Not worth the price. Don't get hooked by the visuals.

The game feels rushed and repetitive. There is a lot of faulty game design overall.
Every level is almost 20 minutes long with NO CHECKPOINTS and it consists of almost the same enemy patterns over and over for no reason, and after dying you don't keep any of the currency you gained. Making it really hard to progress for players that are stuck since you can't purchase/upgrade weapons.

-Game premise/main feature is getting pick-up drops from enemy kills that regenerate your shields, you can convert shields into missiles by pressing RB and viceversa by pressing LB. You can shot a barrage of missiles with the A button.
-Gameplay loop is spamming missiles and quickly converting new pick up shields into missiles after spamming them which literally clears the screen so quickly the game gets boring and you don't even have to dodge any bullets because you are always getting new shields due to the insane amount of drops there are, you just get hit and don't care spamming RB + A.

-There is only a total of 7 levels, afterwards you unlock arcade mode that is just a loop of the same 7 levels continuously.

I'm only giving this a thumbs up because as a shmup gamedev myself I find it incredibly difficult to actually hit that negative review button. Cygni in its current state is simply not worth your time. I did not beat the game at the time of this review, but some of the issues are so apparent from the getgo that I do not feel it's necessary and I honestly just do not have the motivation to play much more of it. If I play more of it and find I was mistaken on some points, or the game gets updated I'll try my best to remember to edit this review.

This game had so many eyes on it so it was my hope that it would bring new fans into the genre. If the developers are reading this, please understand I'm sharing these critiques because I want this game to be at least decent. It's hard to make a game and I'm not trying to take a piss all over your hard efforts. I've never had this many friends messaging me about a new shmup asking if it's good or not. There's more people paying attention to this game than any other shmup in the past decade.

I looked up the credits to the game and the root of all problems with Cygni became immediately apparent to me. Of the ten people on staff and the nine contractors, only two of them are listed as game designers. Both of which had other roles on the team which I can only imagine were significantly stressful and time consuming endeavors based on the fantastic end results of those elements. As far as I understand, Cygni had no one putting all of their time and effort into the gameplay department. And it shows. It really REALLY shows.

There is little to critique in the art and sound department. It's all incredible work. The art style and music aren't to my liking but that's just a personal taste thing. No such thing as right or wrong there. Menus are a bit confusing but I figured them out. That's about it.

Already going into it knowing the game takes several hours to complete, I know this will not be a game with the core vision of being a competent arcade-style game. That's fine, there's longer progression based shmups out there and some of them ARE fun despite what genre purists will argue. But even looking at the game through these lens, it is hard to say it's done well.

First off, let's talk about the difficulties. There's Easy, Medium and Hard. Pretty standard fare. The game defaults to Medium. I spent about an hour playing stage 1 on Medium, dying and restarting thinking maybe I just wasn't understanding something. It turns out without any upgrades you literally cannot kill some of the enemies and bosses before they time out. Why does the game not only let me play an unwinnable scenario at the beginning, but also DEFAULT to it? Once I switched to Easy I felt like I was playing a real game, and this really feels like the difficulties should be changed to something like "Normal, Hard, and Very Hard" with Hard and Very Hard being unlockables after the player has gotten some ship upgrades.

Next, let's talk about how the upgrades work. In the age of roguelites, gachas and Vampire Survivor clones, there is no shortage of games available to study incredibly engaging and addicting progression systems. It should be hard to get this stuff wrong. Cygni requires you to complete a stage in order to receive upgrade currency. This isn't exactly a horrible decision, however the first level took me 17 minutes to finally complete once switching to Easy. So for the first hour or so of playing the game, I made no progress on ship upgrades. And here's when the game gave me the biggest middle finger ever: I didn't even have enough currency to unlock anything. There was a way I was playing that caused this, but it brings to light perhaps the most frustrating design flaw of Cygni:

Cygni features a pretty unique mechanic where you can trade shields for firepower, and you can trade firepower for missiles. It's a bit clunky but it is kind of fun to keep filtering the shield pickups into more damage. The way I had the most fun interacting with the game was staying very low on shields and constantly spamming missiles. So here's the thing, the shield pickups are also your upgrade currency. But ONLY if you have your shields maxed out. This is how I cleared stage 1 with no upgrade currency. So understanding this, I now have to make a decision: do I play the game in "action mode" and use all of my tools at my disposal to win? Or do I play the game in "farming mode" and make sure I harvest as many resources as possible so I'm stronger for the next stage? It's not a fun decision to be presented with, and actively encourages the player away from interacting with the most interesting element of Cygni. There's just a complete lack of synergy here.

So how are the upgrades once you can finally get them? Honestly pretty underwhelming. It doesn't feel like I'm getting stronger, it feels like I just started with a handicap and slowly get back to a moderate power level. So much so that some of the upgrades are explained in the tutorial before I can even use them. This created a feeling of confusion and disappointment when I tried to use these tools for the first time only to not have access to them. It then also ruined the sense of excitement I would've had from unlocking them.

All of that stuff is easily fixable, except for maybe making the upgrades more punchy. Now there's some issues that I'm not sure can be fixed. My biggest personal gripe with this game is the inability to play with an arcade stick. Even Capcom and Namco understand when making a fighting game that part of the fun of a genre born from the arcades is playing on an arcade stick. To many, playing a shmup on a controller feels like playing Guitar Hero on a controller. Sure you can do it but it doesn't feel right. And it's not even the pseudo-twin stick controls that get in the way (although that is a problem and being able to aim with such limits feels pointless). It's the fact that I have to use more than 8 buttons to be able to do everything in the game which means no standard arcade stick will feel good with this game. It just kind of feels disrespectful to the history of the genre, especially when the requirements of a controller or keyboard+mouse doesn't really add much to the game. And coming from a game published by Konami, it feels like a game ashamed of its own legacy when it should be incredibly proud.

(word limit reached, continued in comments)

- Stunning visuals BUT absolutely NOT ENGAGING nor interesting gameplay sadly.
- Very spammy and unnecessary long fights, no actual dodging or much skill needed, movement is way too fast for any precise flying (not that you need it anyways).
Just move left/right balancing energy and that's about it, nothing else needed.
- Upgrade system is overthinked and feels useless at the same time with how the gameplay works.

All in all:
- Game lacks clarity and an actual interesting gameplay.
- This could have been a banger with such art direction and sound but sadly forgot it's a game that needs to be played and enjoyed first and foremost.
- Very disapointing SHMUP and I felt robbed of my money and my time. Never been so disapointed by a purchase this much, and god I love this genre of games, this is a HARD PASS.