TLDR; One ship is locked behind an achievement that would take about 70 hours to unlock normally.

Despite the incredibly wtf moment that the trailer drop was for this game, I was still inclined to try it out as someone who typically plays every Raiden game when they have a chance to get their hands on them so I decided to take a plunge at Raiden Nova. At $30 base price I was already kinda ehh about the entry fee, any higher than that and I probably wouldn't have even bothered buying. A collective series of thoughts after currently being in the hell that is the 500K destroyed units achievement:

There is NOTHING here for Raiden veterans other than familiarity with weapons that existed in Raiden V, and even then it isn't the same because you have such a big zoom for the gameplay field that you probably won't be able to see the details for some of the weapons at all. It's a kind of weird thought about not being able to easily see some weapons in action, but since Moss created this game to be their own brand of Vampire Survivors, there will be more references and comparisons to that game with Nova with a frame of reference having many hours in Vampire Survivors as well. Compared to VS, it feels way less satisfying buying power ups/weapons and you can't even see some of them on screen cause the view is so tiny. How clear each new addition to your arsenal was in VS with each upgrade is greatly missed here. The weapon variety is ok for a few runs, but you will see everything the game has to offer in weapons in less than a dozen runs. This pales in comparison to VS where there's so many weapons that it takes much longer before it starts to feel boring there.

Starting off you'll only have one ship named Azuma. Others will slowly appear in the in-game shop as you complete achievements. Azuma seems to be the ship which the game's balance is designed around, as Azuma is designed to get extra damage increases every amount of level up. Other ships will face major issues in the 2nd half of the game if they cannot get lucky with the right power ups, and in this game it feels like they missed the point of VS and how it handles level ups. Generally in VS there is a bias towards weapons or upgrades you've already purchased so rerolling and skipping level up purchases had a legitimate reliable satisfying way to try building small for only a few weapons starting off in a run. Raiden Nova doesn't feel like it has anything like this, and more often than not the game will keep trying to feed you things you don't already own as a majority of your level up bonuses making it harder to get the damage you need even with maxed out rerolls.

This spills over into the nature of the game's exponential enemy growth. You will definitely notice around stage 4 that some REALLY tanky enemies show up that if you haven't gotten your damage situation under control and you haven't already done multiple runs to power up your ships between runs, then my god you are not going to be able to kill much. Raiden Nova is an EXTREMELY unrewarding game if you don't play long enough to get further into the game to get more money drops since currency is strange in this game and very not straightforward in comparison to VS. There is one ship later on that with maxed out passive trait gives you 200% increased money earning, which inevitably means that you will be doing quite a number of runs with this thing if you want to upgrade your ships faster. It really sucks that something is so necessary to making quick progress in this game like this because the game is so grindy even with it that a lot of people won't want to play anymore by the time they get those things unlocked.

I know this review feels like it's all over the place right now because that's how much of a smorgasbord of content mashed together that this game is. Speaking of achievements, achievements also act as a means to wall content off from the player until they are completed. Most of them are pretty straightforward boiler point types of things like reach x stage, kill x boss, see the arcade ending 5 times, evolve whatever weapon etc, but this game has several typos and grammatical issues in the game's text so in their glorious decision making, this achievement: [Bomb saver]: Stage Clear w/o bombs in Arcade Mode. This achievement actually requires you to beat the entirety of Arcade mode without using a bomb. This is the most egregious case of this game's bad translation not effectively conveying a requirement properly.

There are other things that will drive people crazy when it comes to these, as there is a whole ship locked behind destroying 500K units. As a frame of reference, this is pretty much an equivalent of beating Arcade mode 100 times. An Arcade mode that realistically takes about 40 minutes per run for 6 stages at 5 minutes each, looking at level ups, watching animations play out you can't skip, and loading times which are surprisingly longer than you would think for what you get for the play field in this game given the way it looks. It is not pretty and honestly should make anyone question why this was charged as a $30 game. Because they knew they could and someone like me who happened to be curious and a fan of Raiden and also played VS extensively would see this and consider buying it. This game really makes you realize that it is not so easy to replicate what Vampire Survivors ended up bringing to the table even before that game got content updates.

As much as I sound like I'm complaining about this game negatively, I would be a huge hypocrite if I said I didn't have any fun with it. It just feels like it's lacking in features that allow for long term sustainability the same way that VS does. This game feels like it is one patch away from being decent and perhaps "good enough" for the premise if there were some QoL changes to address some things that make no sense to me. One specifically irritating peeve is destroying key enemies and the rewards it drops are always seemingly thrown somewhere at random even if it's several feet from the source of the enemy itself. Trying to find a small pickup in the middle of a sea of fire from enemies is sometimes laughably bad because something as simple as a pickup shouldn't drop in a RANDOM direction literal feet away from where the enemy blowed up.

It feels like if the game has twice as many stages and different scaling for the survival modes so that they properly get harder endlessly instead of having a min and max cap similarly to arcade mode for each specific stage and the number of weapons available to use in the game was expanded, this game would be more worth it. As it stands I would only say cautiously purchase on sale if you like Raiden and Vampire Survivors and happen to like both of their gameplay styles.

Edit: Good luck with keyboard and mouse. Mouse control works by clicking and holding, then moving the mouse away from the source as though you were playing a mobile game. No cursor for point here and ship shoots where the cursor is, no key rebinding.

TLDR; One ship is locked behind an achievement that would take about 70 hours to unlock normally. Despite the incredibly wtf moment that the trailer drop was for this game, I was still inclined to try it out as someone who typically plays every Raiden game when they have a chance to get their hands on them so I decided to take a plunge at Raiden Nova. At $30 base price I was already kinda ehh about the entry fee, any higher than that and I probably wouldn't have even bothered buying. A collective series of thoughts after currently being in the hell that is the 500K destroyed units achievement: There is NOTHING here for Raiden veterans other than familiarity with weapons that existed in Raiden V, and even then it isn't the same because you have such a big zoom for the gameplay field that you probably won't be able to see the details for some of the weapons at all. It's a kind of weird thought about not being able to easily see some weapons in action, but since Moss created this game to be their own brand of Vampire Survivors, there will be more references and comparisons to that game with Nova with a frame of reference having many hours in Vampire Survivors as well. Compared to VS, it feels way less satisfying buying power ups/weapons and you can't even see some of them on screen cause the view is so tiny. How clear each new addition to your arsenal was in VS with each upgrade is greatly missed here. The weapon variety is ok for a few runs, but you will see everything the game has to offer in weapons in less than a dozen runs. This pales in comparison to VS where there's so many weapons that it takes much longer before it starts to feel boring there. Starting off you'll only have one ship named Azuma. Others will slowly appear in the in-game shop as you complete achievements. Azuma seems to be the ship which the game's balance is designed around, as Azuma is designed to get extra damage increases every amount of level up. Other ships will face major issues in the 2nd half of the game if they cannot get lucky with the right power ups, and in this game it feels like they missed the point of VS and how it handles level ups. Generally in VS there is a bias towards weapons or upgrades you've already purchased so rerolling and skipping level up purchases had a legitimate reliable satisfying way to try building small for only a few weapons starting off in a run. Raiden Nova doesn't feel like it has anything like this, and more often than not the game will keep trying to feed you things you don't already own as a majority of your level up bonuses making it harder to get the damage you need even with maxed out rerolls. This spills over into the nature of the game's exponential enemy growth. You will definitely notice around stage 4 that some REALLY tanky enemies show up that if you haven't gotten your damage situation under control and you haven't already done multiple runs to power up your ships between runs, then my god you are not going to be able to kill much. Raiden Nova is an EXTREMELY unrewarding game if you don't play long enough to get further into the game to get more money drops since currency is strange in this game and very not straightforward in comparison to VS. There is one ship later on that with maxed out passive trait gives you 200% increased money earning, which inevitably means that you will be doing quite a number of runs with this thing if you want to upgrade your ships faster. It really sucks that something is so necessary to making quick progress in this game like this because the game is so grindy even with it that a lot of people won't want to play anymore by the time they get those things unlocked. I know this review feels like it's all over the place right now because that's how much of a smorgasbord of content mashed together that this game is. Speaking of achievements, achievements also act as a means to wall content off from the player until they are completed. Most of them are pretty straightforward boiler point types of things like reach x stage, kill x boss, see the arcade ending 5 times, evolve whatever weapon etc, but this game has several typos and grammatical issues in the game's text so in their glorious decision making, this achievement: [Bomb saver]: Stage Clear w/o bombs in Arcade Mode. This achievement actually requires you to beat the entirety of Arcade mode without using a bomb. This is the most egregious case of this game's bad translation not effectively conveying a requirement properly. There are other things that will drive people crazy when it comes to these, as there is a whole ship locked behind destroying 500K units. As a frame of reference, this is pretty much an equivalent of beating Arcade mode 100 times. An Arcade mode that realistically takes about 40 minutes per run for 6 stages at 5 minutes each, looking at level ups, watching animations play out you can't skip, and loading times which are surprisingly longer than you would think for what you get for the play field in this game given the way it looks. It is not pretty and honestly should make anyone question why this was charged as a $30 game. Because they knew they could and someone like me who happened to be curious and a fan of Raiden and also played VS extensively would see this and consider buying it. This game really makes you realize that it is not so easy to replicate what Vampire Survivors ended up bringing to the table even before that game got content updates. As much as I sound like I'm complaining about this game negatively, I would be a huge hypocrite if I said I didn't have any fun with it. It just feels like it's lacking in features that allow for long term sustainability the same way that VS does. This game feels like it is one patch away from being decent and perhaps "good enough" for the premise if there were some QoL changes to address some things that make no sense to me. One specifically irritating peeve is destroying key enemies and the rewards it drops are always seemingly thrown somewhere at random even if it's several feet from the source of the enemy itself. Trying to find a small pickup in the middle of a sea of fire from enemies is sometimes laughably bad because something as simple as a pickup shouldn't drop in a RANDOM direction literal feet away from where the enemy blowed up. It feels like if the game has twice as many stages and different scaling for the survival modes so that they properly get harder endlessly instead of having a min and max cap similarly to arcade mode for each specific stage and the number of weapons available to use in the game was expanded, this game would be more worth it. As it stands I would only say cautiously purchase on sale if you like Raiden and Vampire Survivors and happen to like both of their gameplay styles. Edit: Good luck with keyboard and mouse. Mouse control works by clicking and holding, then moving the mouse away from the source as though you were playing a mobile game. No cursor for point here and ship shoots where the cursor is, no key rebinding.