” that will provide you with some specific upgrade as long as the countdown is still active. All of these things combined efforts to craft a game that actually feels like it's had a large amount of thought put in it, and it gives players an experience that sits somewhere between the quarter-munching cabinets in the glory days of arcades, and far deeper, more strategic home console-focused releases.
Unfortunately, the thing that sets Sky Force Reloaded apart from the competition is even the element that ends up weakening it.
That realization began with a quite simple action: my unlocking the Mega Bomb. Bombs really are a staple from the shooter genre, therefore it appeared like the best bonus weapon to begin with. After i began my next run, the game added a UI element showing which button bombs are attached to-but then, for the lifetime of me, I couldn't figure out how to rely on them. I played a number of stages still confused, feeling like a bit of a moron for not understanding this type of simple part of the game. Then, it finally dawned on me: basically wanted bombs, I needed to spend stars to obtain them. All three extra weapons require stars in exchange for each control of said weapon every time you enter a stage, and if you die before using up your stock, it's gone. I discovered the idea of spending the valuable credits I needed to upgrade my ship on those weapons ridiculous, and so i simply didn't-I focused instead on upgrading my main weaponry whenever possible. (While you progress, you'll encounter additional methods to earn charges, making this system seem even more unnatural.)
And, through that, another frustration began to grow. Each bit of your ship takes ten upgrades in order to reach one additional “level” towards the power of that item, and that i was quickly understanding that when i sunk more and more stars into powering up my ship, the benefits I was feeling from each upgrade felt absolutely miniscule. Most shooters have trained us to feel a genuine change in our capability from each power-up we grab, but here, I had been just continually grinding out procedures in to inch along in a snail's pace to see similar results. To compound that, the base set of weaponry was getting to be boring-I still only had the same straight-shot main cannon (which does finally started to spread after numerous level increases), the same kinda-sorta useful secondary wing cannons, and the same singular homing missile. I've been returning to two classic shooters via my Switch in recent weeks-Strikers 1945 and Gunbird-and the variety that those games offer up compared to what Sky Force Reloaded was giving me seemed miles apart.
As I got deeper and deeper into Sky Force Reloaded, I had been legitimately having a good time, but was also increasingly seeing it as being a game title that had tried some interesting ideas that sadly became misguided. And yet, I simply couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeper happening. So, I finally chose to do some research on the game-and that's when I came across that its origins were what mobile-based free-to-play title.
After downloading the iOS version of Sky Force Reloaded and spending a fast bit of time by using it, things was a lot clearer. This is a game which was built with the objective of being a time sink, in which the frustration of how long it's taking to obtain your ship upgraded to the level you would like so that it is at can easily be solved by spending cash to purchase stars. The lack of weapon variety that I was feeling? That's answered by unlocking those additional ships. And yet, in the week that I'd been playing, I hadn't even gotten near to getting all of the parts for even one new choice to be selectable. Within an environment where one can pay just to strengthen your default ship off the bat, and then farm the higher-difficulty stages hoping to snag those pieces, however, you could without doubt open those new planes far quicker.
Sky Force Reloaded is disappointing-not since it is a poor game, but since it is a good game buried under some other-platform baggage it shouldn't be saddled with. Developer Infinite Dreams really needed to rebalance the sport when using it console-and when they did, they did not go anywhere near far enough. Around I'm not keen on microtransactions, the Switch version (and I'm assuming other consoles) lacking any choice to pay for stars means an upgrade system once based around a free-to-play economy now feels even more out of whack, and many players are probably going to either give up or feel finished with Reloaded long before they've unlocked stuff that can genuinely make the game better.
Had the weapon upgrades taken a shorter period per level, and we received more ships unlocked in the beginning for a better sense of variety, Sky Force Reloaded would happen to be a far more enjoyable console-focused experience. As it stands, there genuinely is really a fun game here if you can put aside the frustration from the game's heritage-but it'll probably simply be fully appreciated by those people who are the kind that love to sink hours and hours of efforts into the titles they play.
