Star Soldier

“Star Soldier” wants to be regarded as a high-minded sort of top-down NES shooter and it has no idea how to pull it off. Individual ideas presented by the game come off at first glance as novel—the ability to hide under backdrops, bosses retreating if they aren’t defeated in time—but they’re executed so poorly, I wish the game just embraced being mindless. There are times when the game comes close to being an exhilarating experience, when you’ve powered yourself up considerably and shoot bullets towards every corner of the screen, almost making one forgive the haphazard level design.

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