Flightpath: Adventures in Venaris

Heavy on the storytelling, and rich in anime art EastAsiaSoft's latest foray into the shoot'em up genre via Illogic Games has us following closely the flight paths of three individuals as they take to the skies guns a blazing. This science fiction space adventure titled, "Flightpath: Adventures in Venaris" takes place across two separate modes including the story driven campaign and an endless roguelike mode that further builds upon the gimmicky flight path focus. 

Ship-wise though it's your fairly standard bullet hell shmup with a strong emphasis on upgrades, and upgrade management. As you collect coins/credits, and fulfill your role in the provided plot you'll stop and shop for multiple weapons, shields, armors, generators, and stackable boosts that will determine your ability to output the desired defensive and offensive results based upon an underlying overload mechanic.

As either Kath the mechanic, A.J. the detective, or Max the racer you'll take to interplanetary skies as your goals and objectives are made known through a mixture of contextual dialogue captions, comic book style cutscenes, and on the spot radio banter. 

You'll fly through a gauntlet of planet based stages to the tune of an Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty setting facing off against waves of lesser enemies leading up to a battle with a final boss per stage. Ultimately taking down waves of enemy ships as you complete mission objectives, and choose alternate flight paths at key branching moments culminating in different endings per character. The mission objectives, themselves, range from guarding points of interests to destroying other points of interest, and even protective escorting of VIPs. 

As the story unfolds for each individual character you'll gradually build that characters' ship up to snuff by collecting coins/credits, gold bars, and stars from downed ships spending them at intermittent shop stops. This is done at shop checkpoints wherein the resident mechanic sells ship based wares for a price. There are multiple shot types to choose from, and to equip at multiple angles of the ship. There's also shields for defensive options such as bullet deflection, and negated damage. That plus protective ship armor with benefits, and stackable boosts that can be bought multiple times at an increasing cost to upgrade the generator, shield, and even weapon damage among other things.

Most importantly of all though is the balancing and upgrading of the onboard generator. Each of which has an overload rating allowing you to equip more or less weapons or shields, depending on the generator. Going into overload in-game with an equipment overloaded ship can be problematic in that shots will stop firing until cooled down, and will leave you open for devastating damage. Thus what you equip must be carefully considered at each shop session. Sometimes it's good to opt for the pricier equipment, and other times it's best to settle for something less with a lesser overload rating.

Mechanics-wise you have basic shmup controls in Flightpath with a single button for all primary shots, a button for a more powerful secondary shot, and basic thumbstick movement with no slowdown outside of what you toggle on/off for the storytelling bits. The bulk of gameplay success relies mostly on equipment upgrade management, and careful navigation in between the bullet hell shots. Depending upon the assigned difficulty setting this will either be more trying or more easily done. 

When you get finished with each characters' playthrough, and their multiple endings from different flight path choices you can partake of endless mode as a side option which can go on for as long as you are able to survive, theoretically. The difference in this mode is that flight paths tack on a mixture of three negative and positive effects on your ship at given intervals. Adding things like the increasing of earned credits, or even the negating of certain equipment functions. 

This randomized feature stacks more and more the further you progress. Making the weighing of pros and cons imperative for intended long play. As with the campaign you'll also have occasional access to the shop with which you can upgrade your ship in a similar manner for coins/credits. Outside of that certain things are tallied like distance traveled, and VIP targets rescued. This adds into a total score and overall ranking when you finally meet that GAME OVER screen. 

The Presentation ...

Visually Flightpath has an almost Western anime art design to it, though more traditionally Japanese than a lot of anime inspired games coming from EastAsiaSoft. The art is plentiful, and often times layered to look like comic book style story panels. There are also pop-up character avatars during flight that come with their own contextual remarks concerning the current story situation. Ships, and the environments, on the other hand are more basic, and polygonal by design. Not your top of the line Japanese shmup material. A lot of the ship assets are reused, and repeated as you play giving little enemy variety to the mix outside of the boss ships.

Audibly each stage harbors a somewhat synth soundtrack that is adjustable in volume back at the main menu. It is pleasing to the ears, and not overwhelming. All suiting to the sci-fi focus that the game is centered around. 

The Verdict ...

Mechanically speaking Flightpath does not do anything profoundly different other than prioritize it's upgrade system, and the balancing therein. The base mechanics are basic leaving survival up to upgrade management. Even with the shields, and generator it's definitely not too far outside of the box in the way of innovation. That being said the stories, and characters seem to be the games biggest selling point, and they succeed in winning you over with their tales of heroism, and exceptional feats. I just hate seeing something with such potential not be fully realized though. It could have done with some online leaderboards, and some bullet hell mechanics. Overall it's still a decent buy at the $10 mark. A budget bullet hell shooter with heavy handed storytelling and upgrade management as it's main gimmicks.