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Not too many game publishers dare venture into the long-forgotten, like vertical-scrolling shooters. Those games marked some slightly older gaming times when Nintendo and Sega ruled the gaming scene. I remember my first encounter with this genre and this sort of game, sometime at the end of the previous century. I owned an old console which was a replica of Sega's console from that time, and this vertical scrolling shooter was part of it.
Me and my friends spent days trying to complete a single stage because this game was the hardest thing you could experience back in the day. The moment I set my hands on Cygni, those memories started to flood my brain, like I found myself 30 years back in time.
I was happy beyond measure, but little did I know, I was about to be humbled by Cygni so badly that my feelings transformed from pure love and sweetest memories to frustration beyond words, one I was able to feel only while trying to beat some hard bosses in From Software's games.
Cygni: All Guns Blazing will awaken this feeling inside of you because this is a very difficult game. Your job in Cygni is simply to move around the screen while shooting the hell out of hundreds of enemies while trying to differentiate which devil has to be shot down and which one must be picked up to make your battleship stronger.
Unlike other games of this genre, Cygni has a story, but do not anticipate a sophisticated one full of twists and turns and whatnot. The story is as simple as it can be. You play as a pilot who joins the fight against invasion. Who is invading who, and to which army you belong, is not particularly clear. Everything you need to know is that you must fight, and that's exactly what you're doing.
The story of Cygni will serve to connect the dots, and those dots are the game's levels or stages. Each stage features swarms of enemies that are trying to bring you down, and you're doing exactly the same: bringing them down in a chaotic battle full of flashes, explosions, fire barrages, missiles that follow your aeroplane, and everything else you can expect from such a game.
Those story moments are presented throughout the cutscenes, which are made perfectly. The main character, along with everything you see on the screen, will be filmed in a perfect video game presentation like you're playing some story-related title. Soon, everything will be transitioned into a familiar, 2D vertical view, and the action, along with the chaos, will start.
The gameplay of Cygni is very fast and chaotic, and it is simply impossible not to get hit by enemy fire. In this game, your focus must not be to not get hit but rather to calculate how much heat you can endure. Some stages will feature two different types of enemies that can be wounded only by specific types of weapons, so to win the battle, you'll have to switch between the weapons mid-fight, which can be very hard and demanding.
Apart from switching weapons, you'll switch armour modes as well, because sometimes you'll have to worry about hitting enemies while receiving minimal damage along the way, and sometimes you'll have to focus entirely on firing because the enemies will not hit that hard during those stages.
Your weapons and armour can be upgraded as well. Finishing the missions will reward you with points that you can spend to buy various upgrades like double guns, improved armour plates, and more. Of course, your aircraft can be upgraded with temporary upgrades as well during fights, but those upgrades will last for as long as their active life. After your aircraft is destroyed, you start from scratch.
At the end of each stage, the boss awaits, and those encounters are seriously formidable, mark my words. I was beaten so many times by the first-stage boss that I lost count. The attacks the bosses launch at you are just ridiculous, and avoiding them becomes pure luck instead of skill, as it should be.
And for your information, I'm talking about playing on the easiest difficulty. For the greater challenge, you can switch to the harder one, although I don't know who can play that way. However, there will always be people who want to punish themselves, I guess. The difference between the difficulties is in the armour points and the number of lives you'll have before you have to restart the stage.
Perhaps the biggest Cygni's letdown is the luck of strategically planning the fights and more relying on luck to win encounters. You do not have the room to showcase your skills or anything else. It is just to circle around the battlefield, try to avoid at least a bit of enemy fire, and land as many hits as you can, and that's the strategy you'll be using throughout the entire game.
This low variety in gameplay tends to become very tedious after several encounters, and before you know it, you'll drop the game, not because it is bad or anything similar, but because you can grow very tired of it in a record amount of time. I finished the game only because I had to do it due to my obligation, but if, by any chance, finishing the game was the option for me, I highly doubt I would see it to the very end.
Graphically, Cygni looks amazing. Each stage is a different battleground with amazingly-looking backgrounds and graphical effects that will blow you away with their beauty. The explosion effects are particularly beautiful. Once you destroy a major enemy or a big aircraft, the following explosion will cover the entire screen, leaving you in awe.
Unfortunately, it comes with a cost. Whenever the screen is packed with exploding and other effects that require higher usage of CPU and GPU resources, the game starts to stutter and FPS drops, sometimes even below acceptable levels. These FPS drops can be really problematic, especially because Cygni is a game that heavily relies on fast reflexes and plays fast in general. When the frames drop, you can miss the right positioning, and especially on higher difficulties, it can mean game over.
I've already mentioned the perfection of cutscenes in the context of the story, but graphics-wise, they're even more amazing. The cutscenes are filmed to look a bit cartoony, with the beautiful main character and the aircraft she flies. Even though the game would be perfect without those cutscenes involved, it is a very commendable feature, I must say. The developers have my great sympathy for integrating them.
As amazing as the graphics are, even more amazing are the sounds of the game. Whether it is about in-game sounds of weapons, lasers, missiles, explosions, and everything else that produces characteristic sound, or the perfect soundtrack played in the background while scrolling through menus and playing through levels, all sounds seem just perfect.
Conclusion
If you're one of those gamers who prefer good gameplay and does not care too much about nowadays's gaming standards, where the game must be a game, film, book, and whatnot, all in one package, then Cygni: All Guns Blazing might be just the game for you. However, be prepared to be frustrated beyond words, because even at the easiest difficulty, the game is extremely hard.
Apart from that, it tends to become tedious over time due to the lack of variety in gameplay. However, if you're into the good graphics and amazing sounds in the game, all those shortcomings can be forgiven because the game looks and sounds almost perfect. Keep in mind, however, that this is still a preview version of the game, and once the full version is out, some of those issues will surely be fixed.
With all that being said, fans of the genre will love Cygni, even at this stage. As for the others, I'm not so sure because the game has some serious problems but has a certain charm too, so it is very hard to decide whether to love this game or hate it. I believe both are possible at the same time.
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