Review: CYGNI: ALL GUNS BLAZING Needs a Little More Time in the Hangar

Konami recently released CYGNI: All guns blazing from developer KeelWorks. It’s a Galaga-style vertical shooter (shmup) and can be played now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Konami was kind enough to provide me with a Steam code for the purposes of this review, but all thoughts are my own. If this sounds like the kind of game for you, you can purchase it from various storefronts, including Humble (affiliate link) with an MSRP of $29.99.

In CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, humanity’s last stand takes place on the planet CYGNI, where players must defend the remains of a decimated colony from a relentless biomechanical alien assault.

Immerse yourself in a thrilling battle for humanity, where cutting-edge graphics, sound design and intense action come together for an unforgettable next-generation experience.

I’ll start this review by confessing that I’m not very familiar with shooters. I’ve played a couple here and there, but none in great depth. I still had fun playing them. Swans and I even completed it on easy mode.

Let’s start with some technical notes. First, I tried Swans on my Steam Deck and also on the Steam Deck settings, it didn’t work very well. I played mostly Swans on my gaming desktop with a Ryzen 9 5900X, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and 32GB of DDR4 3600 MT/s RAM.

I was actually a little shocked when I discovered that with everything maxed out, it still couldn’t maintain a stable 60 frames per second (fps), which is the maximum the game lets you set it to. I was even more shocked when I lowered the detail level to “High” and still couldn’t maintain 60 fps.

It was better than “Ultra”, but still no go. Sadly, there was no option for AMD FSR. I’m sure if I tweaked some settings via AMD Adrenaline and/or lowered MSAA to x2 instead of x4 I could get a more stable 60fps.

I don’t know if it’s a technical marvel that makes it very challenging, poor optimization, or a mix of the two, but my machine is no slouch and probably should have been able to handle it better.

Enough of the boring technical talk. I think I’ll start with the gameplay. Overall, it’s exactly what you’d expect. You’re in a fighter jet/spaceship and you’re shooting at enemies.

You mostly shoot lasers in a stream in front, but you also have missiles and a beam to attack ground units. You can also buy drones on the side to increase your firepower, different firing arcs and more between missions. Overall, pretty simple. However, there is more.

For starters, you can aim your main lasers, adding another layer of strategy as you play through a mission. Yes, there are different firing patterns for your lasers, but by moving your mouse or right stick, you can adjust the direction of the fire so that it’s at an angle, meaning you don’t always have to aim things straight. You can even purchase an upgrade to turn on homing lasers!

There is also a system where you can shift power between shields (aka health) and firepower. As you destroy enemies, you can collect more power, which as far as I know always goes to health, which is a complaint I have (if my health is maxed out, my firepower automatically increases).

Interestingly, with more firepower you can switch between different firing patterns (which you can adjust in the Upgrades tab between missions). Firepower can also be used to fire missiles (which I don’t think is ever explained) that hit enemies in the air and on the ground.

Funny how Swans has been playing, there are a few things that I don’t like. For starters, while the environments, ships, and effects look great while playing, it can be really hard to keep track of your ship. I would often lose track of my ship due to the visual clutter and things moving so fast.

Another issue I have is that it seems really hard to get enough money to buy upgrades. I have no idea how they calculate how much money you get at the end of a mission, but I found that I would often finish a mission and only get about $20 and so many upgrades cost over $100!

Since they never share (as far as I know) how you get the money, I don’t know what I could do to unlock more power-ups. Third, I wish there was some sort of dodge mechanism. I wish I could press a button to evade enemy attacks every once in a while. My penultimate complaint about the gameplay is that there are too many airborne enemies too often.

There are a lot of moments where you have powerful ground units that give you trouble, but you can’t do anything about it because you’re too busy fighting the hordes of air units that immediately respawn once the group has been wiped out. I think there’s still some balancing that needs to be done, especially since it often feels like it takes a long time to take out most of the enemies.

Finally, one of my biggest complaints is that the levels are quite long (I think my fastest time was around 11-12 minutes) and there are no checkpoints. This means that if you die against a boss, you have to go back to the beginning of the level, which is just annoying.

Other aspects of the game that I didn’t talk about are the audio and video. The audio is good, but doesn’t seem like anything special. The graphics are good, but sometimes seem incongruous. There is a unified look between the menus and the actual gameplay.

However, the cutscenes bother me. Often you have fairly realistic looking environments, but then the character that appears to be the protagonist is very cartoonish and doesn’t fit. I wasn’t a big fan of how the art styles meshed.

Lastly, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what the story actually is. Probably about 99% of the story is just what you read before you start a quest, but they’re very easy to skip. The cutscenes give a little bit of story and mostly it’s just “we have to defeat these monsters for some reason.” I was hoping the cutscenes would give a little more story, but it is what it is.

At the end of the day, do I love? Swans? No. But I wouldn’t say I don’t like it either. It’s a fun game that I think just needs a little balancing. The MSRP of just $30 definitely helps it feel a little less bad.