Rating (out of 10)

★★★★

Overview

Sky Mercenaries is a shoot 'em up with skills, upgrades and a colour-switching mode.

Positive (good features)

✔ Level selection.

Neutral (average/expected features)

♦ Upgrade system.

♦ Decent variety of enemies.

Negative (bad features)

✖ Nothing is explained. After 90 minutes i still don't even know how my ship's health is represented.

✖ Power ups aren't explained, you just pick up tiny coin-like items and they do... something?

✖ The colour-mode is "explained" in a throw-away line in the first level. I had to read the manual to find out how it works exactly.

✖ There's no real choice when it comes to ship upgrades and skills.

✖ All you do is move and switch colours, there's no special items or abilities to use.

✖ Upgrading even one ship requires excessive grinding.

✖ Three different ships that all have to be levelled up for some reason.

✖ Three different characters that all have to be levelled up even though they're barely different.

✖ Bland sound effects.

✖ Bland music. At least i think there is music, i'm not even sure.

✖ Clumsy menu design.

✖ Every level start with a blindly white screen. It's like getting solar flared by Tien.

✖ World three introduces enemies with an insta-kill beam attack.

Conclusion

I wanted to like this game. It reminded me of Raptor (1994) because of its design and level selection. Sadly, it's a mess. Basic elements are poorly explained or not at all. The colour-system, which is similar to Raptor's ground/air system, doesn't work well because you can't really tell what colour enemies are and the screen tends to be filled with stuff. Sometimes you can't tell if it's your projectile, an enemy projectile or a power-up.

The worst part is the grinding. I would have to replay the most recent mission i finished 3 or 4 times to buy even a single upgrade for my ship at its current level. The three ship types each have to be levelled up to use these upgrades, which takes forever. It took 90 minutes to get [i]one[/i] ship to level 10.

As is often the case, any potential this had was crushed by poor design choices. Instead of three ships they should just have had one that you can outfit differently. Instead of three characters they should just have had one with three different skill trees to pick from. Et cetera.

Details ⯍ Experience with genre: I've played a bunch of shmups starting with Raptor in 1994. ⯍ Experience with game: Played for 90 minutes, got to the 4th world (out of 8). ⯍ Recommended to: People who absolutely love shmups and don't mind getting ground to bits.