Holy Shoot Review Summary

Fast-paced, chaotic, and fun gameplay: Players consistently praise the game's fast-paced, action-driven, and chaotic gameplay, highlighting its engaging nature and how it keeps them hooked. The blend of humor and high-octane combat, along with tight shooting mechanics, contributes to a very enjoyable experience.

Distinctive comic art style: The game's unique American comic-style art direction, characterized by vibrant colors, cel-shaded visuals, and exaggerated designs, is highly praised. This aesthetic perfectly complements the game's humorous and frenetic tone.

Engaging roguelike elements: The roguelike aspects, including procedural generation, varied enemies, diverse skill trees, and a rewarding progression system, ensure that each run feels fresh and challenging. These elements contribute to the game's replayability and strategic depth.

Strong Borderlands/Doom influences: The game is frequently compared to Borderlands for its graphic style, humor, and weapon variety, and to Doom for its fast-paced, high-octane combat. This blend of influences creates a unique and appealing experience for fans of these genres.

Satisfying and varied gunplay: The game offers a rich variety of weapons, each with a distinct and satisfying shooting feel. Players enjoy the impact and feedback of different guns, the ability to switch between two weapons, and the strategic depth added by weapon affixes and reroll systems.

Poor Performance & Optimization: Players consistently report significant frame drops, stuttering, and general performance issues, especially in later stages with more enemies or effects. This occurs even on high-end systems, making the game feel unplayable at times.

Limited & Repetitive Content: The game suffers from a lack of content, including limited enemy variety, few playable characters, and a small weapon arsenal. This leads to runs feeling repetitive quickly, diminishing replayability for a roguelite title.

Unbalanced & Loud Audio: The game's audio system is widely criticized for being unbalanced, with excessively loud music and sound effects, sometimes even at minimum volume settings. Specific weapon sounds, like the minigun, can disrupt the overall audio experience.

Incomplete Localization: The game's localization is unfinished, with many untranslated texts, mixed languages, and incomprehensible skill or item descriptions. This hinders understanding and immersion for non-English speakers.

Unsatisfying Combat & Weapons: Combat lacks impact, with bland shooting sensations and poor hit feedback. Many weapons are deemed unappealing or useless due to high recoil, limiting viable choices and making enemies feel like bullet sponges in later stages.

Progression & Upgrade Systems: Players can make permanent out-of-run upgrades using 'souls' obtained from defeated enemies, which gradually lowers difficulty. In-run temporary upgrades are also available for completing challenges, boosting stats for that specific attempt.

Roguelike Shooter Core: Holy Shoot is an FPS roguelike shooter with comic-style graphics, where players fight demons across procedurally generated, stage-based levels. The game's core loop involves clearing stages, killing monsters, and strengthening builds.

Companion & Offering System: Completing challenges in each level rewards players with 'Divine Offerings' and summons a fairy companion. These companions assist in combat or provide healing, adding another layer to gameplay strategy.

Seven Deadly Sins Bosses: The game features boss battles against manifestations of the Seven Deadly Sins after a fixed number of stages. Defeating these bosses is crucial for retrieving stolen Holy Relics, which ties into the game's overarching narrative.

Two Playable Characters: The game offers two distinct playable characters, Samuel and Son, each with unique skills, active abilities, and playstyles. Son is unlocked after defeating a specific boss, providing different strategic options.

Significant Performance Issues: Many players reported experiencing significant performance issues, including frequent FPS drops and stuttering, especially during intense combat, boss animations, and transitions between levels. These issues were noted even on powerful PCs, indicating a need for better optimization.

Mixed Performance Experiences: While many players reported performance issues, some indicated no problems with optimization. This suggests that performance might vary significantly depending on hardware configurations or specific game sections.

Potential for Future Growth: Players see great potential in the game, acknowledging its Early Access status. They are excited for future updates, more content, and the full release, believing it could become a fantastic game with further development.

Strong Recommendation for Genre Fans: Many players highly recommend the game, especially to fans of fast-paced roguelike shooters, FPS games, and those who appreciate unique art styles and humor. They find it fun, addictive, and a solid experience even in Early Access.

Wait for Bug Fixes & Optimization: A significant number of players advise against immediate purchase due to severe bugs, poor optimization, and limited content. They suggest waiting for developers to address these issues before buying, though they acknowledge the game's potential.

Desire for Co-op Mode: Players frequently express a desire for a co-op mode, believing it would significantly enhance the game's fun and replayability.

Support for Developers: A player expressed support and encouragement for the developers.

Desire for more content: Players are eager for additional content, including more characters, weapons, enemy types, and diverse level layouts. There's a strong demand for an expanded endgame, such as a 'mayhem' or 'horde/survival' mode, to enhance replayability.

Weapon progression needs depth: Reviewers suggest that weapon rarity should directly impact stats like damage and range, and that random rolls or a system to upgrade weapon rarity with enhanced perks would add much-needed depth to weapon progression.

Co-op multiplayer highly requested: Many players are asking for cooperative multiplayer, noting that the level design seems suitable for multiple players. There's anticipation for upcoming updates to introduce this feature.

Early Access status acknowledged: Players are aware the game is in Early Access and still very early in development. This context often frames their feedback, implying an expectation for future improvements.

Audio system needs rework: There's a strong suggestion for a complete overhaul and improvement of the game's audio system, particularly concerning sound management for streaming purposes.