Star Fire: Eternal Cycle

I went into Star Fire: Eternal Cycle expecting a lightweight arcade distraction and came out with a more complicated opinion than that. The combat core here is genuinely good. Dashing through crowds of insectoid enemies, timing the Perfect Evade to trigger a slow-motion counter window, then dumping all three segments of the Fury meter into a weapon-specific finisher, produces the kind of kinetic satisfaction that keeps a run ticker going well past midnight. That loop works. The problem is almost everything surrounding it. The build system is where the game earns its replay value. You collect Insectoid Cores during each run, and stacking cores of the same element unlocks escalating bonuses: spawn Shadow Clones from Dark Cores, freeze clusters with Frost, chain explosive reactions by mixing Fire and Thunder. There are reportedly eleven elemental types in post-launch updates, each primary and secondary weapon pulling harder from a particular element. The Gold Axe wants Gold cores; Gauntlets lean into something different. It is not Hades-tier itemisation, but the combinatorial space is wide enough that two runs rarely feel identical. The game does require you to assemble something approaching a broken build to survive the higher difficulty tiers, which is a legitimate balance criticism, but min-maxers who enjoy finding that broken build will not be bored. The tutorial, though, is a near-miss. After a brief intro that hands you your first Insect Core, the game sends you off without explaining that equipment auto-equips on pickup, how Core merging and reforging works, or why your run simply stops at the end of lower difficulty stages rather than continuing. The Perfect Evade mechanic, arguably the most important skill expression in the game, is left for you to discover through death. That is a real barrier for newcomers and it matters here because the onboarding window is narrow. The stat screen also lacks the tooltip depth a build-curious player needs: knowing that crit is good is obvious, knowing whether a 12% crit bump beats a flat weapon damage roll requires guesswork rather than math. Presentation is the other sticking point. The character art is vibrant and cel-shaded, nodding toward Hi-Fi Rush energy in terms of colour palette. But environment assets and certain NPC models visually clash in ways that suggest mixed in-house and store-bought work. Worse, the narrative tone swings wildly between bright tokusatsu-style action and genuinely grimdark lore-card reveals about bosses with cannibalistic habits. The contrast is never intentional-feeling; it just creates tonal whiplash that undermines any interest in the world. The developer, Ethereal Fish Studio, has acknowledged story performance as an area earmarked for future updates, and their post-launch track record of community-responsive patches is a positive signal. Ethereal Fish has been consistently engaging with feedback and rolling out changes, which matters more for a debut title than a launch-window review score might suggest. If you need a narrative through-line and a coherent visual identity before committing runs to a roguelite, this one will frustrate you. If you are the kind of player who can warehouse the world-building and focus on whether the Cyclone Cannon plus Wind element synergy gets you through Difficulty 5, you will find a game that quietly keeps pulling you back. Steam user scores are broadly positive, and the game runs cleanly with no meaningful technical complaints in any review I could find. It is a rough first release from a studio that clearly knows how to build a combat loop, and does not yet know how to build around it.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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