This SHMUP is awesome!, that mix between the shield and the short/long range shot it's simply beautiful and organic; i'm not gonna lie, my first try in this game was via piracy, and it took me less than 5 minutes to decide that it would be mine forever!!!

P.S: Awesome, i repeat, AWESOME OST!!! (Original & Arrange)


A MUST BUY FOR ANY SHMUP PLAYER.

A incredibly addictive bullet hell shooter!

Packing in with multiple difficulties and modes of play. Tons of Replay value!

The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic and it's composed by the legendary Yousuke Yasui!

Lots of unlockables to keep you playing such as extra ship colors, screen borders and other neat options to affect the game.

The game itself packs a good challenge and the scoring mechanics are pretty fun too.

Eschatos probably has to be my favorite shmup that is available on Steam at the moment so I highly reccomend this title for big bullet hell veterans out there!

I haven't played the Xbox 360 original but I have to say that Degica/Qute did a fantastic job on this port!

A really solid traditional vertical STG from Qute with an incredible soundtrack by Yousuke Yasui. Includes "Original" and "Advanced" modes with multiple difficulties for both. Definitely worth picking up. Wonder pack includes JUDGEMENT SILVERSWORD, which is also neat as heck so go for it

i love you yousuke yasui

When I first saw screenshots of Eschatos when looking for 360 SHMUPs to import, I thought it looked... well, like one of those shoddy, low-budget indie shooters that don't really get how shooters work, and that initially put me off buying it.

Which is a shame, because after I DID end up getting a copy (thanks, in particular, to SerFlash's recommendation), it quickly became one of my top three games on the 360.

First things first, I don't see any issues with the port. Lower end laptops will need to drop the settings back and might get some framerate hiccups occasionally, but nothing that would make it unplayable. Keys currently aren't fully remappable, but Degica seems to have a good track record with addressing player concerns.

Beyond that, I just want to run through some of the things that make Eschatos stand out to me.

- The game is forgiving. It's not an easy game, but extra lives are fairly plentiful. You never really feel like you need to restart after losing a life, or that you end up in an unrecoverable situation. There's no getting sent back to checkpoints or getting reduced to an unusable power level.

- The scoring mechanics are straightforward. Essentially, you increase a multiplier for killing entire enemy waves, and your multiplier drops when enemies escape the screen. There are some other considerations, especially in Advanced mode, but the multiplier's most of it. There's no barrier for entry to playing for score.

- This isn't the kind of game where you can just memorize the levels and get through it. You need to learn how the enemy patterns work and react to what you do, especially if you want to keep your multiplier going.

- Enemies all feel unique. Even the popcorn enemies. The scoring mechanics emphasize not letting any enemies escape alive, enemies are built around being inconvenient to kill, and they achieve this in a variety of ways.

- You have three attack types -- a wide shot, a frontal shot, and a shield -- available at all time. They're all have distinct purposes and they're all useful.

- Bombs are used as soon as you pick them up -- there's no bomb stock.

- The game is as much about managing your shield as it is about dodging bullets.

- The game likes throwing weird camera angles at you and it actually works. Weird camera angels in SHMUPs do not usually work.

- Time Attack mode isn't a time-limited caravan mode like you usually see in SHMUPs, but instead is more like Outrun. You get the whole game here, and you have a limited amount of time to finish it. Clearing areas/beating bosses/picking up 1-ups gets you more time. Getting shot makes you lose time.

- The way the music is used is noteworthy. The soundtrack itself is excellent, yes, but in game, it's almost like the enemy waves are choreographed to the music? I don't know if it was intentional, but it's cool.

- A goodly amount of unlockables.

Oh, and definitely go for the bundle with Judgement Silver Sword and Cardinal Sins -- they're both wonderful titles