Skygunner Review

I have never even heard of this game before it came to Playstation Premium Classics and I decided to play this game at all because it was a game with the anime art style that wasn't a JRPG, fighting game or visual novel. That said, the game is just "okay".

The biggest strength the game has it's brevity, it lasts about 2 hours and I wouldn't want the game to be any longer than that due to this, the game can almost feels like playing an obscure anime movie especially with it's art style and look. The steampunk asethetics are also kind of nice too.

Some good things about the game is that mechanically it's sort of interesting, where you can shoot from your aircraft, and have 3 special weapons like, a dog launcher, fireworks and crosses, all 3 have their own use in combat. Fireworks is for regular enemies, crosses is for larger foes and dogs are for very weak fodder enemies. This is all pretty interesting on paper all though a weakness for me is that the game straight up tells you what special weapon to use during combat which takes the fun out of guessing which attacks work on which enemy. I'm also not sure if they do a good job at telling you since I used fireworks when it told me to use the dogs and I got by just fine.

However, one major thing about the game that really can be a geniune hassle is the lock on and controls. In Skygunner, you have a lock on but your character doesn't shoot to where the camera is locked to, you still have to aim your reticle to where the lock on is while your aircraft is moving. The game uses character relative aiming while also demanding you to aim your shots even though lock on should just do it for you. On top of this, aiming with the reticle tends to be way to sensitive and it's hard to feel like I'm getting a good shot in. The camera also spazzes out in tight spaces with your vehicle being always moving.

The final boss is also a massive damage sponge, and trying to do the timed multiple cross attack and then shooting to get his shield down felt more like a game of luck. It took me a while to get the timing down to shoot the crosses and when I did do it, I felt like it was luck rather than skill.

Let's just say due to all this, if it weren't for rewind and save states on PS5, I wouldn't get anywhere in the game or beat it at all. The game's easy difficulty with character of Femme also helped me get to the end of Skygunner at all since you had a crazy level of hp before a game over, however I do not want to play this game on higher difficulty modes with the other characters.

Overall, Skygunner is a game that is just "okay" to me. The easy mode, save states, rewind and it's short length are big factors to why I got to the end at all didn't drop it. I can't imagine trying to beat it on base PS2 hardware with limited continues. If you can get past the design quirks I mentioned, you might be able to enjoy the game more than me.