3 people found this review helpful
Recommended
27.9 hrs last two weeks / 191.3 hrs on record (163.4 hrs at review time)
Posted: 21 Nov, 2023 @ 3:35pm

If you love Vampire Survivors (or similar "bullet heaven" genre) and aren't allergic to anime, it's necessary you try this game. A weeb card isn't required.

Holocure is part of the many VampSurv clones, however it goes above them and I'd say it even stands next to the game it takes inspiration from.
The gameplay loop is the same as every other: kill things, grab XP, level up, acquire items, become strong, reach the time limit and win. At the 20 minute mark, a boss will spawn which you will have to defeat to beat the stage. The currency you gained in the run can be used to further upgrade your character for an easier run next time.
The main thing that set it above are the small differences to other games:

Controls:
Free aim! No autolock into enemies, so there's a bit more skill involved. You have the option to play in a similar way to Vampire Survivors (with a button to "lock" aim so you can strafe), but there's also an option to play with mouse or analog stick which gives you 360 degrees of freedom to aim. A lot of VampSurv clones now have this option, but at least back when this released it was a pretty innovative mechanic.
Movement also feels snappy and responsive, not much to comment other than analog stick gets 360 degrees of movement, while obviously keyboard only gets 8. No way to control with mouse.

Music:
This juice is banging yo

Weapons/Items:
Weapons come in different forms, mainly categorized by being Melee, Ranged, or Multishot. Each one interacts differently with Items, passive boosts to the character stats, to healing capabilities, or other effects. These items are acquired through Level ups or HoloBoxes, which will randomly pick one from the entire pool. These boxes also have a small chance of rarer, stronger versions of Items with added bonuses
Another drops apart from the common healing item being Food, there's a chance for Anvils to drop, which will allow you to either level up an item for free for faster scaling, or to Enchant them for an extra bonus stat to the Weapon for a cost.

Called Evolution, Fusions, and other names elsewhere, Collabs are your main way to gain better firepower, by merging two different weapons after maxing their levels out. Collabing two weapons with an Enchantment will also allow you to keep both Enchantments for both weapons for a souped up version. Of course, if this isn't enough for you, you can merge a few of these Collabs with Items for a Super Collab, a very powerful weapon with the limit of only being able to equip one of them.

Content:
There are currently 38 characters in the game, each one with their own unique stats, weapons (that acquire a new powerful effect one you max its level out), set of three passives, and Special Attacks (a powerful ability that recharges over a long period of time).
These are unlocked through Gacha with in-game currency which you acquire by simply playing the game. While the random mechanic of getting characters sounds a bit weird, getting duplicates of characters causes them to grow stronger, plus if you happen to want a character and aren't lucky getting it, you have a currency you gain as you obtain dupes, which will allow you to unlock the character freely after about 7 dupes. This currency can also be used to unlock skins for the characters, which can range by character from 3 total skins to none (if the character was recently added).
Between 16 weapons, there's a total of 46 Collabs possible (3 Collabs available per Weapon), plus 4 extra Super Collabs, all tracked in the Armory for those completionists.
There are also 5 Stages, with 3 of them having a Hard Mode version, plus an Endless mode where you compete for high scores in online leaderboards, and also a Time Mode where you play in a unique stage to try to defeat a number of enemies in the fastest time you can.

HoloHouse:
In case you're having difficulty beating later stages, worry not for the HoloHouse comes for those.
Unlocked after beating the first stage, this is basically your respite, where you can farm, fish, cook foods with buffs for your next runs, and hire workers to idly farm for more coins.
There's also house decoration included, for those players who have TOO MANY COINS and don't have much to spend as a way to money sink the rest of your coins.

Planned Content:
The devs are very passionate about Hololive and have stated they plan to include all Hololive Talents in the game, which currently means the cast will expand up to 65 characters, with each patch including around 10 of them, plus a new Stage and a Hard Stage; on top of that, as confirmed for next patch, there'll be a Dungeon Crawler style minigame as an alternative gamemode for extra content, and a teased Casino, so they definitely don't plan to stop anytime soon.

TL;DR/Conclusion:
Great weapon variety, snappy controls, nice graphics and music, tons of content (about 160 hours for me to 100% the game (i am a bad gamer)), anime girls if that's your thing, all for the price of free. At least worth a try. Definitely recommend
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
4 Comments
Goofy Slime 22 Nov, 2023 @ 2:32pm 
haha made you say where
「Kida」 22 Nov, 2023 @ 1:56pm 
where
Goofy Slime 21 Nov, 2023 @ 9:54pm 
i miss you kida come back
「Kida」 21 Nov, 2023 @ 3:37pm 
i write too fr*ckin much