ZeroRanger is very solid. A red letter entry in the incredibly competitive genre of indie shmups on Steam. When you're up against Cave ports, against Toohoo, against Strania, DariusBurst, Eschatos, CrimzonClover, Mecha Ritz... you have to bring your A game and ZeroRanger does.
The pacing is great, the enemy designs and patterns are tight, the bosses are at worst standard and fun and ramp up to some real hum dingers that got my blood pumping. Some real anime mecha fight type stuff. You don't got any bombs, but you will pick up three powerups over the course of the game, three new firing options that stick with you through the whole game, each picked from a binary choice, and they each offer a lot of variety. A charge shot that doubles as a shield, weak side fire or strong backwards fire... that's more variety in loadout options than you get in most shumps. The game is loaded in references out the wazoo, and a true shmup genre veteran will have a blast catching them all. Throw in a rocking soundtrack and you got a full package right there.
You probably noticed from other reviews that there's clearly some meta-game fourth wall destroying Undertale crap going on here, and that's true, but it does not detract from the pacing of the game. In fact, what it does is draw you into continuing to play. The game has a generous level select and continue system. Even you, the person reading this, who has never 1cced a shump in his life and probably does not even know what I just said stands a good chance of seeing everything this game has to offer with all this generosity. It will drag you along with enticing plot breadcrumbs, you will keep redoing the final levels, blowing all 7 continues on one or two bosses, really eager to see the end.
And once you do, you are left without all that, asked to unlock it again. This isn't a long game, just shy of an hour, but you can get all those checkpoints and continues back fast. But the point is the game is not just allowing and encouraging you to drill at the hardest part of the game until it is manageable, but then dropping an opportunity to then go back to the start, see how good you've gotten, and, maybe you think you can now do the whole thing again in just the 8 continues you start with. Or even fewer. But you don't have to. You got the big end to the story after all. The game strikes a good balance, making a game that's worth the effort to play for score and skill but also enticing the one-and-done credit feeding type player to tackle much more manageable but still tough and meaningful challenges and still see the end. I don't think anyone has come close to replicating this. Bridging these two mentalities has been a challenge in this genre for decades and ZeroRanger deserves praise for being one of the only games of this sort that threads that needle successfully.
As for the plot?... I don't really have much to say about it. But where it does deliver is the spectacle. Ooh boy does it really go all out. You need not worry about the meta stuff. The only cryptic nonsense you have to cope with is in the lore itself. No La Mulana crap here. No need to hunt for thirty shiny things and hit them all perfectly in one run and then thirty more in the second loop in different locations. You just need to play the game and be better at it.
There are a lot of really, really great shumps on Steam and ZeroRanger is easily in that number. If you're good at them, if you're bad at them, doesn't matter. ZeroRanger is a blast and absolutely worth your time.
