The Switch is rapidly becoming the system of choice for shmup gamers. While it’s not the most powerful console of the current generation, there are more shmups releases on the Switch than anything else aside from PC. Just in the last six months, we’ve had three major Cave shmups drop on the Switch for Western audiences, and now, Qute Corporation has graced us with a Switch port of Eschatos!
If you haven’t heard of Eschatos, it’s not entirely a surprise. Prior to this release, Eschatos was available exclusively on Steam in the west. Aside from that, the only way to play it was to import a region-free Japanese Xbox 360 copy of the game to play, and it was worth it. Eschatos is the spiritual successor to a game called Judgement Silversword, which in turn channeled some Radiant Silvergun vibes itself and was originally released on the Bandai Wondeswan, an Asia-exclusive handheld system. If we really want to get into provenance, the Wonderswan itself was made by a company founded by Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of the original Game Boy and the original D-pad, but perhaps that’s a bit too far. Anyway, Eschatos isn’t alone on this collection. Also included is the original Judgement Silversword, as well as a remixed caravan mode of Silversword entitled Cardinal Sins. This is a wonderfully diverse amount of content and aside from a few hiccups, is excellent across the board! Let’s take a look at each game in the collection, what it contains, and why they’re good!
First up is Eschatos itself. This is a unique vertical shmup with some non-standard mechanics. The game comes with three modes, Original, Advanced, and Time Attack, and each has its own nuances. In original mode, your ship is always fully powered. You have two shot styles, a forward shot and a wide shot. Forward shot is a fairly narrow fire pattern that puts you directly in the enemy crosshairs. Wide shot spreads across the whole screen but is much weaker and leaves a blank spot in the fire pattern directly in front of your ship. Optimal performance in the game requires a constant shift from wide to front shots and back. You also have a shield that can block enemy bullets, but it can’t block them indefinitely, running out of power after absorbing a certain amount. It’s important to note here that if you hit wide shot and front shot together, your shield activates instead, so don’t double press! Finally, you can change the speed of your ship with three options available, but most of the time, faster is better! There are 4 different difficulty modes on Eschatos ranging from Easy to Hardest and multipliers, bullet patterns, and overall difficult shift with each mode. Hard and Hardest are definitely NOT messing around!
Eschatos is broken up into small waves of enemies. Defeat a wave, up your score multiplier. The longer it takes, the lower your bonuses get, so the faster and more accurately you kill everything onscreen, the higher your score. Die and your multiplier drops by 1. You can collect F-bombs (I don’t THINK it’s a joke?) that clear enemy bullets and destroy weaker enemies, but they muck about with your score a bit and collecting them is risky since they flit all over the screen. There are also hidden items called Wonderwitches in Eschatos. Wonderwitch is actually the language used to program the original Judgement Silversword on the Wonderswan, a little Easter Egg that’s tossed in. Manage to collect them all and you get massive score bonuses as each one rises in value consecutively. And if all that wasn’t enough, if you do manage to beat the game, you get a huge point bonus for each ship you have left! With five stages, consisting of 26 areas, multiple bosses, boss rushes, and some surprises, Eschatos is utterly stacked for gameplay. Suffice it to say there’s a lot going on here if you’re playing for score and that’s just original mode.
Advanced Mode in Eschatos adds an additional layer of complexity to the game. Now your ship starts out weak but with full shields. Each time you collect a P powerup, your ship weapons get more powerful and you get a score multiplier but your shields get weaker, dropping to a measly 30% of their former bullet-stopping power by the time you max out your ship’s weapons! Block bullets with your shield in this mode and they become purple crystals that help defend your ship, but it definitely takes a bit of a knack. Instead of F-bombs, there are gold F-bombs in Advanced mode and they drop your score multiplier by 1 if you collect them. They do keep your ship from dying though, so that’s probably preferable to losing whatever larger multiplier you’ve built up! Like original mode, Advanced is a constant score balancing act that is part of the charm of Eschatos! There’s also a Time Attack mode that should be pretty self explanatory. Ninety seconds to score as high as you can. Go!
The main game here is pretty solid, but what you might also notice about Eschatos is that it’s a gorgeous looking game! The backgrounds are interesting and the perspectives shift so that it feels like you’re jetting all over the place with camera angles tracking you around flying saucers and over pyramids, fighting in the air and on the land all while maintaining a standard vertical shmup playfield. It’s so distractingly gorgeous that it’s easy to die while looking about, but occasionally it’s worth it! On top of that, the soundtrack is simply excellent and honestly probably worth grabbing if you can find a digital copy somewhere. It’s available on Steam if that’s your thing! Please note that a few players have reported very slight frame drops with large amounts of explosions onscreen while in handheld TATE mode for Eschatos on the Switch.
Whew! Now that you’ve got a good idea of what’s in store with Eschatos, let’s take a look at Judgement Silversword! Included on the Switch is Judgement Silversword: Rebirth Edition. This is a Switch port of the original game and it’s almost perfect! Judgement Silversword, as the precursor to Eschatos, is pretty much the same format with wide and front beams, a shield, and vertical orientation. Visually, this is more of a vintage 8 bit experience, but fine tuned to be one of the best vertical shmups out there. Take away all of the distractions from the graphics of Eschatos, replace them with sprite-based enemies, add in even more complexity to multipliers and you’ve got Judgement Silversword. The technical aspects of multipliers are probably too complex for this review, but suffice it to say that you get multipliers for killing enemies fast, hitting them with shields, and blocking bullets. A lot more 1ups drop in Judgement Silversword, but ironically they seem to be based mostly on how badly you play, so if you’re seeing a lot of extra lives, you probably suck. It’s also important to know that using your shield to block actually pushes you back, so be ready to compensate or die rapidly. Bullet patterns seem faster in Judgement Silversword than Eschatos and the screen is a tighter, making for a lot more pressure as the game ramps up. Naturally, three modes of difficulty are also included.
After a few stages, you’ll end up in a boss fight with one of the game’s Judges carrying a silver sword, hence, well, the title. Between the Judges and the other bosses, Silversword is loaded with challenges and it makes for an incredibly tense game that’s fun to simply try to survive in but also engineered for expert shmup gamers to maximize scores as well. It’s a game that’s simple and elegant on the surface, complex underneath, and absolutely deserves its reputation!
There are some slight differences that only the most hardcore of shmup fans would notice, such as slight framerate changes (the original game on the Wonderswan ran at 75hz, and the Switch actually runs at 60hz, meaning that there are 15 frames per second that have to be blended to match the original game. This makes the Steam version of the game (assuming you have a 120Hz monitor or better) the definitive version of the game. This is reinforced by the painful nerfing of the true final boss in the Switch version, leaving the final fight unsatisfying for anyone who’s a hardcore shmup fan. Hopefully this gets patched!
Finally, there’s Cardinal Sins Recycle Edition. This is a sequel / remix of Judgement Silversword with identical graphics that’s designed to be played in waves with specific goals in each. Cardinal Sins is unique in that it’s not a standard shmup. Instead it’s broken up into 7 mini-stages based on the seven deadly sins. Each stage has a goal such as “Destroy Them All”, “Collect Enemy Data”, collecting “1up”s and more. At the end of the seven levels, your score on each is given a letter ranking, they’re averaged out, and you have a final score during Judgement Time. It’s a fun diversion that has Trial Mode, Normal Mode and a Marathon mode included!
Now, if all that wasn’t enough for you, there’s also a leveling system in the Eschatos options. This carries over into Judgement Silversword and Cardinal Sins as well. The more you play, the more you unlock and as you play you level up your ranking with the game itself and add continues, wallpaper, effects options, special settings, collision detection options, and even a God Mode! Each game has a set of unlocks for a ton of added playability.
There’s really no question that Eschatos is a fantastic game, and with the inclusion of Judgement Silversword (even if it isn’t the definitive version) and Cardinal Sins, this is a must-have title for the Switch! At $26.99 this isn’t the cheapest title out there, but it’s also got a wealth of content and replayability if you’re into the shmup genre and it’s one of the best things out there. Go check it out!\
This review was based on a digital copy of Eschatos provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was excellent in both. This version of Eschatos is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch at this time and is available digitally only.