DRAINUS (Switch)

Geoffrey Wright | February 8, 2023 | Review | No Comments

Stealthily released to Steam last year, Drainus from Team Ladybug now makes its way to other systems, with the portable Switch version hoping to catch the eye of potential pilots. Worth taking the fight to the Kharlal Empire on the go? Lets take a look.

Drainus sees you taking up the journey of Irina, a slave on the planet Haplax in the Kharlal Empire, who is recruited by a time traveller in Ghenie to stop an impending galactic war. With her fathers illness worsening and the only cure available being on Earth, Irina sets out on a perilous journey to hopefully save her father and bring down the empire to save the futures of nearly 5000 planets.

Story is presented in the classic way using character portraits and booping dialogue. While the stories mainly serve to keep the game moving along in this genre, Drainus has a surprisingly good narrative as it does sport some relatively fleshed out characters and has a satisfying conclusion to round it off – there’s even collectibles to grab and listen to for more lore. I suppose the only real downer is the length can be relatively short, you can be fully done with the game in a few hours depending on difficulty.

The game opens up with what looks like a 3D intro, but in reality is just pseudo-3D which sets the tone for the presentation. In a way it kind of reminds me of shmups on the Saturn as it sports chunky sprites and occasionally throws in the odd pseudo-3D moment using layered sprites. Stage designs, and style of the game in general, are reminiscent of the likes of Gradius, R-type, Darius, etc so there’s plenty for long time fans of the genre to appreciate.

There isn’t any performances issues to speak of really in handheld mode, which kind of makes docking for any improvement moot. To be honest I’m not sure there is a noticeable improvement if you do, other than it still goods good on the big screen, outside of being able to use a better controller.

For the most part this plays out like a typical . Risk/Reward has always been a staple of the genre, do you risk riding the enemies shots to land a few more of your own or fall back to manageable area for example, which this game highlights. The key addition is the reflector, a shield you can activate that protects you and absorbs enemy attacks for a few seconds. This power is then transferred into a counter attack when the button is released, so soaking up as many attacks before the meter runs out. Its a little risky as the meter can run out from additional attacks, there’s also the odd time it felt as if the game punishes you for using the reflector when it doesn’t want you to. You can get past that feeling though if you balance the ability between attack & defense better during the multi-stage boss encounters.

The reflector also has other uses. The energy absorbed is also used to fill jars of energy which is then used to purchase upgrades between missions. You can upgrade all kinds of things, from simple weapons to additional modules to add more firepower or increase the reflector usage time. The only real downside to this is that your health is tied to the upgrades, the more upgrades the more health, but it can backfire late in the game if you die as spawning all the way back at zero to build up only seems to tickle enemies. To be fair there isn’t much to fault with the game aside from that mentioned, the only other annoyance is that the Joycons suck for this kind of game – but that’s on Nintendo.

To be honest as someone whose more into cute-em-ups these days like Cotton, I was left surprised by how engaging Drainus turned out to be. It reminded me of the fun I used to have on Saturn shmups, and there’s some interesting mechanics thrown in to go with the great visuals and well presented narrative. Hardcore genre fans may not get much out of this though unless the difficulty is ramped up, but others will get plenty of enjoyment for several hours, with the game also serving as a good entry point to traditional shmups for newcomers.