Cygni: All Guns Blazing review: intense SHMUP action

Cygni is one of the best SHMUPs in recent memory, despite a weirdly disjointed tone.

Ava piloting her ship. / Konami

Upon jumping into the Cygni’s first mission you’ll be presented with a cutscene reminiscent of Foamstars’ art style where pilot Ava is getting ready for a mission while upbeat pop-rock plays. There’s an odd shot of Ava’s butt and panties as she pulls up her suit. This whole cutscene, panty-shot and all, feels entirely out of step with the rest of the game. It absolutely did not prepare me for the absurd bullet hell experience that awaited me.

Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a fast-paced shoot-’em-up, and it’ll have you gunning down thousands of robots and ships in both the air and on the ground in hopes of ending the war. What is the war? I’m not entirely sure – every cutscene other than the first one was intensely serious and dreary, made with a fraction of the budget. The tone in Cygni feels inexplicably jarring, but the guns and the explosions? Oh yeah, they’re good.

Cygni is tough – so tough, in fact, that I had to swap to Easy mode after just a few minutes of play. It almost seems intentional, though. Playing through the game earns you points that you can spend on ship upgrades, and these will see you shooting off many more bullets, missiles, and homing attacks, in addition to drone assistants that make shooting down enemies much easier. Going into Normal mode with these upgrades makes the experience far more approachable, and then there’s Hard mode waiting for experienced bullet hell players that demand even more.

Explosions. / Konami

Once you’re in a level with all of those upgrades, oh boy. Explosions, everywhere, almost constantly. Cygni’s subtitle is ‘All Guns Blazing’ and that’s what you’ll be doing. There’s no reload or recovery on your basic cannon fire, meaning you’ll be firing all the time, and you’ll never run out of enemies to shoot. 

It’s not mindless though. You can only get hit as long as your shields are functional, and luckily, enemies drop shield pick-ups pretty often. But if there are a lot of enemies to take care of you’ll want to use your limited supply of missiles. You can swap your stored shields for missile ammo, putting you in a position where you might want to weaken your shields in order to take out foes that are overwhelming you. Shield pick-ups don’t add to your missile storage automatically or when your shields are full, which means you’ll need to focus on juggling these two resources – you can change missiles back into shields when in a pinch, though.

Missiles help clear out enemies. / Konami

That means that there’s a bit more risk and reward incentive to Cygni than you might expect from your first mission. Easy mode really is easy, allowing you to revive instantly after death so you’ll never fail a mission, but Normal, Hard, and the unlockable Arcade mode will force you to use your talents to stay alive. There are only seven missions in the game, but they range from nine to 15 minutes long, which is a reasonable length for a classic SHMUP.

When in the heat of the action, I can’t think about anything else. Cygni has so much going on that my hyperactive brain can’t tear itself away. There are always more enemies to shoot and bullets to dodge – it commands your attention, and if that attention breaks, you’ll probably die. Moments of respite are incredibly rare, and rarely last for more than a few seconds. Even if you manage to take out all of the foes flying around you, there is also a ground layer with enemies that will fire bullets and explosives up at you, and you can see these attacks hurtle upwards as you plan your evasive manuevers. You have an alternate weapon that fires on the ground, and while these parts aren’t as exciting as the sky combat, it often means that you’ll have to split your focus between the foreground and background mid-battle, increasing the intensity.

Ground units will get involved in battle too. / Konami

It’s a lot of fun and doesn’t outstay its welcome or introduce any mechanics to slow down the experience. If I am to level a complaint at it, I’d say that it’s tough to actually get started with. The tutorial isn’t mandatory, so even though it seems simple enough to jump in and play, you’ll miss some key mechanics if you skip it. 

Normal mode seems incredibly difficult unless you’re an experienced bullet hell player, which leads me to think that these modes should’ve been locked until you play through the game on easier difficulties to unlock upgrades first. It seems like a more natural, obvious progression path, but instead you unlock Arcade mode, which is a gauntlet of every mission in a row with a single life. Not for the faint of heart.

Boss enemies pose the biggest challenge. / Konami

Cygni asks a lot of the player. It demands your attention and – if you’re not one of those aforementioned bullet hell demons – it asks you to invest time to learn, upgrade, and improve. But the really hard part was getting started with Cygni, and playing at the pace that the game demands — once you’re over those first few levels, it’s hard to put down. 

Cygni: All Guns Blazing isn’t a SHMUP essential, but it’s damn good fun once you start shooting and completely forget all of the cutscenes. 

Score: 7/10

Platform tested: PS5