REVIEW / Starward Rogue (PS4)

When doing this reviewing thing you go through bouts of playing multiple titles that loosely all fall into the same genre. This isn’t necessarily of our choosing but it’s always a good exercise. Playing multiple games in one genre allows you to better see the merits and flaws of current titles. You aren’t basing anything on a hazy memory of another game that might be similar, you’re looking at a bunch of current games and pitching them against one another on a level playing field. This is very much the case at the moment because I’m playing a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this will be the genre we’re in today. The game is Starward Rogue and it’s coming off as rather a mixed bag for me.

In Starward Rogue you’ll be piloting a mech as it battles its way through a killer-robot-infested spaceship called The Megalith. You’re on a rescue mission, and usefully Rodney, your charge is stuck on the lowest level of the vessel. I think you can pretty much guess the premise from there. Battle through five decks of murderous automatons and traps and perform your rescue; all this being done in a typical roguelike shooter fashion. The premise isn’t new, but what is? I don’t have an issue with the basics. This is a perfectly good reason to be playing the game, and as this one isn’t particularly story-heavy we’re all good.

What Starward Rogue does well, it does very well. There are about six different mechs that you can take into the fray and each of these are sufficiently different enough to make you want to try them all. Some are tankier than others and their load-outs vary, but in a game that is going to be different every time you play, this is welcome. They offer varying degrees of difficulty too, something worth considering when making your choices. I don’t think I’ve settled on a favorite quite yet so the jury is out for me, I think this will be dependant on personal taste. As an additional point, this is a good thing. There are too many games out there that give you a choice for you to quickly realize that there is really only one or two good options out of a bunch. This takes the agency away from you and your decisions and this isn’t the case here.

In Starward Rogue the challenge is real. Between some really nasty bosses, there are plenty of other big stompy robots wandering around the spaceship that are having a permanently bad day. When you add to this minions galore, traps, turrets, and other degrees of automated nastiness you’ll really need to be on your toes. This game is a bullet hell in the truest sense. Everything attacks differently and everything will cough up enough projectiles to light up your screen. Adrenaline junkies looking for their shooter fix will find a lot to enjoy in the sprawling mass of rooms and corridors that is The Megalith. A word of caution, the turrets in this game can’t be blown up and they spew death so some puzzling is required for you trigger-heads.

Graphically I don’t have much to complain about with one little caveat that I’ll come to shortly. The graphics are colorful and have a 90s vibe to them. The sprites are relatively simplistic but this makes some of the bigger, tougher, enemies stand out a little more so no problems there. The rooms of the spaceship have a nice retro feel to them and it’s all done neatly enough to draw the eye and make you want to keep going. On the subject of aesthetics the music and sound effects are fine, nothing to write home about but still very fitting for the title. The music has an edgy electronic arcade feel, which is nice but gets a touch repetitive after a while.

My biggest issue with Starward Rogue is the UI. Text boxes and tool tips looked tiny to the point where I was squinting to see what I needed to do next. I still haven’t figured out what everything does, not because I don’t want to but because the prompts make my eyes hurt. My eyesight is not the best, to begin with, but I shouldn’t need to sit about three feet away from the screen to stand a chance of reading useful information. The controls aren’t difficult but it’s still handy to have all your tools at your disposal figuring out what things do as you go in a game like this is a death wish. This isn’t game-breaking, more an annoyance I could have done without.

The difficulty of Starward Rogue is a strange one. I started playing on medium difficulty and was getting my rear handed to me a lot. This isn’t unexpected for a game of this type and I’ve played a lot of games where even the middle setting is hard as nails so this isn’t a complaint. Wanting to see more of the game than the loading screen I scaled back to easy to get a better feel for what was going on. Easy mode, on the other hand, felt far too easy. I stormed my way to the third flaw of the ship in no time and on my first try. It just didn’t feel like much of a challenge. It wasn’t until the final boss of that run and his stupid screen-filling wall of nope that I was eventually ended. The difficulty, in my opinion, needs tweaking. I was expecting a softer touch, not a free pass. There are five difficulty modes and by this logic very easy will be a cake walk and I don’t even want to contemplate what very hard mode looks like.

Outside of these gripes, this is a pretty enjoyable arcade shooter with some interesting bosses and a good variety of weapons and sub-weapons to play with, once you get used to how they all handle. I’ve got no idea what most of the sub-weapons and passives do on account of my earlier point about the UI but I’m still having fun trying them out. If you like roguelike gameplay and enjoy the shooter genre you’ll get a decent helping of fun here. If you need a bit of hand-holding or have poor eyesight I think you might struggle.