Shieldmaiden - A vibrant pixel art world | Review

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Neon pixel art on the platforms.
Shieldmaiden is another 2D platformer, but with some differences. This new version, released in September 2021, by developer Dumativa, the same as the highly acclaimed Songs of a Hero, features impressive neon pixel art, perhaps even one of the game's strongest points. In addition, according to the developers, this new update comes with ''a revised and expanded story, balance and quality of life improvements, new stages, and mechanics. In this gameplay, you will test your reflexes, especially to defend yourself, in four different machine-dominated areas, and in battles against bosses.

The studio Dumativa, itself, came to the gamer universe to create and launch a different style. With inspiration from musicians, artists, and others, the company is to rescue classic styles and mix them with modern perspectives and tastes.

The game is available for PC, Windows only, through Steam, at a very affordable price of $24.99 and requires very little of your machine. You need only 2GB of RAM and something better than a Radeon X600 XT or a GeForce 6800T. Honestly, unfortunately it was not a game that appealed to me so much, because the narrative is getting tiring in this genre so worn out by the community, because, with excellent games, it is necessary to somehow stand out and get out of common sense to create something good.



A bit of a tale of chaos

The story comes to be a convincing point, but not central to your concern, that's because we will try to understand the minimum just to be able to move forward in the narrative, without worrying to involve us so much with the suffering story of Asta, the main character. We are in Modigard, a city, just like all the others, destroyed for an unknown reason, very apocalyptic indeed, with a simple objective, to rescue our older sister who disappeared right in the middle of the chaos.

The story seeks to captivate you the most, showing emotion and feelings, loss amid the apocalyptic universe, but everything is already a little strange with the sound system of the characters themselves, but not the soundtrack and so on, but the characters make bizarre sounds when they speak, which generate an initial estrangement, meanwhile, we are fighting threatening and pretty boring machines to be honest, in the beginning, I suffered a bit to conciliate the commands and because of it I ended up dying quite a lot.



The bracelet

In combat, everything will revolve around our equipment, a bracelet that emanates powerful and inexplicable energy in a shield shape. Shieldmaiden drinks heavily from classics like Megaman X and Ninja Gaiden, the pace of the game itself is very 90's oriented, however, unlike The Songs of a Hero, from the same developers, the challenges here are very limited, the stages are empty, we are basically looking for collectibles, and all of this tries to be rewarded in the fights against the bosses when it gets a little more interesting, however,particularly, this path is not attractive to the player, because we stay a long time without a sequential and really challenging action.

Continuing, all attacks and defense movements will revolve around the shield of our lady, we can throw it in various directions, and use it for defense and even in close-range attacks. Here already thinking about the controls, it might be interesting to use a joystick, the keyboard is a big mess at first and will require some mastery.



In addition, here we will not count on that nice system, although very common, of character evolution. Everything is a little static because we will end this gameplay in about 5 hours the same way we started, with the same skills, and, consequently, boring.

Another problem was that I had no way to move the screen, so I played with a huge black square surrounding the game. In the chase stage, the screen sometimes focused so much on what was following me that I couldn't see where I had to go, making me scramble as much as I could to have screen space to play. Second is that Asta can't duck, so for many holes you have to take a leap of faith and pray that there is ground underneath you and not a chasm.



Cyberpunk and the audiovisual match

One thing is certain, criticizing is necessaire, really, but when we must praise we can spare nothing. Here, the pixel art style, added with an excellent soundtrack, made a perfect match amenable to all praise. The art is beautiful, and the cyberpunk style neon really pleased me, along with the electronics, combining perfectly with the neon.

The main highlight is the bosses. They are very nice and with very different concepts, although all the villains, who are brothers, seek a single and straightforward goal: they want the artifact. Despite this, the variation of enemies could be better; it is very repetitive, without much creativity.

In terms of sound, the Dumativa studio seems to stand out for the large arsenal in their games, bringing here, even, tracks of hits from the movie universe like Matrix and Maze Runner, including some parts of operas, which I considered something different positive, I never imagined myself praising such a style in an action game, much less platforming.

However, I felt a huge lack of sound feedback, especially in combat, many times the battles were silent, which caused me some discomfort and strangeness, because I expected something more interactive and exciting, given the quality of the audiovisual system of the Dumativa games.

Shieldmaiden is available for PC.

We thank the PR team at Dumativa studio who granted the key and allowed the creation of this content.
 
Veredito
70
Excelente

Despite beautiful art and a quality sound system, when we talk about the studio Dumativa, creator of the work The Songs of a Hero, I confess to always expecting more, the game displeased in the combat system, movement, and among others.

Scoring

  • Gameplay
    60
  • Graphics
    90
  • Audio
    89
  • History
    65
  • Controls
    50
Scoring Criteria
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Alex
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Rockstar Games fan!
About the game
Shieldmaiden

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