After playing the game for around 6 hours and clearing both loops on arcade mode I finally feel confident in giving Drainus a review score.
Drainus is a surprise dropped, weirdly-named horizontally-scrolling shmup released by Team Ladybug - the studio which you may recognise for Touhou Luna Nights. Ladybug's works are known for extremely high quality sprite art and polished presentation, and Drainus definitely lives up to the studio's reputation in this regard, if not raising the bar even further.
Seriously, this game looks great already in screenshots and it's even better in motion. The mix of highly-detailed sprite art and 3D effects gives Drainus a distinctive visual style, and the game is just filled with spectacular setpieces from beginning to end (such as the stage 1 intro sequence, which truly does not get old no matter how many times I see it).
I've seen some people complain about the soundtrack being bad which is a complaint I don't understand. While the music isn't quite as good as the visuals, it's still a very strong soundtrack (good enough for me to have purchased the soundtrack on steam, in fact). Many of the songs are catchy and overall the composition nails the Gradius V-inspired progressive techno, semi-orchestral vibe they were going for. Maybe I'm just a shallow person, but the utter glory and confidence of the presentation is enough to make me overlook the many flaws within the moment-to-moment gameplay experience, at least to an extent.
Another thing to note is that Drainus has quite a hefty amount of storytelling (at least, for shmup standards) if you aren't playing on arcade mode. While the story in Drainus is a fairly generic "underdog hero defeats the big evil space empire" kind of narrative, and the main characters involved are quite one-dimensional, it's still communicated to the player pretty well through stage intermission cutscenes and discoverable audio logs. There are some moments of genuinely good foreshadowing and emotionally-satisfying narrative payoffs for those paying attention. The trend of modern shmups developed by indie/doujin and other smaller studios dabbling further into storytelling without disrupting the flow of gameplay required for the genre to work is a trend that I think is healthy and should be encouraged.
Now to talk about the actual game mechanics of Drainus, which is where things get a bit more dicey. The main gimmick of Drainus is that you have a shield which can absorb all non-physical projectiles and reflect them back against enemies for more score and/or damage. This shield is tied to a guard meter which recharges when you aren't using the shield. This mechanic works quite well and the creative stage designs and bosses do a good job at mixing things up in regards of where and when to ideally absorb bullets. It kind of reminds me of the much older doujin shooter RefleX or maybe even something like Mars Matrix.
You also have a ton of other resources besides the absorb shield, which is where the game's balances takes a big hit. As well as the absorb shield, you have an Axelay-style health system where the amount of hits you can take before dying is equivalent to the number of power-ups you have equipped, powerful i-frame bombs tied to a separate also recharging meter, conventional shields which can soak up extra hits for you without losing any power-ups, and more extra lives than you can shake a stick at since you get a score-based extend every 100,000 points without exception. This makes the game feel way too forgiving and most of the time you feel close to unkillable when you're fully powered up.
It's not much of a surprise that many genre veterans are dismissing this game as being too easy even on the highest difficulty. Although I think the lack of difficulty in Drainus is being kinda exaggerated by some, it is true that the mechanics are balanced way too much in the player's favour here.
The way the powerup system itself works is also a cause of contention. Throughout the game you'll be acquiring power-up modules by absorbing bullets and destroying enemies, and you can use these modules to purchase upgrades and change your current loadout in wait-for-it a PAUSE MENU. Yes, at any point of the game you can pause the game and spend your time buying powerups and equipping them in a kind-of cumbersome loadout menu. This kills the flow and feels quite "euroshmup"-ish, doing a disservice to the otherwise very tight and focused design of the moment to moment gameplay.
Arcade mode mixes things up a bit by limiting you to one visit to the upgrade screen per stage and limiting your selection to 90 seconds, but it still doesn't feel like enough. I appreciate this kind of upgrade system as a way to make the game more approachable for beginners, but I would have preferred it if arcade mode used a more traditional or even Gradius-style powerup system instead. The game already takes enough inspiration from Gradius V as is so this kind of mechanic would make a lot of sense to me but it just isn't there.
There's also some stuff in Drainus that's just weirdly broken. For example in story mode (which includes the highest difficulty called Ridiculous mode) bosses can't time out which makes the scoring system pointless as certain boss patterns could theoretically be milked for score infinitely. Another broken thing is that there's an "emergency power up bomb" which you can use instead of a more conventional bomb. This bomb will, as the name suggests give you a single power up refill instantaneously. Since shields are tied to the power up system. You can just emergency bomb the moment your shield is disabled, restoring the shield back up to full power for free. Good use of this would make even Ridiculous difficulty a joke once you have the perfect shield unlocked.
In conclusion, Drainus is a good first shmup from Team Ladybug, and is just a few balance patches away from being a great or even fantastic shmup. Despite all the flaws of Drainus, there is a genuine love for the genre expressed in this game, which can especially be seen in the title screen for arcade mode, which looks very authentic as an arcade game and even has multiple attract screens. At it's finest moments, Drainus feels like the closest we're ever gonna get to Gradius VI or some other new Treasure shmup, but unfortunately those moments are at least for the time being buried under some questionable design choices.
Drainus is a surprise dropped, weirdly-named horizontally-scrolling shmup released by Team Ladybug - the studio which you may recognise for Touhou Luna Nights. Ladybug's works are known for extremely high quality sprite art and polished presentation, and Drainus definitely lives up to the studio's reputation in this regard, if not raising the bar even further.
Seriously, this game looks great already in screenshots and it's even better in motion. The mix of highly-detailed sprite art and 3D effects gives Drainus a distinctive visual style, and the game is just filled with spectacular setpieces from beginning to end (such as the stage 1 intro sequence, which truly does not get old no matter how many times I see it).
I've seen some people complain about the soundtrack being bad which is a complaint I don't understand. While the music isn't quite as good as the visuals, it's still a very strong soundtrack (good enough for me to have purchased the soundtrack on steam, in fact). Many of the songs are catchy and overall the composition nails the Gradius V-inspired progressive techno, semi-orchestral vibe they were going for. Maybe I'm just a shallow person, but the utter glory and confidence of the presentation is enough to make me overlook the many flaws within the moment-to-moment gameplay experience, at least to an extent.
Another thing to note is that Drainus has quite a hefty amount of storytelling (at least, for shmup standards) if you aren't playing on arcade mode. While the story in Drainus is a fairly generic "underdog hero defeats the big evil space empire" kind of narrative, and the main characters involved are quite one-dimensional, it's still communicated to the player pretty well through stage intermission cutscenes and discoverable audio logs. There are some moments of genuinely good foreshadowing and emotionally-satisfying narrative payoffs for those paying attention. The trend of modern shmups developed by indie/doujin and other smaller studios dabbling further into storytelling without disrupting the flow of gameplay required for the genre to work is a trend that I think is healthy and should be encouraged.
Now to talk about the actual game mechanics of Drainus, which is where things get a bit more dicey. The main gimmick of Drainus is that you have a shield which can absorb all non-physical projectiles and reflect them back against enemies for more score and/or damage. This shield is tied to a guard meter which recharges when you aren't using the shield. This mechanic works quite well and the creative stage designs and bosses do a good job at mixing things up in regards of where and when to ideally absorb bullets. It kind of reminds me of the much older doujin shooter RefleX or maybe even something like Mars Matrix.
You also have a ton of other resources besides the absorb shield, which is where the game's balances takes a big hit. As well as the absorb shield, you have an Axelay-style health system where the amount of hits you can take before dying is equivalent to the number of power-ups you have equipped, powerful i-frame bombs tied to a separate also recharging meter, conventional shields which can soak up extra hits for you without losing any power-ups, and more extra lives than you can shake a stick at since you get a score-based extend every 100,000 points without exception. This makes the game feel way too forgiving and most of the time you feel close to unkillable when you're fully powered up.
It's not much of a surprise that many genre veterans are dismissing this game as being too easy even on the highest difficulty. Although I think the lack of difficulty in Drainus is being kinda exaggerated by some, it is true that the mechanics are balanced way too much in the player's favour here.
The way the powerup system itself works is also a cause of contention. Throughout the game you'll be acquiring power-up modules by absorbing bullets and destroying enemies, and you can use these modules to purchase upgrades and change your current loadout in wait-for-it a PAUSE MENU. Yes, at any point of the game you can pause the game and spend your time buying powerups and equipping them in a kind-of cumbersome loadout menu. This kills the flow and feels quite "euroshmup"-ish, doing a disservice to the otherwise very tight and focused design of the moment to moment gameplay.
Arcade mode mixes things up a bit by limiting you to one visit to the upgrade screen per stage and limiting your selection to 90 seconds, but it still doesn't feel like enough. I appreciate this kind of upgrade system as a way to make the game more approachable for beginners, but I would have preferred it if arcade mode used a more traditional or even Gradius-style powerup system instead. The game already takes enough inspiration from Gradius V as is so this kind of mechanic would make a lot of sense to me but it just isn't there.
There's also some stuff in Drainus that's just weirdly broken. For example in story mode (which includes the highest difficulty called Ridiculous mode) bosses can't time out which makes the scoring system pointless as certain boss patterns could theoretically be milked for score infinitely. Another broken thing is that there's an "emergency power up bomb" which you can use instead of a more conventional bomb. This bomb will, as the name suggests give you a single power up refill instantaneously. Since shields are tied to the power up system. You can just emergency bomb the moment your shield is disabled, restoring the shield back up to full power for free. Good use of this would make even Ridiculous difficulty a joke once you have the perfect shield unlocked.
In conclusion, Drainus is a good first shmup from Team Ladybug, and is just a few balance patches away from being a great or even fantastic shmup. Despite all the flaws of Drainus, there is a genuine love for the genre expressed in this game, which can especially be seen in the title screen for arcade mode, which looks very authentic as an arcade game and even has multiple attract screens. At it's finest moments, Drainus feels like the closest we're ever gonna get to Gradius VI or some other new Treasure shmup, but unfortunately those moments are at least for the time being buried under some questionable design choices.