Twins of the Sun – PS5 Review

Sometimes a small package can hold some interesting ideas. Twins of the Sun attempts to pack environmental variety in their simple brawler. Commando Panda have at least tried to keep a short adventure relatively fresh but I find the basic combat a little too loose and not especially satisfying.

The premise is very basic. Your twin sister has been imprisoned so your task is to travel the lands to get her back. It doesn’t expand beyond that and ultimately is a no-frills narrative. There’s no cutscenes to tie you between areas or levels. As a result, it does move at a fair clip. Pacing is brisk. You pick your twin of choice at the start of the campaign, leading the other to be captured. You can choose a coloured dress for our heroine but that’s as far as customisation goes.

The journey will take you through five areas with five stages contained within each. The first one is usually a short introduction to a new mechanic whilst the last one always contains a boss fight. It’s got a reliable structure and your performance is rated with three obtainable stars. One will focus on your ability to dodge, another upon a timely completion. There’s also one for finishing the level. Getting at least two of them feels like a formality.

You can play solo and, whilst it’s certainly achievable, co-op does allow the second player to kite enemies around and generally engage on two fronts. Going it alone brings all that enemy attention onto your shoulders. I sense it’s a smoother ride as a duo but I’m not sure if the game balances around the extra pair of hands.

Combat is handled like a twin-stick brawler. The left stick controls the twin’s movement whilst the right controls the direction of your melee strikes. As a result, it can feel clumsy, especially when enemies approach you from all sides. Your range is limited which means trying to manoeuvre around a foe’s blind side. You can pick up power ups which aid your movement speed or grant fiery orbs to deal damage from a distance. That does supply some much-needed variety but the duration seems all too short. It’s also drawing from a very, very small selection.

Enemies will spawn in waves which a meter at the top of the screen letting you know how many waves remain. As such, the encounters do have fixed spawn positions so can be planned around. Health pick-ups can be generously sprinkled between waves, too. It’s not a difficult game with enemies having distinctive, albeit caricatured, looks. I knew which ones to focus on during any given wave.

Some will fire homing projectiles that stay on your tail for long periods of time. This can be annoying, although you can also return certain projectiles with a well-timed strike. The action is just hectic enough for me to forget this. Friendly fire does appear to be enabled, allowing enemies do damage each other. That’s a solid mercy to have in a game that is mostly boxes of enemy waves.

Boss encounters do offer something different. They usually exercise a new or infrequent mechanic that freshens things up. They’re typically invulnerable before triggering a damaging state which often means avoiding mobs or hurtful areas. Movement has one notable nuance. You move faster and jump higher when not engaged in combat. It does impose a fight or flight response which at least gives you something to think about.

If it wasn’t for these moments of ingenuity, Twins of the Sun would be a genuinely boring excursion. Fighting is such a basic experience that it needs those little quirks to maintain my interest. Each new set of levels refreshes the enemy variety and they fit with the new environments. There’s hazards to consider and they prove useful, in the right circumstances.

That said, this is not a difficult game. Health pick-ups will restore you to a full compliment of hearts and there’s usually one reliable spot on the arena they’ll spawn from. That can lead to scenarios where you’re buying time for it to arrive but, I’ve not really found an issue with it. I think my main problems stem around combat as a general experience. It’s all too close quarters and enemy AI will swamp you. Hits don’t provide a lot of feedback and it can just feel like you’re chipping away at the opposition.

Presentation is bright enough with a colourful palette to draw from. Again, it’s very basic and cartoony. When enemies converge on your position, it can be tough to parse the action. Area of effect attacks are well telegraphed but explosions can take up plenty of the screen. As a result, things can get very messy.

The audio is fine. The music settles on geographical themes for the level. It’s light and bouncy and the twins have their own barks for combat and jumping. I appreciate the warning chirps you get when your health is low and each time you take damage. As chaotic as this can sometimes look, that feedback can be valuable.

Twins of the Sun is a clumsy attempt at a brawler that lacks variety in its gameplay. It relies heavily on a combat system that lacks range and finesse. On the one hand, things are kept simple with basic puzzle solving and enemy types that are distinguishable. Unfortunately, the constant wave survival makes for a game that is stale within a few stages.