Furi Review

 

Platform Played: PC
Developer: The Game Bakers
Publisher: The Game Bakers
Genre: Boss Rush / Bullet Hell / Hack and Slash
Completion Status (How Long to Beat): Yes (4 hours)

I’m a sucker for a boss rush game. Punch-Out!!! And Cuphead rank as two of my three favorite games (Tetris is the other.) Suffice it to say, Furi should be right up my alley. Fortunately, Furi delivers. The game pits you against nine bosses with the premise being, you need to escape an otherworldly prison. Each boss is wonderfully animated and has their own arena, attacks and lore. Setting itself apart from other boss rush games, Furi mixes both the bullet hell and hack and slash genres. Most boss fights start in a large bullet hell arena, but as you near the end of a boss’s phase, the arena tightens and becomes a close-quarters fight where perfect parrying and dodging are key to success. Furi also uses a novel system in which the player regains a life for each phase of a boss they overcome. The player starts each fight with three lives, and the bosses generally have five to six phases. This leaves the player feeling like they’re never out of the fight. There were countless battles where I found myself down to one life early, only to come back and win. This alleviates a common flaw of difficult games, the need to restart if things don’t go well early. With each fight lasting approximately fifteen minutes, the tension added through this system is palpable, because the price of defeat is fighting the boss from the beginning. Between each fight, there is a prolonged and awkward walk to the next boss. Lore is told between these walks by a Donnie Darko-esque rabbit, but when there’s no lore being told, these walks feel like a chore and kill the momentum. Overall, Furi is a unique take on the boss rush genre and incorporates systems and mechanics setting itself apart from its counterparts.

Pros:

• Unique system in which you regain a life when you defeat a phase of a boss. The player never feels out of the fight.
• Bosses are beautifully animated and feel unique from one another.
• The mixture of bullet hell and hack and slash is brilliant.
• The protagonist controls well and the parry timing windows feels solid.

Cons:

• Dodge invincibility frames feel slightly off, almost as if you need to dodge prematurely.
• Slow interstitials between boss fights bog down an otherwise tight game. Each one could have been significantly shorter. It felt like padding.

Engagement Factors:

Two of the biggest signs that I’m really enjoying a game are how hard it is to stop playing and how much I’m itching to jump back in when I’m not playing.

• Difficulty to Stop Playing: 8/10
• Desire to Return: 9/10

Note: These scores reflect my personal engagement with the game and are separate from the overall score, which considers all aspects of the game.

Overall Score: 8/10