Roguelike bullet hell shooting action is the order of the day in Rightfully, Beary Arms. The moment to moment gameplay is decent, with a great selection of weapons to find, and upgrades to unlock. It’s not a game that hands these out too easily, mind you, and while the challenge might win some over, personally I found the initial grind a bit too laborious to really get me engaged and excited enough to try over and over again.
Upon the start of a run we can choose one of three starting guns – I always preferred the alien blaster, but a cap gun or hand gun are also available. As soon as we hit the teleporter, the timer begins and we are on our way to either survive to the end, or die trying.
Levels are short, sharp, and procedurally generated from a set of rooms. Loading in we never really know what layout we’ll find; some can have multiple off-shoots and rooms, others are shorter and more straightforward. Regardless, each level is broken up into several small rooms that require clearing of enemies to proceed. Enemies range from kamikaze blobs to deadly sentry turrets, rapid mini spiders or powerful flowery things, among others.
Sometimes we’ll be granted a reward for clearing a room, such as a new weapon, some Plu – the game’s currency – or more importantly, some Inspiration, our skill points that allow us to unlock permanent upgrades. It’s best to focus on these early as otherwise we’ll end up beating our head against a wall when trying to beat the levels, and the bosses at the end of each.
At the start of a new set of levels we can choose potential rewards in the next, such as a better chance for Plu or Inspiration to appear, or forfeit this to visit the shop to spend the Plu on health, weapons, or other items.
All of this adds up to the general randomness we’ve come to expect from our roguelike games. Some runs can have us feeling powerful, others border on a waste of time as we get pummelled early on. Weapons can be upgraded with perks if we find them, such as a chance to insta-kill enemies or firing double projectiles, but – like everything other than Inspiration – these are lost upon death (or pixelization as it’s known here).
Whereas titles like Hades encourage repeat plays because the act of playing the game – even as we’re being beaten up – is pure fun, I have to say that I never felt that same drive with Rightfully, Beary Arms. It’s not that it’s not fun in bursts, but despite there being different options of weapons and upgrades, it all feels very one note. As a twin stick shooter we aim and attack with the right stick, but this feels very loose in terms of accuracy, and a bit too often attacks miss or simply don’t do the damage we’d hoped for.
The bullet hell aspect comes in harder as we progress, and while we’re not looking at Ikaruga levels of hell, there can be a good amount of projectiles to avoid at times. We found, though, that it’s very easy to be multi-hit by several projectiles in a row with little way to counter hit after hit (we do get a dodge that can skip through bullets but the cooldown by default is quite long). The hit boxes also felt off at times, with one run ending after I was hit by a boss attack that – to my eye – was nowhere near me.
Conclusion
In short bursts there is fun to be had with Rightfully, Beary Arms, and once we nab a few permanent upgrades some of the issues are less pronounced. But we simply didn’t find it all that engaging enough to want to repeatedly play and progress, with one-note combat and occasionally cheap deaths.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
