The first thing that caught me immediately with Star Fire: Eternal Cycle (Star Fire) was the vibrant and beautiful art style. It is extremely colourful and reminds me of a classic anime mixed with a 1990s saturated morning cartoon style. Developed by Ethereal Fish Studio, Star Fire is a 2D hack and slash like retro classics of old, but from a partially isometric perspective, along with modern graphics and a robust roguelike progression system.
The controls and basic core gameplay are simple but have layers of complexity, multiple builds, upgrades, and more that give Star Fire infinite possibilities for types of play styles.
Multiple Ways To Build Your Hero
Star Fire: Eternal Cycle has been an oddity for me, as I don’t normally enjoy or put this much time into roguelite games. The variety of builds you can synergize is exceptionally well-executed. During my runs, I was able to unlock a ton of different weapons, and none felt useless or randomly generated with bad statistics or anything like that. I definitely had items I liked more than others, but experimenting with ones I hadn’t yet felt great, and unlike most games like this, it wasn’t an immediate sigh and going back to the old build. All of the weapons have different ways you can customize them, which works really well as you synergize and match with the various elemental sets available to you. There are various bonuses you can get from these elemental core sets, with a wide variety that will appease any style of play you prefer overall or for certain enemies or encounters. Taking the time to create a proper build always feels powerful.
The game has a robust progression system that gets even more in-depth as you get further into the game and reach much more difficult runs. Your runs will always net you enough weapons, items, and resources to create new and better builds. As always, when you find that elemental core set that you were after, you will feel extremely satisfied and happy with completing a build you were after.
Fight…Again…And Again…
Combat is always frantic and feels tight. There is a nice ramp up in difficulty as you progress, with the start and middle stages being approachable, while the final stages act as a sort of skill check, leaving you either dead in moments or victorious with the right level and build. There is excellent build variety, so do not feel like you have to stick to one; test and experiment. Stages also have various modifiers that change each time, so it keeps things varied when replaying content.
The game features a wide variety of enemies to fight, each having its own sub-boss types and modified types, similar to the enemy hordes in the Diablo series, where some enemies synergize with others, requiring you to prioritize eliminating them first. Like the newer entries in the Diablo series, there are some modern mechanics here, like ultimate attacks, dodging, and fairly decent support for a gamepad. This game is unique in that it feels like an old-school arcade beat ’em up with roguelike progression and Diablo-like enemy hordes.
Conclusion
The game is very much focused on gameplay, with some other aspects of the game suffering right now. Sound effects appear to be missing in several areas, including some menus, during stage rewards, and for certain attacks from some bosses.
I also feel there could be better menu navigation and quality of life features, like making it easier to compare upgrades and other things. I also would love to see more tutorials, as I would open a menu that was fairly complex with nothing to tell me what was going on. On top of these issues are numerous localization issues. While playing in English, I encountered numerous errors and items that lacked translation.
The developers have been listening and are aware of these issues; it’s just a matter of waiting to see when they fix them. They have been prioritizing gameplay over everything, as it should be, and they continue to make changes so far, so hopefully we see the game supported and all feedback is taken into account and acted on.
Overall, this is a unique hybrid, so if the idea of a game blending Diablo/2D beat ’em up/roguelite mechanics sounds like fun, then definitely give Star Fire: Eternal Cycle a try! Just be aware of the overall unpolished feel of it right now, but its gameplay is solid and the main focus for the dev team right now, with polish coming later.
Star Fire: Eternal Cycle
$16.99
Pros
- Fun hybrid gameplay of Diablo, 2D beat em ups and rouglikes
- Beautiful and flashy graphics and art style
- Almost infinite build options
- Lots of content
Cons
- Localization issues
- Lack of tutorials
- Some gameplay imbalance
- Missing sound effects and overall unpolished presentation at this time
