Kromaia Review

 

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If there’s one genre of games that has been sorely lacking of good titles in the last couple of years, it’s the 3D arcade shooters. Arriving well after the party’s over, Kromaia tries to revitalize this ancient sub-genre by offering a well-crafted combo of old and new, in virtually every way.

 

As you can see, everything is clearly visible at all times.

There’s one thing I feel the need to point out right at the start. When looking at the game’s screenshots, most of them will be blurry or bloomy and you won’t be able to discern quite what’s what. In motion, it’s a whole different thing. Kromaia is a visually stunning game, using simplistic shapes and intense colours to point out what’s your objective and what you’re supposed to be be shooting at. Most of the “locations” are gray-ish or white, while the details, such as enemy combatants and points of interest, get a snazzy overcoat of vivid colouring. In the backgrounds, you’ll notice vast explosions of… energy, I guess. Whatever it is, it’s nice, and keeps the game dynamic even when you’re not shooting lasers/scatterguns/blasters at enemies. The game’s auditive performance is just as well-realised as its visuals are, so expect the guns and thrusters to blow your face away. You will feel quite badass though.

Just as in-your-face as the graphics might be, the gameplay is even more tense. Being a semi-open world game, you’ll be equipping four different ships, each in a wholly different area. These areas are large and require a fair amount of searching before you manage to find your objectives. That’s okay, though, because the game’s combat is more than enough to warrant the players coming back.

Gameplay-wise, Kromaia is a simple but relatively deep game. While the controls aren’t difficult to get a grasp of, you’ll have to learn how to use your ship’s tools with great precision and little hesitation. Thrusters, brakes and such are a given, but since you’ll switching vessels every so often, you’ll never be able to really set your roots. This isn’t bad in any way, mind you, since all of the ships control nicely and responsively, and their weapons are quite interesting when it comes to enemy interaction. Interestingly, the ship controls in Kromaia are much more similar to your run-of-the-mill FPS games than to its genre peers. Since each ship can activate thrusters to move in all of the 3D-available directions, the usual WASD combination works wonders as far as soaring through the space goes. Since the movements are quite floaty, however, precision movement isn’t always a viable option, so there’s that.

 

All of my yes go to those particle effects.

As you float about the given gamespace, you’ll quickly encounter your first enemies. Since this is an arcade shooter, there is an abundance of things to explode at all times. Quite interestingly, the drones seem to adapt to your playing style and you might be encountering new behaviours as you progress. During my own playthrough, they seemingly learned how to strafe in all directions, which made fighting them that much more fascinating. None of the enemies are too beefy, thankfully, so a couple of precise shots will usually knock them out in an extremely vivid explosion of particles and polygons. The bosses, however, are a wholly different animal, requiring you to study their attacks and behaviour while trying to deal enough damage to bring them down. These leviathans offer tense situations that somehow managed to remind me of Shadow of the Colossus. There’s something about taking down massive gods that rings all of my bells, so I felt pumped before each boss scenario. To actually get to the bosses, however, you’ll have to complete objectives in each of the four game worlds. You’ll have to fly through a set number of checkpoints, to be exact, which takes you on a tour of each and every “sandbox” you’ll be fighting your way through. Once all of the four gods are defeated, you’ll have to finish off the final one, which will be waiting for you in the game’s central hub area. The storyline offers only minimal exposition as to what’s going on, but with the “Mother” speaking to you as you progress, it also sets a mysterious atmosphere, making the game that much more memorable.

As all modern titles, Kromaia has its share of bugs to discuss too. I’ve had a crash in the first game world that occurred seemingly randomly while fighting with the boss, thus nullifying my progress in that area. Putting that aside, I also encountered some scoring issues and was seemingly unable to revamp my controls because they kept reverting to defaults, regardless of what I edited.

Summa summarum, Kromaia is a fun game that won’t have any difficulties in distracting you for a couple of hours. With tight gameplay mechanics and only a couple of hitches to go with it, not to mention the stunning visuals and great audio effects, it’s an easy recommendation for all of those who want to play something equally modern and retro at the same time