Star of Providence Review (CharmingTrax)
My opinion of this game changed fairly significantly after beating Floor 6 for the first time.
While it starts off strong, it is unfortunately riddled with that issues that become more and more pronounced, the further into it you are:
- Absent any permanent progression across runs and with the shop only having a few new weapons or bombs, variety dries up very fast once you have progressed into hardmode. Hardmode is fairly interesting in that it doesn't just bloat hp and damage values of enemies, but noticeably changes their patterns, However this then amplifies one of the games biggest issues:
- Visual clarity is abysmal and continues to get worse the farther you are get into it. And before you say "but it's a bullet hell game, of course there are lots of enemy projectiles". this isn't about the number of enemies projectiles. Between your own bullets splitting up and bouncing off walls (often changing color in the process), insane amount of screenwrapping going on with both portals and projectiles that screenwrap by default and enemy projectiles having every rainbow color imaginable, it is legitimately impossible to see whats going on this game in later rooms.
- The difficulty tuning is also somewhat off in my opinion, anything before Overlord is a complete cakewalk and then the difficulty has an obscene spike that makes learning Floor 6 and its boss infuriating because getting there is such a boring slog. Weapon balancing is also ridiculous, a game this difficult shouldn't have such variety in power in its weapon/mod combinations (homing triple lasers/fireballs utterly trivialize the game). Since it is so essential to almost instantly empty any room you come across, the game is in my opinion noticeably easier/less frustrating on Intense difficulty, which speaks to something being severely wrong with the overall difficulty curve.
- Similar to the previous point, the risk/reward tuning is also baffling in the sense that some optional content like the gauntlet is a nobrainer, while doing the temple and microcore is just griefing yourself. Almost every single unique weapon I ever found was also just straight up worse than what I was currently wearing at that point. Likewise entering a room to see a Cavalier there in hard mode is an instant reset due to his shield, I don't even bother with him anymore, since he is grossly overtuned for a floor 1 enemy.
The game also keeps spaming me with Steam cloud sync errors since the update yesterday and refuses to remember half of my settings.
TLDR:
If you want to have a little bit of fun for cheap, get this and stop once you beat the Floor 6 boss for the first time, because until then it is definitely a fun experience. Afterwards the game gets repetitive and its issues take center stage.