Drainus. Whether it’s a tongue-in-cheek portmanteau of Darius and Gradius, or a reference to the game’s core mechanics, it’s a silly name any way you look at it. Japanese developer Team Ladybug, most recently known for the rather good Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, has made the Switch hardcore shooter wait eight months since the game’s release on Steam, but does it live up to the hype?
Drainus pays homage to many of the genre’s classics; touch of Border down in its ship functions and style, bow one handed in the aesthetics of the attack on the train in the second stage, and much more Gradius V in the stages of boss transformation. The one influence that was highly praised in the previews, inexplicably, was Ikaruga, as if it was the only other title in the genre that the mainstream gaming press had ever heard of. While Drainus has a system of absorbing enemy fire that can be retaliated with a burst of homing lasers, the execution here has much more in common with Takumi’s Giga Wing than Treasure’s puzzle-shmup hybrid does, making it a hugely misleading comparison.
Drainus has a weird tipfeller bug, it has a tutorial that doesn’t teach you about your laser bomb, health, or quick ship speed adjustments (which are activated by the left shoulder button). Although confusing at first, it is nevertheless a remarkable work: bold, brazen, exhaustingly creative and utterly beautiful.
While the function of absorbing and reflecting is easy enough to understand, perfecting its timing takes practice, especially when you’re looking for a spot to inhale amid a curtain of bullets. A constant, satisfying, rhythmic engagement, the overarching stage design takes every aspect of its capability into account, requiring its use not only to wipe out enemy fire, but also to navigate through laser wheels, internal mazes, and survive heavy artillery barrages. Boss appendages open up, revealing laser links and bridges to draw or maneuver across, and stage obstacles regularly require its timely use to survive forced movement. For tighter segments that require precise movement, you can slow the ship down using the button on the right shoulder. This inventiveness makes everything so effective. Likewise, Drainus is pure action, requiring reflex and muscle memory rather than rote strategy to overcome.
Visually, it’s a work of art, a smooth 60 frames in hand and on the base station. Rarely has a 2D shooter been blessed with such spectacular visuals – and it’s about time. Modern hardware has the capacity to create graphics without being overblown or using crude, misplaced assets. Drainus, like Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, spins sharp details and beautiful animation into an incredible spectacle, and his style is no different from Falange on the X68000.
In the first stage you have to charge from a battered sand pipe, the scenery rotates 360 degrees, before you race across the desert surface and plummet into Wild road-esque dust storm. From there, you ascend to a rainy sky, water droplets rippling across the screen, and then space, where the planet below has been nuked into oblivion, leaving you to navigate the smoldering asteroid field beyond. Just something.
The bosses and mid-bosses are fantastic assemblies of mecha-dragons, transforming fortresses, and even monoliths from 2001, many of which offer takedowns and multiple stages. We haven’t seen such a creative tour de force of large-scale enemies since Radiant Silvergun, and Drainus doesn’t shy away from borrowing a few ideas. There are the typical shooters, like the giant attack on the mothership, where you fight your way inside to destroy the core, but it’s done in a way that feels completely fresh.
In terms of gameplay, however, there are a few details that won’t immediately appeal to shooter purists. In terms of scoring, there are certainly methods to get more digits than the next best player, but at the same time opportunities to develop a dedicated system have been overlooked. Other than that, your score counter just loses track if you continue, and there’s no sign of an online leaderboard (yet).
Drainus also has a weapon upgrade structure that requires pausing the game mid-run. While stopping the action is usually frowned upon among shooters, it’s time to embrace a new way of doing things, and the ship’s bracing feature adds a unique dimension to the action. However, Arcade Mode, which limits upgrading to mid-stage intervals, should probably have been the default option rather than locked until you clear two loops of the game.
Energy tanks collected throughout the game act as a form of currency. Inside your pause screen is a huge menu of options to turn on and off. Initially, your ship has three slots, and you can apply newly acquired weapons to the available slots in the order of your choice. In-game, selecting power-up icons triggers each slot in ascending order, automatically activating their applied weapon. These slots also double your ship’s health, meaning a bullet eaten will drop one slot and return to the next weapon. When you’re teetering on the last active site with an underpowered pea shooter, you’re in the precarious position of being one crash away from death before you can re-strengthen. It’s a system that encourages you to stay unharmed, especially if you have your best weapon sensibly placed in the highest possible slot. There are punch and laser power upgrades, formation options, and tons of other little things you can buy and configure, and half the game depends on how and when you spend your currency. It’s entirely possible, depending on skill, to go through several stages without buying anything and then suddenly grab a hefty reward. Each player will define their own personal preferences, but it will take you a lot of play before you know what works for you, and, due to the rather limited descriptions, some time to understand what everything does.
Perhaps one obvious problem for purists is that default and even hard difficulties are too casual. Although we are admittedly experienced in the genre, we achieved a double loop with one credit on our sixth attempt. And, while the second loop is stronger, it’s softened by keeping all your lives and power-ups and giving you even more powerful weapon options. To say it’s too easy may not be entirely fair, but for some it certainly is. Completing both loops and the true final boss unlocks additional modes, however, including a “Ridiculous” difficulty setting for high-level players to get their teeth into.
Drainus never quite hits the adrenaline highs of Andro Dunos 2, partly because the music — while still good — isn’t on the same level, and the overall climactic nature of things doesn’t feel quite as satisfying. What he excels at is his desire to impress. When you’re traversing the interior of a mothership, detonating massive structures, riding on power-ups and turning up the heat, it really takes off. The visual feedback is strong enough, and the constant pressure to work with bullet absorption creates a layered sense of involvement that feels more engaging than most shooter gimmicks.
Conclusion
Team Ladybug really shows off their programming expertise with Drainus. It’s dangerous and brave to attempt a shooter on the scale of Gradius V or Einhander, but the developer mostly pulls it off convincingly. It’s not entirely perfect, probably too light, and various aspects will suit some players better than others. But, at the very least, it’s a spectacular sci-fi action epic that’s constantly being developed, created, and presented. To that end, Drainus will do well for both hardcore and casual players.
