The Last Federation (Or is It)

The Game:

A turn based bullethell game made by Arcen games that wants to blend innovative combat with active and procedural storytelling giving the player the opportunity to make their own story.

Story: 9 (I do love anything that lets me build my own story though)

A Hydral Ladies and Mentlegen

You are a Hydral a space hydra, and you are the last Hydral because every other Hydral, was killed because they were a bunch of spacefaring fascist overlords. But not you or at least hopefully not you thats for you to decide, but after your race’s almost genocide you are imprisoned on the planet of your only rival (Insert race here) but you break out steal their prototype battlecruiser and flee the planet on your way to create peace in the galaxy through any means necessary. There are 8 races each with their own ideals and abilities as well as goals it is your job to manipulate all of these things and create and unstoppable faction, maybe get all the warmongers to work together and burn the rest of the galaxy to the ground, get the super capitalist robots to deny all trade and dump copious amounts of toxic waste on anyone who is not willing to join you, or create a new form of peace getting all of the peace loving races to work together and unite to push the warmongers either out of the galaxy or out of existence. The races are interesting to discover so I won’t tell you to much more their.

Gameplay: 7

It’s interesting but not for everyone, turn based bullethell works in a fun way you select where you are going to move towards taking into account momentum and turning radius of course, then you aim where you are going to shoot your bullets. Early game your bullets will hit almost everytime however it is a top priority to dodge enemy bullets. You also have the ability to divert power to Engines, Weapons, or Shields, your ship has so much power and you set the three of these to whatever the situation demands, an enemy too big to fight shows up power down weapons power up shields and thrusters and book it. Already set yourself on a solid movement path take a turn to power down the engines and fire some extra powerful shots at the enemy. There are also special moves and additional ancient Hydral tech you pick up on the way to make life easier for you and to make death easier for those who oppose you.

The Look: 7

It has a style and a decent one at that, all of the aliens are unique from bug people, to robots, TO AWESOME INTELLIGENT BOAR THAT SOMEHOW FLY A SPACESHIP. (cough) excuse me I got carried away in the coolness that is a race of intelligent boar.

The Universe: 8

You know a game has a solid universe when you have the option to sit out and just watch what happens, lore wise not much happens however all of the races act like real intelligent beings for example, they may give up some small morals for allies at first but over time the two races blend and their moral compasses (compi?) begin to point in the same direction and they get along better. Most of the sane races look down upon you dumping toxic waste on a planet full of enemies the honorable ones calling it cheating the less honorable ones calling it a waste of good land. It is deep and it is a living breathing universe however most of the backstory is thrown out the window in seconds and not really brought up again.

Soundtrack: 7
It’s solid it fits the theme but has a tendency to loop fairly often and is rather noticeable when it does it it’s still nice and during combat it’s great but listening to it outside of the games context is rather underwhelming.

Example of Soundtrack

Overall: 7.5

It’s innovative but it is a niche it is not for everyone but if you are like me (or Foamy) and have this morbid curiosity to know just what a turn based bullet hell is like pick the game up it’s good fun and there are even difficulties like You are OP for those less masterful with bullethells.

Next month's Theme Fun for the whole friend group. These will be games me and my friends find ourselves playing (and not being very good at) rather often starting with the game of our current free time. Warhammer 40,000 Dark Crusade (Which is the best because mecha communist space weeaboos for lyfe)




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Yamuu