Blasting Into A New Generation: A CYGNI: All Guns Blazing Review

By Manuel

Players: 1-2
Platforms: XBox, PlayStation 5, PC

Being a fan of the shmup genre, I was excited when CYGNI: All Guns Blazing (Hereafter simply referred to as "CYGNI") first popped onto my radar. Coming to us by way of Konami, who have previously brought us the Gradius and TwinBee series, I was drawn in by their promise of this game kicking off a new generation of shoot-em ups. (Or as I called them earlier: "shmups".) That was quite the boast to make for a game that didn't have a lot of information behind it, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be them. The wait is now over, and CYGNI is currently available on the XBox Series X|S, the PlayStation 5, and on PC. I played the PC version for this review, but I think all of what I have to say will be relevant across the board. There's a lot to go over in this one, so let's dive right in!

CYGNI opens with a very upbeat cutscene that promises a fun adventure filled with a catchy soundtrack. That sounds fun right? Unfortunately that opening cutscene is the only part of the game that gives off that vibe, and I can only guess it was created as a way to keep the game from being a total downer throughout. Though our pilot (who I don't believe is ever named) is all smiles in the beginning, she'll be all frowns and furrowed brows by the second stage. Let's back up to explain the plot a bit. Humans have spread throughout the galaxy and have begun to harvest the ruins of an ancient civilization found on the titular planet of CYGNI. The planet is something resembling a graveyard, full of giant alien carcasses ripe for the picking. We humans love our strip mining, so pick we do. All goes well until these giant lifeforms start to awaken. Perhaps angry for the intrusion, perhaps just out for blood in general, they go hard for the attack. Most of the human defenses are wiped out in an instant, and you're one of the few surviving pilots who make up the last line of defense. These aliens are no pushovers either, as they are very numerous, and some are even bigger than the ship carrier you launched from. The story then takes all sorts of dramatic twists and turns from there, with none of them being particularly interesting. It's a tale we've all heard before, and is only truly disappointing due to the promise of something totally different at the start. Tonal whiplash aside, I can't help but feel that the story felt tacked on. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the giant aliens were created first, and then the story crafted around them. Either way, plot in a shmup is not needed to provide a great gameplay experience, but CYGNI's opening is really something else. Anyhow, let's move on to discussing gameplay next.

If you thought that Konami's next generation of shooters was going to be beginner friendly, well you're totally wrong as CYGNI is one of the most difficult games you'll probably ever play. Completing the tutorial is so necessary that I don't know why it wasn't made mandatory, as you'll likely only get through a minute of gameplay before you hit a game over screen. That quick turnover is due to the fact that CYGNI only gives you one life, and your only path to survival is through shuffling around your ship's resources from offense to defense. This key mechanic is easy to explain, but hard to master. In short, it's done by simply moving your ship's resources to weapons or shields. Stronger weapons means more powerful attacks, and stronger shields mean you can take more damage. The only power-up in the game are energy cores left behind from defeated enemies, and these can be used to replenish power in either part of the ship's systems. Picking up power-ups when you're fully changed adds them to an in-game currency you can use to unlock permanent upgrades, and you can recharge spent missiles if you pick up energy when on the fully offensive side of things. Speaking of missiles, they're the only attack available to you other than your main gun. They lock onto random enemies, but hit hard. The energy shifting mechanic gives the game a risk/reward setup that reminds me a bit of Ikaruga's color-changing mechanic. During all this you'll be facing against endless waves of enemies that are trying to take you out, and the game will dip heavily into the bullet hell side of things once all those enemies start unleashing their weapons.

Though the gameplay mechanic might sound rather simple on paper, there are a few things that make it complicated. First off is the fact that you'll often have to alter your main weapon's line of attack using the right analog stick. CYGNI might try to claim it's also a twin-stick shooter, but you can only actually move the gun about 45 degrees to the left or right. This is probably the most annoying aspect of the game, as you can never really seem to pull your weapons towards the many attacks that will come from your sides, or even behind you. Then there's the fact that enemies exist both on the ground and in the sky, with each needing a specific weapon to be destroyed. You can only use one attack at a time, so you'll often have to decide if it's worth bothering with ground enemies at all. The ground weapon doesn't even become useful until you get the homing feature added to it, and that's something that the tutorial doesn't tell you. Actually a lot of things shown to you in that tutorial aren't available to you at the start of the game, and that's just as frustrating as everything else. Determining when it's best to attack ground or air units will always be a tough call, and there will even be some bosses that have parts of their body in both areas. Add to this the damage sponge aspect of most enemies, and you have a recipe for bad gameplay. Yes, you can take enemies out more quickly if you feed all your ship's energy into attack, but most enemies will still take a surprising amount of time to kill.

You'd think I'd be done complaining about the many things that CYGNI gets wrong, but I still have one more giant issue to discuss. Every single level in CYGNI is a long, ten-minute or so affair. This might not be too bad if they were fun, but they're mainly filled with endless waves of the same generic enemies. It honestly feels like the developers were trying to pad out the levels themselves, so that they weren't too short compared to the long boss encounters. Speaking of those encounters, they each can take several minutes, and they usually all have different forms complete with their own unique attacks. These bosses are a nice break from the faceless enemy mobs that came before, but they also can destroy your ship if you're not careful. Since most boss attack patterns only have a small window where they're vulnerable, you'll want to focus on attacking so you're not sitting in the game for hours on end. Doing this opens you to attack, and it only takes a few hits for you to be destroyed. If you remember what I said earlier, you only have one life in CYGNI, and death means you have to start the entire level over from the beginning. This means you can spend ten minutes playing, get the boss down to 10% health, and then be forced to do it all again if you fumble the energy shift mechanic just once. I understand that this can be a skill issue on the part of the player, but it's still an issue that shouldn't happen multiple times in a game. It took me a good hour before I beat the first stage, and I shifted to Easy so I could even beat the later ones. Easy mode gives you an actual life system, and makes everything far more manageable. I used that difficulty setting to get me familiar with the levels, and unlock upgrades that made Normal difficulty not feel impossible. Even though I'm not ashamed I had to resort to shifting to Easy mode, I am a bit upset that I felt I had to do it at all.

After beating the game I was left wondering how Konami could've gotten all this wrong. They were the masters of the shmup, and this game seems to be mediocre at best. Then I realized that they were only publishing the game. I sort of left it out of the intro, but this game is actually developed by a UK studio named KeelWorks. I'm not sure if this studio has worked with Konami in other capacities, but they seem mostly focused on cinematics and 3D graphics. As far as I can tell, this is their first game. This explains a lot, and it really puts everything else into perspective. This isn't a brand-new, genre-defining game from a once legendary developer. This is a first-time release from an untested developer who probably aren't too well-versed in the genre they're trying to update for the next generation. I know I can't really make that last point with any sense of surety, but it truly feels that way if you play the game. Knowing that they focus on 3D graphics and cinematics makes a lot of sense too, as CYGNI is the literal definition of fluff over gameplay. I guess it's a decent showing from KeelWorks, even though I doubt it'll be a particularly memorable one.

While I'd be lying if I said that CYGNI didn't look like a great current-gen game, I'd also be remiss if I didn't also point out its overall lack of originality and charm. I'm not sure if that opening cutscene I mentioned earlier was created by a team that had no idea what the rest of the game was going to look like, but it looks like nothing else the game has to offer. Besides the fact that it's the only cutscene in the game that's fully animated, it's also far more colorful than anything else CYGNI has to offer. While I get that the drab atmosphere of the game itself is most likely intentional, one can only play in dark, barely lit stages for so long before it all starts to get boring. The enemies don't help much either, as there's very little variety between them. I don't think I can accurately tell you what a single one looked like outside of playing the game again. None of them were memorable outside of the bosses, and those are only noteworthy because of their size. For example I can tell you that all of the bosses were big and impressive, but I don't trust myself in saying which boss belonged to which stage. GYGNI looks great on a technical level, but nothing about it draws you into the game. This might as well be a tech demo with how dry it comes off at times.

I hate to mention that opening cutscene again, but the music in it also paints a very different picture of what the rest of the game will be like. The opening track is upbeat, catchy, and I thought the rest of the in-game music would be the same. That's not a stretch either, as shmups very often have great soundtracks attached to them. I actually have several shmup soundtracks that I listen to regularly, and assumed that CYGNI would deliver more of the same. Then the actual first level starts and you realize the rest of the game is filled with what sounds like a filler score left over from an old sci-fi movie. Part of me wants to call it cinematic, but it really doesn't deserve that label. It's easily the most boring music I've ever heard in a shmup before, and one of the worst soundtracks I've heard in general across any genre. I'm actually amazed by how bad it is, to the point where I think the game would've been better off just placing royalty-free music in place of it. It does nothing to lift up the other aspects of the game that are also lacking, and if anything makes the experience far more drab and boring than it already is. I guess I can at least say that things are a bit better in the sound effects and voice acting side of things, but that hardly makes up for the big failure that comes by way of the soundtrack in general.

Even though it's probably for the wrong reasons, there's no denying that there's hours and hours of gameplay to be found in CYGNI. While I personally don't find it as replayable as other arcade-style shooters in the genre, I can easily see others sinking a lot of time into this one perfecting its many gameplay quirks. There are different ways to play the game, lots of upgrades and medals to earn, multiplayer and arcade modes to check out, and even achievements and trophies on respective platforms to earn. This all comes in at a not-too-bad price of $29.99. While I guess that price is pretty good for console players, I can't recommend anyone on PC paying full price for this one. In a move that I can't begin to understand the reasoning for, Konami saw fit to release CYGNI completely for free on the Epic Games Store at launch. That's right, at the time of this writing, you can grab this game completely for free on PC. While that probably sounds awesome for those that might be interested in the game, it makes me wonder why Konami would go for such a strange move while it was still selling it for full price on every other storefront. The obvious answer is that Epic Games paid them a ton of money for that deal, but it completely devalues the game from here on out when talking about it on PC. It's rather impressive how this game manages to fumble just about every aspect of its own release.

I honestly don't know how I feel when it comes to recommending CYGNI: All Guns Blazing. On one hand I do think that it succeeded in delivering a new generation of shmup, but on the other I think that it failed in making a new generation game that was actually fun to play. Then there's the whole Epic Games Store freebie thing that still rubs me the wrong way. Mixed feelings or not, I can definitely say that this is not a game for beginners or those wanting to get into the shooter genre for the first time. This is as unfriendly a game as there can be, and it'll only lead to frustration if you come into it blind. If you like your shmups to be completely over-the-top hard, or if you thought Ikaruga was a total cakewalk, then this might be the game for you. Just don't pay full price for it on PC. Anyway, see you in the next one!

Check Out CYGNI: All Guns Blazing on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1248080/CYGNI_All_Guns_Blazing/

---

Story: C
Gameplay: C-
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: C-
Value: C

Overall: C

Pros:
+ Sets out to deliver a next generation shmup experience, and succeeds in several ways.
+ Is a great-looking game for the mast part, and has a lot of impressive moments scattered throughout.
+ Though I'm not exactly a fan of the core gameplay mechanics, they are simple to grasp.
+ Very challenging for those who are looking for that kind of thing.

+/- While it can be considered a pro I guess, the fact that it was available at launch for free on the Epic Games Store rubs me the wrong way.

Cons:
- Extremely difficult, to the point of frustration. This is not a beginner-friendly game at all.
- The opening cutscene promises something totally different than the rest of the game delivers, and almost feels like a bait-and-switch.
- Even though the game looks amazing, the drab atmosphere and generic enemies bring down the experience a bit.
- Music is generic and completely forgettable.
- Does not live up to Konami's shmup reputation. That makes sense since it was developed by UK studio KeelWorks, and this was apparently their first game.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

---

#Cygni