It feels a little strange putting up Ether Loop impressions considering that I’ve already managed to beat the game, but in all honesty, the only reason I managed to beat this chaotic twin-stick bullet hell shooter so quickly is that it randomly glitched out during a good run and caused bullets to pass through me instead of causing damage. Ether Loop does a lot of things right—most interestingly, its per-run upgrades can stack in fun ways that cause each playthrough to become markedly different from others—but these kinds of glitches do cause problems. For example, if an enemy drops a heart pickup when you’re at full health, it can’t be used even if you take damage immediately afterward. At its best, this game can be bullet heaven, the kind of significant challenge perfect for banging your head against and speedrunning. At its worst, though, it earns the title of “bullet hell” and can play downright dirty. Ether Loop‘s steep difficulty curve causes its occasional cheap shots to be incredibly deflating.

You start out with a pea shooter that does decent damage, but has a low rate of fire and requires impeccable aim. Every playthrough will begin with this weapon, and the subsequent weapons that you find are randomized. Finding something new that supplements your play style can be incredibly rewarding. Suddenly dying to something unexpected and having to start over with a newly randomized area and weapon drops, on the other hand, can be very frustrating.

The biggest problem with Ether Loop is its dodge move. It grants you invincibility frames, true, but it’s always difficult to tell where you’ll end up as a result of your dodge, which makes it frustrating to dodge through fields of tightly-packed bullets.

That’s the kind of thing that can be worked around with familiarity, but I’d really prefer some kind of indicator that shows you where you’ll land. This would help with dodging’s other, bigger issue: walls cancel your dodge. If you’re pushed up against a wall and try to dodge to the side and you aim down enough to hit the wall, you’ll unexpectedly stop just in time to get hit by an enemy projectile. Sometimes, dodging doesn’t work at all. I don’t know if this is a problem of unusual timing or what, but you can press the dodge button and watch as nothing happens. I’ve run into waves of bullets because of this. Other times, you’ll dodge but take damage anyway (4:00, 4:05). Ether Loop‘s dodge move is so unpredictable that I mostly stopped using it.

If you had a choice of, say, two or three different starting weapons (all weak ones to avoid unbalancing the game), that would go a long way toward remedying the sameness of the early levels. With a more reliable dodge to tighten up the gameplay, the mechanics would really shine. And if the controller worked 100% (right now, you can’t get on a mount or walk on ice using a controller), it’d be far more convenient to play since this is a twin-stick shooter at heart. Deep down, I really like Ether Loop. Conquering a boss after raging about it always feels great. Every area has a different art style, and you move to a new area after finishing a single level and boss fight, which makes the pacing nice and brisk. It just needs a little more time in the oven for bugfixing and balancing. Unfortunately, the January 21st, 2020 release date doesn’t provide enough time for that.

Either way, I’m going to keep throwing myself at Ether Loop and see how far I can make it without the aid of friendly invincibility bugs. I have no idea how one beats the penultimate boss—a giant spider who shoots bullets that are packed together so tightly that you’d have to dodge to the other end of the screen just to squeeze between them—but I get a little further each time I play, which is always a promising sign of quality.

Ether Loop impressons: Brisk bullet hell first appeared on Killa Penguin