Habroxia 2 Review

Despite my fondness for arcade scrolling shooters and bullet hell games I completely missed the original Habroxia, first on Playstation platforms and the its recent release on Xbox One. Having just finished Habroxia 2 though, I’d urge you not to sleep on this sequel. It is a super fun, old school shooter style game that brings its own unique spin on things in really engaging ways.

First up is something that took me a little while to get my head around; Habroxia 2 gives us full 360 degree of movement to aim and fire, playing almost like a twin stick shooter. While most enemies still comes from in front of us, any we miss can still be defeated even if they are behind us on the screen. I’m so used to only having direct fire and having to move the ship a lot more that I initially found myself just hold the right stick in the forward direction, still moving the ship around a lot. Once that switch clicked for me though, it opens up a whole new way of playing that is just brilliant. Utilising this method of attack to stay out of harm’s way is key, but that’s not to say enemies aren’t still capable of giving us a bad time.

Even early on they are pretty relentless. The screen scrolls at just the right speed and fills up with bullets and enemy ships pretty quickly. There are some that are only capable of aiming forward or charging at us using the ship itself as a weapon, but the majority have the same freedom or attack range as us. This pretty quickly evens out any advantage the 360 aiming might give us. Some even have homing attacks, and my word, once they come into it the difficulty ramps up quite quickly. I must’ve played Level 3C more than a dozen times thanks to a lot of these attacks combined with plenty of extra ships to navigate.

In addition to our standard gun we also have a front and rear special attack. These can be individually changed at the start of each level to any one that we have unlocked; once gained, I favoured the Bomb at the front for its power, and the Homing Missiles at the rear for their ease of use, though there are about five or six others to choose from too. These are governed by a recharging meter that has four levels of attack. Once used, it takes a few seconds to fully recharge. If we fire it before it fully charges we get a weaker attack – good for use in a pinch. Let it charge though, and we have a split second as it reaches max power where it’ll actually let off an even more powerful variant – think something along the lines of the active reload in Gears of War. It’s not significant enough to be life or death, but it’s a neat extra tool in our arsenal.

 There are also pickups dropped by enemies such as a super powerful laser blast, screen clearing bombs, shields, and more. We can only hold one of these at a time, and if not used they will be overwritten should we pick up a new item. I must admit, this was quite frustrating at times as I’d be saving a laser for the boss battle only to accidently pick up a shield icon at the last minute. But I soon took to just using whatever I had early on and hoping to find more later on. Health and credits also drop from enemies or scenery as well as the refill on our last defensive manoeuvre – boosting. This lets us charge forward smashing anything in our way for a brief period. Great for when the screen is filling up but by default it doesn’t last too long, so be wary of when you use it.

Those credits mentioned above are used to upgrade our ship in between levels. There are several categories – health, shot power, spread and speed, pickup power, and boost power – that can be purchased, each costing significantly more the higher the upgrade goes, naturally. Make sure that you pick us as many as you can though, as you’ll absolutely need to upgrade to get very far. Remember Level 3C up top? I was only able to finally beat that by grinding out credits to upgrade my shot power and health several levels. After about the 15^th go I was ready to call it quits for the day but I persevered and eventually got to a level that let me get through by the skin of my teeth. Funnily enough, by getting this powerful the rest of the game was actually pretty easy by comparison.

Level 3C, you say? Well, as that name may imply, there are several versions of each stage that lead to different boss encounters and routes through the game. While the straight path will take us to one boss fight and the next level, in some stages there are hidden alternate routes. These lead to different boss encounters and lead on to whole new stages. It’s smartly done, encouraging exploration. Levels aren’t always scrolling left to right either. Occasionally –whether we’ve found an alternate route or not – our ship will pivot 90 degrees and suddenly we’re scrolling up the screen. It brings some freshness to the presentation even if the gameplay remains the same.

Finish all five paths (A though E) and the final boss encounter opens up. Beat that and we unlock Boss Rush, Boost Rush and New Game +, letting us take our newly power ship back to face tougher enemies and level up further. Colin Moriarty, writer on Habroxia 2, has often stated his desire to make fun, achievable Platinum’s (or in our case, 1000G) and even as someone who cares less than anything about achievements, I managed to get almost all of them in about 6 hours with the game. It’s a smart list, rewarding us for just playing the game mostly, with a few optional extras such as collecting each levels bounties or finding the hidden astronauts in each stage (which I plan on going back for).

Conclusion

Habroxia 2 takes my love for old school arcade shooters and gives it a fresh, modern spin. It can be difficult early on, but I always felt I was making some progress thanks to the upgrade systems. Having a full 360 degree of attack movement is a breath of fresh air, as it being able to equip a couple of special attacks to help out. The 16-bit visuals are great (as is the soundtrack), the gameplay feel is spot on, and it doesn’t over stay its welcome at all.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.