Nephenthesys is a vertical top-down shoot ‘em up game that was made with the Unity graphics engine. It was developed by Let’s Dev Studios and published by eastasiasoft on the 17th of January 2024. It is available in English or Portuguese language and features a tutorial, which I recommend playing through before heading into the real game thingy. It is really short – it will show you how to move, shoot and release a drone. That is literally it, so let’s get into the full experience, shall we?
RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 17, 2024
DEVELOPER: LET’S DEV STUDIOS
PUBLISHER: EASTASIASOFT
PLATFORM: PLAYSTATION 5
You are able to choose between nine different ships, but you still need to unlock five, so basically you choose between four. Each of them has a different weapon and drone, so I recommend playing the game through with all of the ships. The gameplay is quite simple – you will have to evade enemies’ bullets and destroy the enemy ships until you will reach the level’s boss. If you fail, you will have three continues available, and after that you will need to start a new game from scratch. It is also pretty fast and hectic, like most of the shmups are, but I had a feeling that your ship moves around a bit too fast, so it is kind of difficult to manoeuvre it around enemy bullets. I can also say that the use of drones is pretty much useless and it is not really fair that you need to restart a whole level when failing at the boss’ section. I guess that artificially lengthens the game’s duration, as it only features five levels you need to complete.
Game’s graphics are not anything special, except really colourful, but the real criminals here are a below average soundtrack and sound effects, so it is real close to me recommending it playing on mute. Nephenthesys also presents quite a challenge, but is fair and not anything you cannot overcome. Practice makes perfect, so just replay and replay until you will succeed. The trophies here are pretty straightforward and easy to achieve, if you complete the game. You will only need to kill a total of 2500 enemies, collect 125 weapon upgrades, and score more than 50,000 points in a single run, so I can conclude that it is a relatively easy Platinum to add to your collection. It is also on the cheaper side, as it will only cost you 5,99 €.
Nephenthesys does not bring any innovation to a great genre, and I can only recommend getting it, if you have beaten all other shmups that are available out there, which you have not. Honestly, I have expected more from it and I was left kind of disappointed – it is not totally bad, but it is not actually fun either.
GRADE
