Thank you Red Art Games for sending us this game to review!

I had never heard of Psyvariar before reviewing this game, but I'm glad I gave it a chance, because it plays differently than most other shoot 'em ups I've tried. The Psyvariar series started way back in 2000, and is a vertically-oriented shoot 'em up known for its unique "buzz" mechanic. Considering Psyvariar 2 was originally released in 2003, it's been quite some time since we've gotten an entirely new entry. (There have been other releases, like a rerelease of the first game, but no new ones.) As shoot 'em ups seem to be more popular than ever, it was a great time to release a proper sequel in Psyvariar 3.

Since the phrase "shoot 'em up" might mean different things to different people, it's important to define what it means here. This is not a first-person shooter, or a gun game, but instead it's a 2D game where you see your spaceship from above, and enemies come from all directions but primarily the top of the screen. You shoot up (from bottom to top) at them until they explode. Being a vertically-oriented one, the playing field is taller than it is wide, with the sides of the screen using one of several optional backgrounds. Enemies can fill the screen with bullets, and it's your job to avoid them while shooting the bad guys until they explode.

However, in Psyvariar, some aspects of that formula are flipped on its head. As you might imagine, many shoot 'em ups have some kind of unique draw. For some, it's unique powerups, pickups, and so on. For example, R-Type is known for the Force, and the powers and skills that come with that by picking up certain upgrades. Psyvariar 3 has nothing like that. As a matter of fact, it has no pickups at all. Instead, all powering up comes from exploiting its buzz mechanic, which is sometimes called grazing in other games.

Buzzing (or grazing) is a means to encourage risky behavior by placing your ship within a certain distance of one (or many) bullets for some kind of bonus. While some games reward you with points or other smaller bonuses, Psyvariar bases its entire progression system on it.

Since there are no pickups, your ship gains levels through buzzing. Well, not exclusively; you do gain some through killing enemies as well, but buzzing can often lead to much more and faster progression. At the top of the screen there is a meter which shows you how close you are to the next level. If you buzz only the occasional bullet, you'll see that meter go up slowly as you do so (as well as blast enemies). However, if there are a lot of bullets on the screen, and you manage to carefully get close without taking any hits, then the meter (and level up sounds and effects) can pop over and over.

It also helps that your ship gets short-term invincibility when you gain a level. This, along with more powerful bullets and often with a wider spread, makes buzzing not just an important mechanic, but a critical one.

An interesting side effect of this is that sometimes it might be smarter to wait for an opponent to shoot, or even to not shoot them at all, since buzzing can offer better rewards than shooting them down. That's why this series has earned a reputation for being the "shoot 'em up where you don't shoot". Interestingly, bosses have two health meters - a life meter that depletes when you hit them, and a timer. If you manage to survive or otherwise not run out of lives (or credits) when the timer runs out, the boss will just explode on its own. This is what makes no-shot runs viable.

It's probably worth noting that the hit box, or the area on your ship that causes you to die if you get hit, is actually only a single, tiny pixel. It might seem like the game would be easy then, right? Well, not so much, especially since there are so many bullets on the screen at once that you might find staying alive much harder than it first appears.

As you gain levels, your ship gets more shots that change visually as you level up. And it's not just the shots that change - your ship does, also. Sometimes it's just a color or palette change, but sometimes it entirely changes shape. Since your hitbox is only in the middle it's mostly cosmetic, but I personally find it really cool to see your ship visually power up as you do.

Another unique aspect of Psyvariar 3 is how it handles difficulty levels. You can't choose it in a menu, or at the start of play. Instead, the game rewards high-level play with higher difficulty levels. For example, on stage zero there is a set number of enemies and bullet patterns. Depending on how many levels you gain, you can start the next stage (stage one) on one of four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, or X. In the case of stage zero to one, there is no minimum for Easy, Normal needs level ten, Hard fourteen, and X twenty. A similar pattern remains for each other stage, with the X difficulty often being dramatically higher than the others.

While a new player might assume that you want to stick with lower difficult levels at first, the reality is quite different. What you really want is to pick the highest difficulty levels you can at any point. Why? The reason is simple: with more enemies and more bullets, there is more to buzz, so you gain more levels. Gaining levels gives you a short invulnerability window, so if you play carefully, you can gain levels repeatedly. And, depending on the character, you can stack buzzing with their skills, making level gains quite the sight to see.

You see, there are seven characters, each with their own ships. Each ship has a primary fire, and a secondary bomb. Some characters (but not all) have a short bomb and a long bomb - determined by how long you hold down the bomb button. Another interesting mechanic is the roll. When you shoot normally, the bullets are spread out. When you roll, they pull in and shoot in a more concentrated manner, doing more damage more quickly in a tighter zone. This also impacts buzzing, as I believe your scoring goes up there, too. In exchange, you move more slowly, so be careful! Some characters have slightly different mechanics on rolling as well as bombs.

Each character has various strengths and weaknesses, which might not be immediately apparent. For example, arguably the strongest character, Cotton, is one that I thought was weakest the first time I played. Why? Because her weapons aren’t particularly amazing, but her long-press bomb action does something nobody else can – it absorbs bullets in a straight line vertically, both clearing a path, and giving you the points for each absorbed bullet. When used strategically on higher-difficulty bosses, it can catapult your levels. With her, not only is it the only character I saw the true ending on, but I also made it on the global leaderboards – first place at the time!

I personally find that the strongest characters (Cotton, Maeda) have secondary skills that work in concert with the buzzing mechanic. Maeda’s bomb makes him temporarily invulnerable to shots by drawing them all to him – and he buzzes them all. Insanely powerful. Others, like my least-favorite, Kate, just shoot, with a bomb that clears the screen. When gaining levels is tied to buzzing bullets, clearing the screen is quite counter-productive, drastically reducing what gains you might find yourself with. When using her, even earning a consistent Normal difficulty level was a challenge. Each of the other characters has something that makes them unique and certainly worth trying.

For a shoot 'em up, there is a surprisingly large number of game modes. Arcade mode is the main draw, and the mode where all of the above advice applies. Next is Arrange, which has you play through with your ship at a set level and no level-ups can be earned. The bullet patterns change as well, and the difficulty is set up front. It's not bad, but I prefer Arcade mode.

Next is Challenge mode. Here, you have seven challenges to complete for each character. They range from killing a number of enemies to earning a certain buzz score to getting various high scores. I personally found a lot of them very difficult to even get a single star on, much less three stars.

After this is Caravan mode. You have two minutes to get as many points as you can, with unlimited lives. It's not bad, and a great way to practice your buzzing. Another mode that's the opposite is Endless mode. Here, you have one life, but a semi-random level to play in. You are given a seed number to generate the level, but you can enter your own if you wish. It's a seven-digit number, so you literally have millions of levels to play through. It's a lot of replay value if Endless mode seems appealing to you.

Last but not least is Practice mode. Here, you can replay any area you have already completed in Arcade or Arrange mode, as well as choose which section of the level to start at. You can also choose the difficulty and what level your character is at. The goal here is to repeat it over and over until you achieve the skill level you desire. It's a great way to nail down that bullet pattern you've been struggling with.

On Switch 2, the game runs really, really well. There were times when using Cotton that the game seemed to slow down a little bit, but not enough to really be a problem. It offers both Quality and Performance modes, with the former being 4k at 60 frames per second (fps), and the latter is 1080p at 120 fps. For whatever reason, I found the larger blurrier pixels to be more distracting than the slight smoothness benefit of Performance mode. I played the majority of my time in Quality mode, where the ships all look really sharp, and I found 60 fps to be more than good enough.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I tried the game on my Switch (original). It is playable, but it's a significantly inferior experience. The resolution, and especially the frame rate, is a lot lower. Though I don't have a frame counter, it felt slower enough and sluggish enough that I performed a lot worse with a lot more deaths or missed buzzing opportunities. If I had to guess, I'd think it was about half as smooth, so probably 30 fps. I didn't expect the original Switch to feel so underpowered with a shoot 'em up, but here we are.

From an appropriateness standpoint, the issues are relatively few. As you might expect, there are lots of ships that shoot at your ship, and you shoot them back. Each of the characters is shown on the menu screen, and a few of the females wear jumpsuits that make their bosoms curves clear. Otherwise, I didn't note anything else.

Psyvariar 3 is a fun shoot 'em up that takes the buzzing/glancing mechanic and turns it into a new way to play. I wasn't so sure about it at first, but once I saw levels shoot up and got into the groove, it's an awesome play style that is really quite invigorating. It also really helps a lot that it is priced absolutely right, at a reasonable $19.99. If you're a shoot 'em up fan, you really can't go wrong checking this game out. Highly recommended if you love shoot 'em ups!