One of the reasons I love Nintendo Directs as much as I do are the potential for games to come out of nowhere and drop the same day. Sure I’m excited about mainline Nintendo titles like everyone else, but a number of games have caught my eye by virtue of being featured in one of the Nintendo streams, and then becomes one of my favorite games on Switch. So when Storm Lancers’ trailer came on the most recent Nintendo Direct I was immediately intrigued, and wondered if it would be my new favorite game from a Direct.

Storm Lancers is an action Roguelike set after the characters’ ship crash lands on the planet Cryptica, which is full of hostile creatures. Caught in a cycle of being brought back to life by other inhabitants of the planet, you have to push further and further with each run.

The first immediate thing that’s easy to notice is the style of the game, particularly in the intro animation. They’re going for a modern take on a retro anime style, and this looks really excellent. The character designs are great, and there’s a lot of style in the intro. The rest of the game looks good, but doesn’t quite live up to how appealing the intro is. A lot of the environments are a bit bland, and while there are some visual flourishes it doesn’t have the same sense of visual appeal. The intro video really sets a standard that the rest of the game struggles to meet, which is unfortunate.

Storm Lancers rides the line between Roguelite and Roguelike in having some persistent upgrades, though these are few and far between, but the most vital ones were the movement upgrades at the end of each biome. At first I was a bit frustrated with how clunky movement initially felt, with jumps being short and not a lot of room to dodge enemies, but found myself liking this movement once I got upgrades for the slide and double jumps. This made things feel more fluid, which in turn allowed me to explore more of the map. Unfortunately this means that movement struggles in the first impressions. Even as the movement improved it never felt as good as I wanted or as fluid as I wanted it to.

My biggest gripe with Storm Lancers lies in just how repetitive it feels. This is a common issue for roguelikes to face, considering the nature of the genre is to play it through several runs, over and over. However, Storm Lancers runs never feel that distinct. There are some nominal changes in builds you can make during each run, such as different weapons which might have different effects and storm bindings, upgrades that come with both advantages and disadvantages. However, differences in weapons are few and far between (mostly boiling down to attack speed, strength, and how far away your character can hit, as well as some elemental buffs) and the storm bindings never felt like I could fully make my character my own because they tended towards being too minor of a difference. For example, one storm binding increases enemy difficulty in exchange for getting more of the currency that you can spend on permanent upgrades. High risk, high reward. However, neither the rewards nor risks are high enough to feel noticeably different so it just feels like a wash.

The rest of the game also struggles in comparison, but this time to other games in the genre. Immediately my first comparison point was with Dead Cells, which feels like a very clear inspiration, and hard to avoid thinking about. However this doesn’t do Storm Lancers any favors. Out of curiosity I booted up a fresh save in Dead Cells and was immediately struck by how much more fluid the gameplay felt, how much faster I was able to do things on base equipment, and how much better it felt. This might be an unfair comparison, but it’s one I imagine a lot of Storm Lancers players might do.

Ultimately, I think my biggest frustration with Storm Lancers is that I feel like it could be something more. It could have more variety in weapons and have more interesting builds. It could push the retro anime aesthetic harder in the UI and while playing the game to be more visually interesting. But it doesn’t. And this is the biggest issue with this game. Storm Lancers isn’t bad, but every element in it has been done better and could be done better. When I saw the trailer come up in the Nintendo Direct I had high hopes it could be a new favorite in a genre I love, but sadly it was just OK.