Otherwar, on paper should be an instant hit. It combines multiple genres that sound like a lot at first, but the more you think about it, the more you realise, “wait, that actually sounds class!” Mashing together a combination of twin stick shooter, bullet hell and tower defence, ‘Otherwar’ lays the foundation for what should be a homerun title.
What does a game of Otherwar play out like?
The narrative of Otherwar is a simple one: heaven versus hell. You control a lone angel and protect the gates of heaven from the demonic forces from hell. As mentioned at the start of this review, Otherwar is a mashup of a few genres. Please allow me to break them down.
Your character controls with both analogue sticks, left giving full movement around each level and shooting a projectile wherever the right stick is pointed. Enemies operate by the rules of the two remaining genres. Waves of enemies enter from off-screen and can move only along the path towards heaven’s gate. You can try soloing the wave, but enemies will shower you in projectiles, each enemy type with their own set of patterns and projectile speed under their belt for you to avoid. This feat is too much to ask for one lone guardian angel, so you must build a series of defensive and offensive options to help tackle the horde along the way.
To aid your battles, you accumulate XP with each enemy defeated. This can be traded in for towers. Towers can be used to attack enemies, slow them down or shoot projectiles out of the sky. Each tower has an area of effect, making the placement of a tower require planning ahead because once the tower is planted, you can’t move it; you can only sell it at a loss. After you have a nice cul-de-sac of offensive and defensive towers built, the remaining XP can be used to upgrade the towers to become stronger, to continue being an aid to you in battle. As you progress through the game, more towers are unlocked to add to your tower loadout before selecting a stage.
How enjoyable is Otherwar to play?
Otherwar’s pixel art works for the most part during gameplay, but on a big screen for this console version, it is best put as ‘visually noisy’. The level select screen’s colour palette is hard on the eyes and was quite difficult to process and take in information at times. The UI for creating a tower can sometimes obscure the radius the tower covers, making it difficult to plan the best option for creating a tower.
Additionally, the button layout deviates from the norm while in build mode. The button that the majority of players would press to exit a menu will instead sell a tower. Leading to many times I would make this mistake and have to earn enough XP again just to rebuild my tower to rectify my muscle memory error. On top of all this, Otherwar takes a good while to get momentum going, your bullets are slow, weak, and enemies are sponges. Permanent upgrades are pricey, and the in-level upgrades every three waves are minuscule. Every time I would finish a level, the thoughts of a slow start would kill any interest I had in going to another level.
Is it worth your time and investment?
I find it hard to recommend Otherwar on the PlayStation 5. All the ingredients are here for an amazing game, but the time I spent with it left me underwhelmed. A huge damage buff across the board would make games get going quicker and incentivise replayability.
In addition, a more action-packed score to accompany the fast-paced dodging of bullets while keeping an eye out that your towers are keeping the waves at bay, while you clean up, would make this an easy pick-up and play kind of game. Maybe on a Nintendo Switch or a Steam Deck, this would be a nice little palette cleanser to have between games, but not while you’re sitting in front of the TV and choosing a title to sink time into.
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