Star of Providence (formerly known as 'Monolith', but changed due to possible Copyright issues) is a phenomenal game. It has everything you could want in a shoot-m'-up Roguelite title: long-term progression, a plethora of weapons and weapon variations, clear visual and audio cues of enemy attacks, plenty of enemies and bosses with varying difficulty and attack styles, and I could go on and on.

The difficulty of Star of Providence is through the roof, but is kept fair by giving the player precise movement, mobility and only a teeny tiny hitbox. More importantly, I was able to learn my way through the difficulty curve without looking up any information on how to reach secrets or secret bosses, which is something I greatly appreciate of this title.

In addition, the game lets you customise builds and runs however you like, by giving the option to toggle settings and unlockables on/off whenever you want. You can change the difficulty of the game, how punishing the run will be, what weapons and bombs will appear in the spawn pool, and the game even allows you to input seeded runs.

The art and music of SoP are both incredible as well. Normally I dislike chiptune OST due to its shrill nature, but SoP's OST is devoid of this, making it a pleasure to listen to. Granted, some of the enemy sounds can be a tad loud, but this is needed for you to notice when an attack is coming.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the lore that goes behind this game. At first glance, it may seem like a regular shmup, but the story is actually quite interesting once you figure out why the world is as broken as it is. Many NPC's within the hub of the game reveal information on their experiences, allowing you to puzzle together a great deal of lore yourself.

The only aspect of Star of Providence that I did not enjoy was the looping system. Looping, unlike changing the difficulty, changes certain aspects of the game whenever enabled. Mainly, bullet and minion output of regular enemies are greatly increased through this setting. You can loop as much as you want, increasing the difficulty only slightly every time you do so. At a certain point (from loop 25 and on), this mechanic forces you to completely overhaul your playstyle to an aggressive one, because you will need to kill enemies before they start attacking to avoid their hellish - and frankly unavoidable - bullet output. In other words: the game is not so much about dodging anymore, but more so denying enemies to attack you in the first place, which I find a bit excessive considering you need to withstand this for a minimum of 50 loops to get the final achievement. Like this achievement's name, it really feels like an eternal nightmare.

Despite this, I highly recommend SoP to any fan of the shmup and Roguelite genre. It is truly one of the best games I have played in the genre, and I have played a lot of them. If you play without 100%-ing, it has about 50 hours of content, so it is definitely worth its price as well!