Oh, and those boss fights I mentioned? They’re a precious resource in Drifting Lands. What we’re left with is a wide selection of largely same-y stages that you’ll forget about as soon as you reach the score screen. Additionally, the game uses procedurally generated waves of enemies, which, while this adds variety to the levels, it also means every stage lacks that finesse that comes from a tightly-choreographed shooter like you’d expect from Cave, Toaplan, Psikyo, and the other masters of the genre. And worse yet, backgrounds repeat frequently over the course of the campaign.
The thing is, Drifting Lands‘ stages are bland and uninspired. The best shmups feature memorable stages that are designed like intricate Rube Goldberg machines, players’ skills as they’re forced to cautiously navigate labyrinths of pulsating bullets on their path to the inevitable boss fight awaiting at the stage’s conclusion. You see, a big part of what makes a bullet hell shooter stand out is found in its stage design. While the RPG elements are great-safe for a rather paper-thin and predictable story-the shooter side of things leaves quite a bit to be desired. Unexpected turbulenceĭrifting Lands’ stages repeat far too often, and while the procedurally-generated enemy waves add some variety, they make the game feel loose and unrefined. It’s a really addicting mechanic, and easily one of the real highlights of Drifting Lands’ package. And I’d be lying if I didn’t find myself playing stages over and over again just to unlock mightier guns or other bits and bobs to assist me in toppling the next story mission.
#DRIFTING LANDS V1.0.1306.24953 UPGRADE#
It’s easy to become completely immersed in trying to upgrade your once-humble craft into the ultimate force of airborne destruction.
This means you’ll have to keep a close eye on the action and choose the best time to unleash your more potent abilities. Want to heal yourself in the middle of the fray? Equip a healing skill! Want to devastate swarms of drones at close range? Slap Conflagration in a slot and watch nearby baddies fizzle out like moths that fluttered too close to the flame! Much like an MMO, each of these skills has its own cool-down and warm-up timer, too. In addition to outfitting your ship-which come in three classes, each with varying strengths and weaknesses-you can also select from over 100 skills (four active, and two passive) which offer a number of offensive and defensive capabilities.ĭrifting Lands doesn’t throw you power-ups the same way most shooters do. By upgrading its core stats, which include Navigation, Power, and Structure, you can equip bigger and better armor, guns, engines, and the like. The Ark, the space station your scrappy band of mercenaries, politicians, and outlaws call home is equipped with a hangar that allows you to spend your hard-earned credits to upgrade your ship in a number of ways. Let’s start with the good: Drifting Lands does a great job of nailing what makes a good RPG so addicting. The Ark offers pilots an ungodly amount of customization options to explore as they take their fight to the skies.
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