My biggest problem with indie games is that they often lack ambition and are built around only one or two main ideas. I don’t want to blame them for appropriately scaling their projects to their budgets. You gotta do what you gotta do to make your game work. But as a consumer, I’ve gotten to the point where I feel overwhelmed and burnt out by low cost methods like old school pixel art or simpler genres.
What I love about the Level-5’s Guild series is that, while they’re simplified down to a couple ideas like most indie games, they never feel like budget releases.
Liberation Maiden features 3D graphics, voice acting and even an opening anime cutscene. In some ways it plays like a lot other flight based shooters. Specifically, Omega Boost and Panzer Dragoon, which focus on avoiding damage while locking onto as many units possible to unleash a barrage of missiles. What’s different is that, instead of taking place on rails, you navigate a full 3D space to take out objectives.
Unfortunately, the smaller price point does come at the cost of length. The game is only five missions long, but each mission is well crafted. It feels like a smaller section taken from a full retail title.
