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0 Time to welcome a new rogue-lite shooter, crawling out of hell or maybe falling down from heaven. That’s what my preview is here to uncover. This is Tale Era Interactive’s first project, and it’s called Holy Shoot. It offers fun abilities and holy armaments against demon spawn. The game is out now in early access, and it could be yours for £16.75 on Steam.
Warning! GIFs used in this article contain flashing images.
I may be a Holy warrior, but I’ll be damned if I let the demons win!
Gameplay
Holy Shoot’s story is a simple one, seven holy artifacts have been stolen from heaven, and we head down to get them back. So far, the game only offers two characters, Toshiko and Samuel. Toshiko is locked at the start but is easily unlocked by beating the first boss once. Before each run, we start off in a church and must enter a portal to begin. When starting, three elements are available for the player to select: Lightning, Fear, and Ice. Each offering effects that will aid with combat, and are upgradeable with elemental shards that have a chance to drop from enemies.
Each area you fight through will offer a challenge objective for you to complete. Sometimes the challenge is not jumping, other times it might be performing melee kills. If you beat them, you’ll be rewarded two things. One is a Fairy Companion, who will heal, attack, and buff you. And the other is Divine Offerings, which are used to unlock permanent upgrades at the church.
Upgrades at the church and during runs.
While killing demons, you will collect corrupted souls for you to use to buff yourself. By cleansing them at the statue in the rest space, you will gain perks to beef you up during each run. Although these aren’t permanent. Some of these perks aid in increasing heals from basins found in rest areas. While others will give you a chance to ricochet bullets. Also at each rest location is a chest that will have new weapons for you to try, and may have different rarities. I found some of these weapons oddly weak, but fair play, the devs have said they are working on balancing in the game. That would explain why the Gatling gun’s recoil returns me to a higher plane.
Now, onto those Divine Offerings I previously mentioned. These really come in handy by having you increase three skill trees. Offence, Defence, and Utility. Each will skill requires five Divine Offerings, but they’re really easy to obtain if you focus on doing the challenges. These upgrades are what you want to aim for — more health and getting better damage. I put a lot of my time into maxing the offence tree so I could unlock the piercing shot against enemies.
The enemies
Holy Shoot’s enemies all follow the theme of the seven deadly sins — which I love — and the current build will have you go through three of these realms. But we can expect to actually get all seven at a later point. The enemies take the theme of whatever domain they’re in, such as the succubus in the lust domain. However, I didn’t see any elemental effects or difference in attacks, which is a shame. It would be cool for the succubus to stun the player with her “charm”. Or poison from the spider demons. The bosses themselves are cool with them also being from the seven deadly sins. Mammon looks like a typical greedy businessman and attacks the player with money piles. All while riding on a suitcase — that I assume is filled with money.
Graphics & Audio
Holy Shoot offers a bright, colourful, cell-shaded environment and characters. Despite the themes of evil and good, the overall colour scheme of the game is paint-can bright, and even darker dungeon-looking levels feature bright enemies and environmental details. However, besides boss designs, I didn’t notice a variety in enemy designs, and thought there’d be more thematic enemy designs leading up to the area’s boss. This was true for the first two realms, but the third realm didn’t appear like that to me. Fighting the same enemies over and over got tedious quickly. While the music is full of electric energy with its guitar, it’s not enough for me to want to listen to it and would rather listen to my music instead, especially since there isn’t much spoken dialogue.
Longevity
I beat Holy Shoot after roughly 8 hours, and with that, you will fight off against three demon bosses. Each based on a sin. Since it is a rogue-lite, you can play as many times as you want. And with new content to come in the future, you’ll be able to put in a nice amount of time with it. You unlock Toshiko after beating the first boss, but besides levelling up the skill trees. There isn’t much to work towards.
From what I’ve read, we can expect the rest of the sins to be entering the game in future updates. As well as more guns and two more playable characters. Hopefully, when these are added, we can expect some cool secrets or other hidden bosses.
Final Thoughts
At times, the gameplay can come off a bit slow, more so in the wrath realm. But it does feel satisfying preforming headshots on demons and running around as Samuel. I tried Toshiko a couple of times but felt like Sam’s abilities worked better with both the game and my play-style. I’d like an additional skill tree added for each character for the player to level up, as it would maybe make their skills stand out a lot more in combat. Toshiko’s turrets could really do with some added effects, which I feel another skill tree could offer her. And would also offer more reason to play other characters.
I know it’s in early access, but I would love to see more enemies added to Holy Shoot. Since when you reach the third realm, you get thrown the same ones in wrath’s realm. The gun variety is okay, and I enjoyed using a good couple of them. With the Deadshot being my favourite. Back to the characters, maybe some different starting weapons as well.
The issues
Here is a small list of the bugs I encountered:
- Enemies stuck running in place, or behind walls.
- Challenge objective not changing text in Greed Realm when entering new area.
- Fairy companion not spawning when beating a challenge at random times.
- Gunfire having no effect on enemies and explosive barrels when shot.
- Text for gun chest not displaying stats when looked at.
- Minor frame issues
- One major crash
Now, even though I had these problems, I wouldn’t say they ruined my experience. I still beat the current build ending, and it’s not only in early access but the dev’s first project to boot. I did enjoy what I’ve played of Holy Shoot, so best of luck to the team.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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