Earthion – PS5 Review 2

Earthion is a 16-bit style horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up and it comes to us from Japan’s own Ancient Corp, a studio that has a history of, let’s say, unusual games that goes back to 1991.  Founded by Yūzō Koshiro, the legendary video game composer behind soundtracks for games like Streets of Rage 1-4, Shenmue 2, Etrian Odyssey and, frankly, too many others to mention, Ancient bring a fair bit of retro credibility with them and so everyone was pretty excited to see what they could do with this game.

There are a lot of retro-inspired games on PSN and we review a lot of them here at PlayStation Country.  Sometimes they’re good, often their pretty bad but it’s those average, bang in the middle ones that bother us usually.  Personally, I often wonder how a current retro-style game would have done if it had been released decades ago.   And if it would have been a 6 or a 7 then, that kind of makes it a 3 or 4 now.  But Earthion is one of those rare ones, a game where this would have melted faces back in the early ’90s, cementing itself as an all-time classic.

You play as Azusa Takanashi who has to take on an invading alien force.  You’ve played shoot ’em ups before, you know how this works.   Thankfully, the story only comes in short cutscenes at the start and end of the game.  That’s good because, we’re not bothered about stories in shoot ’em ups.  We just want to know one thing:  where they are.  That said, the opening cutscenes do give you a sense that they want a bit of drama and back in the ’90s gamers would have lapped this up.

But the main thing here is the action.  While this is very much a shoot ’em up in the classic sense – you fly towards the right, enemies come in and try to shoot you, you blast them out of the sky –  Earthion has some interesting systems in play that elevate it from the usual console shoot ’em up.  Which is interesting because this was designed as a modern Megadrive game, albeit an evolved one.

You start off with the usual weak blaster but you can pick up extra weapons.  Spread fire, lasers, rockets and more.  As you take damage, your weapons are weakened and eventually destroyed but they can be boosted by picking up green material, Solarium, that will boost them up, allowing you to optimise their power.  You can initially carry two weapons and switch between them at will.

The other thing you’ll need to be aware of early on is your shield.  This is definitely super handy and will eat a few shots before you’re in critical danger and it’ll recharge over time which is great.  We’ve just played a ton of Toaplan shooters and frankly we were in need of a shoot ’em up that actually gave us a fighting chance.

What’s very cool about Earthion is that, if you pick up the level’s ‘Adaption Module’ and get to the end of the stage, you’ll be offered a choice of upgrades including an extra ship, an additional weapon slot, a new sub-weapon or, most usefully, an upgrade to both your shields and main weapon.  That’s the good stuff right there.

In terms of the actual shoot ’em up action, the game gets things right for us.  Enemies actually die when you shoot them, they aren’t bullet-sponges and this keeps the action moving.  The bosses are big, impressive affairs and while they take a lot more damage, they’re not as hateful as in other games (although it’s not always clear where their weak points are).  And the game also manages to feel action-focused rather than requiring miserable amounts of memorisation.  It’s almost as if they’ve decided that fun matters rather than ruthless discipline (although there are a choice of four difficulties that should cater to all player types).

The only real issue we have with Earthion comes in the visual department.  On the plus side, this really is the Megadrive utilising every trick it’s got.  Faux-3D effects mixed with bold, brash and beautiful sprites, wildly varied backdrops and some real artistry.  But, there are times where it’s just a bit too cluttered, especially early on.  We didn’t suffer too many ‘what hit me?’ moments but it was a bit of a strain on the eyes when the game was trying to do too much.

To counter it we did sack off all the CRT/scan-line effects and go for the largest, clearest image possible but that obviously takes away from the old-school Megadrive feel but felt necessary.  And the game still looks great, so it’s not too much of an issue.  And, of course, the soundtrack is a total banger too.  Although the crunchy, compressed sound effects can be a bit jarring.  It’s all trying to sound like an ’90s console game but it’s a bit harsh.  We’d have loved a modern sound effects option.

But as we said before, if Earthion had hit the Megadrive back when that was a thing, it would have made all the other supposed classic shoot ’em ups on there look mediocre.  There’s enough of a classic heart here to make it feel legit but with gameplay that’s a bit more evolved.  We still prefer the simplicity of a good R-Type power-up system but the upgrades here add a lot of utility and the fact that the game doesn’t punish you massively for a mistake is very welcome.  Earthion is the new apex shoot ’em up for Megadrive fans and retro shoot ’em up fans in general.