Sine Mora EX

The Dark Souls of shoot em Up Git Gud

tl;dr: Pass on this, unless you want a very different but subpar take on the 2d Shmup.

This is a difficult game to review, because there are some very interesting ideas. However, those interesting ideas are not executed well.

In essence this game is a 2D side-scrolling shmup, with the best point of comparison being similar to Gradius or R-type.

The game is difficult like the classic titles in the series so I can't recommend this for newer players, as the game can be punishing in its patterns and how its power up system operates where you lose them on hit.

However there are some unfair enemy/hazard placements in the stages. Unlike R-type or Gradius, the weapons you have access to don't compensate for some of the difficulty presented. Sine Mora is little less punishing because you can take a couple of hits before the reset to the start of the stage, and can recover power ups, but you are not going to reach the power that you do in a Gradius or R-type. So you have to be ok with routing for comparatively under-armed ships compared to other games.

The number of hits you can take is attached to time. Functionally, this creates a more obtuse way of tracking how you're doing, and makes it more difficult to know if you can recover quickly enough to get to a checkpoint.

The presentation itself is fairly competent, as the art direction is pretty good. The enemies look great, and the scenery is pleasant. The pilots are star fox style animals, and that adds to the charm of this game.

The premise of the story is interesting, but the dialogue and presentation are lackluster. The voice acting itself is fine, but the script is too on the nose. The scenes between stages only serve to slow the story down given the low quality of the writing.

So basically this leave the game looking pretty with interesting ideas, but doesn't play particularly well and is difficult. This leaves basically only able to recommend the game to experienced shmup players who want to try something different and aren't afraid of the flaws I described. For everyone else there are other shmups that check off a lot of the boxes this game does better.

+1

It started off as a great game with graphics and scenery. Hard enough to give a good challenge. But what is this with credits and time? and restarting over? Nah... None for me thank you. A good effort but futile. It's worth the 1 $ ... just to see that some people worked for it.

Sine Mora EX
pros:
//fast game with modern day graphics with easy controls that moves from location A to B to C and so on
//good amount of action and special effects
cons:
//a lot of difficult battles/boss battles
//some overpowered enemies
//some enemies have unfair attacks
//could use more health drops and powerups
//sometimes too many hazards that make it difficult to evade
//can't change aiming direction

//good game
Personal Suggested Purchase Price: $0.99 Or Less During Sale

I'm new to shut em up and I think it's good. For the last achievement, doing a stage in Insane without picking up anything and at the end of each part a score coin may drop and you are forced to pick it up, it feels so bad...

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]

I have seen many people who think making a shmup is an easy task. But the reality is obviously way different than that. Making a shmup is as hard as any other game and if you are not careful, you can easily screw up and create something that ends up being vastly inferior to the other games in the same genre.
Case in point, Sine Mora EX. The game certainly looks good and even has some seriously talented people like Suda51 and Akira Yamaoka on the development team. But the end result is a game that makes so many critical mistakes when it comes to shmup game design.

Time is a valuable thing / Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings

Sine Mora EX introduces time as a core mechanic of the gameplay. Instead of having lives like a traditional shmup, this game gives you a time limit for every section of every level and if that timer hits zero, you will immediately be directed to the game over screen. You can increase the amount of time you have by killing enemies and collecting certain powerups, while taking hits decreases it by a set amount.
The idea itself is intriguing, but the problem is that I think it adds nothing of value to the game in execution. Even the story mode never clarifies why is this mechanic a thing instead of a normal lives system. But if you ask me, I would say the time mechanic is a countermeasure taken by the devs to make the game a little more bearable; as they knew a normal lives system will result in a lot of angry players complaining about the game's shortcomings. Because the more you play this game, the more you will find out how many cardinal sins this game commits in terms of shmup design.

My expectations were low but HOLY F***

And the reason such a lives system was needed is because of how incredibly easy it is to get hit in this game in unfair ways.
Sine Mora EX does an absolutely horrible job when it comes to visual clarity. Sometimes, it's really hard to differetiate between hazards that are in the background and those that are in front of you. Some of the projectiles, especially missiles or blue & orange projectiles that are much smaller than the rest, blend-in with the backgrounds & environments and become hard to see as a result. Even some of the enemies can blend-in with the environment. So, there will be tons of moments when you genuinely won't know what hit you.
That's not where my complaints end though, as the game also tries to make you take hits in very unfair manners. In some of the levels, enemies and their projectiles come at you from behind, with no prior warning. Some of the boss attacks come at you out of nowhere with no prior telegraphing. The game even has the audacity to use one hit kill hazards, with many of them designed in a way to get you on your first time. Then we have the unclear hitboxes for both the controllable aircrafts and the environment, which is especially visible in levels where you have to navigate through narrow passages such as caves, autoscrollers or the penultimate level which puts you inside of a rotating maze.
So, I think we can all see how implementation of a normal health system could have made this game unbearable to play. But the problem is that the time mechanic also hurts the game in places. To explain this claim, we have to get into the mess that is the power up system.

Can we PLEASE let this outdated power up system design DIE FOR GOOD?!

Sine Mora EX is one of those shmup games that use a power up system for your aircraft's main weapon. You can collect power up tokens to level up your main weapon, but if you get hit by the enemies, you will lose them and the game will give you a chance to recollect them. As much as I am not a fan of such power up systems in shmups, I am willing to accept them if they are not detrimental to the gameplay...
...Do I have to say how much I loathe the way Sine Mora EX handles power ups?
Upon getting hit in Sine Mora EX you will see all of your additionally collected powerups flying out of your aircraft, resetting your power level to the default value, and all of them will be thrown towards the front where the enemies and their projectiles are coming from. And what's worse, these powerups all have collision physics which means they can collide with the enemies and the environment, getting thrown towards locations where you have no chance of recollecting them. The situation is so bad that if you do not collect them the instant you lost them, there's a close to zero chance of them floating back towards you. In that case, you have to make do with your default firepower until you find more.
This creates major problems down the road as you play any of the game modes. The drops you get from enemies are randomized, which means you might not find enough power ups when you desperately need them. Your resources are also preserved upon going from one level to the other, even if you are playing the story mode (that makes no sense from a narration standpoint btw), which means you might see yourself facing the final boss of the game with no upgrades, such as happened to me.
And what do you think can happen in these situations? You have to use an underpowered weapon against hordes of enemies and bosses who are showering you with projectiles, all while the clock is ticking down and every hit (fair or unfair) causes you to have even less time remaining, making you pray for the game to give you a power up soon. And you know this is a legit concern and a sign of a failed design when the game itself breaks its rules by constantly giving you time refills & extra power ups to have you surviving the final boss fight.

Why is this not fun?

I cannot fathom how boring this game feels as a whole for me.
There are some incredibly designed bosses in this game. One of the bosses is a massive construction vehicle that transforms into a gigantic mech, and another one is a train with a very sick design that is equipped with tons of weapons. But the bossfights themselves are devoid of any excitement. All you do is just shooting at the damn things until they blow up, with nothing interesting happening. And the same applies to regular levels.
The soundtrack doesn't help the situation either. Many of the tracks are beautifully composed. But when it comes to hearing them in the game, most of them do nothing to elevate the experience. I never felt like the soundtrack is doing the levels or bossfights justice and none of them felt memorable to me. This is such a fatal flaw in a genre where the soundtracks are usually the highlight of the experience. And I don't know what or who is at fault here: The composer's lack of experience in shmup genre, or the director probably forcing a certain theme because of the story mode.

Aaaaand it crashed

The cherry on top of everything, is the questionable performance of the PC port.
The initial loading process is rather slow, even on a SSD. The game is prone to crashing at random, especially when you get to the end of a level, which makes progression difficult as the game only saves after a complete arcade run or story chapter completion. Sometimes it even disables various Steam features such as the overlay and screenshots at random, with any attempt to access them resulting in a crash.

TL;DR

It has neat ideas, but fails to execute them. Coupled with the horrible visual clarity, infuriating power up system and a bland gameplay, Sine Mora EX doesn't have much to say in the shmup genre.

This is one of those games that is so amazing, I can't believe it's real.

It's a more casual shoot'em up but it's story driven with really great visuals.
The only weakness this game really has is that these shoot'em-ups usually have great soundtracks and this one's music fairly bland and generic, which is really unfortunate given the obviously high standard of quality applied to every other aspect of this game. They should have held out for a more capable composer but beyond that, this game is just so unique.

Sound: 6
Graphics: 8
Story: 5
Gameplay: 7
Commands: 7
Fun: 5
Time to load / lag: 9
Bugs / Problems: 9
Final score: 5