Sky Force Reloaded

Sky Force Reloaded

Sky Force Reloaded is a grindy, collect-all-the-things shoot ‘em up with persistent upgrades. It’s based on the mobile game Sky Force and has classic STG-style gameplay. The player starts with a purposefully underpowered ship and earns stars for defeating enemies, which are used to purchase various upgrades. Each level has four main goals, which are generally some combination of save all the soldiers, defeat 70% of enemies, defeat 100% of enemies, get all stars, take no damage, etc.. You win a medal for each goal. Once you’ve completed all four medals a harder version of the stage unlocks with star bonuses. A certain number of medals are required to advance to later stages. (As a brief aside, the SFX is fun. Whenever you save a soldier they holler, “Ye-haw!” Clearly they are all Americans.)

The persistent upgrades were what lured me in. I enjoyed that feature of Danmaku Unlimited 2. I was warned the game was grindy, and it is. I kind of flip-flop on this aspect of it. In the beginning I got kind of burned out on having to replay stages so often, but later on I had the itch for comfort-zone shmuppery and I returned to the game and really enjoyed grinding out stars and mindlessly blasting things.There is something satisfying about returning to a level after several upgrades and being able to lay waste to the enemy.

The game isn’t without it’s frustrations. More than once I’ve missed a 100% defeat medal by missing a sole popcorn ship. While upgrades are persistent special ammunition/shields are not, so each time you die you lose everything you collected. You can purchase more at the start of each level with stars. So if you’re not grinding for one thing you’re grinding for another.

I have never seen a shmup with so many collectibles. You can collect cards that grant temporary gameplay bonuses (usually for about 10 minutes). You complete objectives (overall achievements, like down x enemies) to gain points, which are then used to unlock technicians, which are essentially perks that can be activated, but only one at a time. Some of the technicians are dead useful, one negates your first instance of damage taken so you still have a shot at the “no damage” medal for that level. Then there are the stars which are used to unlock upgrades, and laser, shield, and bomb upgrades, then there are some kind of weird medal pieces that randomly appear and I’ve collected a few and have no idea what they do. There are apparently multiple ships, which I only know because I stumbled across that section in one of the many GUI sections that dutifully catalogues all the Things one has Collected, along with the Things one has Not Collected.

Sky Force Reloaded is a very YMMV shmup. It reminds me a lot of the twin-stick arena shooter Riddled Corpses in terms of grindiness and how grinding is essential to get through certain levels. I do think the medal requirement for level advancement should be reduced so less grinding is required to unlock all the levels for play, but I accept the game for what it is. When I’m in a very particular mood I’ll fire this up and grind out stars or angle for new challenges.

Sky Force Anniversary just came out on Switch. Originally, the release order was reversed. Apparently the difference is Anniversary is more difficult and has less collectibles. I cannot conceive fully completing Sky Force Reloaded, let alone needing More of That, but it’s good to have options.