Psyvariar 3 will remain installed on my Nintendo Switch 2 for quite a while simply because of its engaging, highly-difficult, yet highly-rewarding gameplay loop of grazing bullets and racking up high scores. It falls short in the graphical department, but it makes up for it in properly executing a bullet hell that caters for those who want a true shmup challenge.
Just over a week ago, I came out of playing R-Type Dimensions III fully convinced that would be one of the only shmups of the year. Sure, you could argue that SAROS skews bullet hellish, but there’s nothing like the simplicity of a vertical shooter modeled after older-school arcade games. Imagine my surprise when an opportunity to cover Psyvariar 3 presented itself. Despite playing quite a bit of bullet hells over the years, Psyvariar is a series of which I am unfamiliar…and I’m kicking myself for not playing it sooner.
Let’s take a step back, though. You’ve probably heard the phrase “bullet hell” or “bullet heaven” to describe popular contemporary games like Vampire Survivors, SAROS, and Enter the Gungeon. While these games are fun and engaging, they’re derived from a category of innately difficult games that reward those with patience, precision, and focus. They stem from the danmaku subcategory of shmups – a type of game where ballets of bullets (of varying composition) fly across the screen and encourage the player to weave in-and-out of intricate bullet patterns all the while attacking enemies. The Touhou Project is one of the most notable series in this subgenre, as it featured a dramatically difficult gameplay loop that rewarded those who could dodge in risky fashions rather than simply destroy.
I am all for accessibility and approachability so that as many players can get into a game as possible with the notable exception of manic shooters like the Touhou Project. Games like Touhou are meant to be difficult to push players into being risky by grazing bullets. Imagine if your avatar (be it an anime girl, space ship, or otherwise) has a 1×1 pixel in the center of their character sprite. If bullets hit that 1×1 pixel (the hitbox), you die; if bullets pass through any other part of the character sprite (called grazing), you gain bonus points or other special effects. It’s the embodiment of living on the edge in arcade form that’s equally risky as it is exhilarating.
Psyvariar is a bullet hell series – one that was primarily region-locked to Japan until its two titles made their way to the PlayStation 2 in 2003. Since then, its first game was remastered and updated several times, but no new entries (read: actual new games) have been added to the series until now. Red Art Games partnered with Banana Bytes (a development team out of Brazil) and took on the task of reviving the Psyvariar series with SUCCESS Corp. After playing Psyvariar 3 on the Nintendo Switch 2, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the closest thing I’ve gotten to playing a Touhou title in recent years but with a futuristic spaceship thematic rather than traditional anime…and I love it.
Psyvariar 3 is a simple shmup at first glance – it takes the typical vertical shmup formula while incorporating the manic hell gameplay loop of grazing (here it’s called buzz) and weaving through intricate bullet patterns. It’s straightforward in that the overall goal of the arcade mode (the standard gameplay mode) is all about surviving to the end of a level, accruing as many points as possible, and blowing up enemies from all directions. It’s like Ikaruga or Galaga. The buzz system offers ways for player’s chosen ship (one of seven available from the start of the game) to level up their main weapon over time to deal more damage and become visually deadly.
It’s not meant to be easy. It’s not meant to be approachable for the average player. Psyvariar 3 is meant to test players in their ability to get as close as possible to long chains of bullets (see below) and be rewarded with massively high scores. For more granular movement, I could “roll my ship” to wiggle my way into grazing range of bullets. Taking a single hit of damage in the ship’s clearly outlined hitbox destroyed my little ship, and I had a limited number of tries before I had to use a “credit” to respawn with a zeroed out high score while retaining my weapon’s current power level…mostly. If too many bullets were coming my way during a boss fight, I could use a bomb that would wipe my screen of the dangers before me and let me focus on whittling away the boss’ health.
My experience with Touhou back in middle-and-high school had prepped me well for Psyvariar 3. My first few bouts playing as Naomi, a character with the most straightforward scoring style. When I completed a level, I had often accrued enough buzz to unlock the Normal and Hard difficulties of upcoming levels. This dynamic difficulty system kept me on my toes and rewarded me with more opportunities to test myself with harder challenges. I appreciate the inclusion of dynamic difficulty on a per-level system, as it’s perhaps the only form of approachability this game needs for it to remain a true-to-form danmaku. Selfishly, I felt rewarded for unlocking the higher difficulties and trying them out even though I was certain I was going to fail (and I most certainly did).
Psyvariar 3 includes seven different types of selectable ships, each with their own difficulty curves and unique abilities. They play differently from each other, which is great, but I’ll admit that I gelled with two of them the most: Naomi and Maeda. I tested out the other characters in the game’s “Mission Mode” just to get a feel for how they play in contained spaces, but I kept coming back to Naomi and Maeda because of their straightforward scoring systems and bomb abilities that reminded me of playing Touhou. If there’s more Psyvariar in the pipeline from Red Art Games, having as many characters to choose from should be the major priority for the sake of gameplay variety.
The initial presentation of Psyvariar 3 is admittedly jarring. While the Switch 2 features a performance mode of 120fps that feels smooth and properly takes advantage of the modern hardware, the moving PS2-esque backgrounds are flat out distracting. The default background brightness is so bright that some enemies’ bullets blend into the background because they use a similar color scheme. I quickly went into the visual settings and turned down the brightness to “near black” which helped quite a bit at the start. These moving backgrounds should be toned down by default so that players can focus on memorizing the bullet patterns in their first few hours of gameplay before upping the ante with distracting backgrounds.
Now…let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Psyvariar 3 does not look glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. I saw another reviewer (who I will not name) call this game “ugly.” I won’t go as far harsh or far as to say that the game is ugly, but…its age is showing. The blocky ship designs and backgrounds look straight out of the PS1-era of polygons. It’s disappointing for the graphics to look as clunky and rough as they are given that this is many players’ first impression of the series, let alone exposure to traditional bullet hells. For a revival, Psyvariar deserved better.
It feels like I’ve spent much of this review defending the manic shooter (danmaku) subgenre and/or being too descriptive in discussing the mechanics. I’ve seen several players online express frustration with the game’s difficulty, lack of explaining specific mechanics, and/or its design. I want to reiterate that Psyvariar 3 is not an easy shmup by any means. It’s not meant to be. It’s aligned with the goal of being an ultra-difficult shmup for sickos like me who want to test themselves with increasingly difficult bullet patterns. It’s rewarding and exhilarating to watch the big numbers get bigger when I make risky plays by grazing bullets. If you’re struggling with this game, I’ll give you a tip: Try to leave as many enemies on-screen as possible in the earlier levels so they can fill your screen with bullets. You’ll level up faster that way.
Psyvariar 3 will remain installed on my Nintendo Switch 2 for quite a while simply because of its engaging, highly-difficult, yet highly-rewarding gameplay loop of grazing bullets and racking up high scores. It falls short in the graphical department, but it makes up for it in properly executing a bullet hell that caters for those who want a true shmup challenge.
