TLDR: Vital Shell is a beautiful love letter to the Dreamcast-Gamecube era of video games with its crisp polygonal visuals, breakcore soundtrack, and overall badass gundam style theming.

This game is a perfect casual arcade roguelike with runs not being abysmally long and you always feel like you're making progress. For the low price tag this game has brought me immense joy and nostalgia and I can honestly say there's not a character/playstyle I don't like playing as. For as simple as the "survivor-like" gameplay can be, there is a surprising amount of depth in your builds as mixing and matching different gems unlocks new "resonance" modifications on the already vast weapon pool.

I played this bad boy on the steam deck and would recommend a controller for the best experience, but it is still enjoyable with keyboard and mouse. It provides the perfect pick-up-and-play that arcade games and roguelikes excel at while also managing to suck you into multiple runs if you have the time.

Vital Shell - 9/10

TLDR: Vital Shell is a beautiful love letter to the Dreamcast-Gamecube era of video games with its crisp polygonal visuals, breakcore soundtrack, and overall badass gundam style theming. This game is a perfect casual arcade roguelike with runs not being abysmally long and you always feel like you're making progress. For the low price tag this game has brought me immense joy and nostalgia and I can honestly say there's not a character/playstyle I don't like playing as. For as simple as the "survivor-like" gameplay can be, there is a surprising amount of depth in your builds as mixing and matching different gems unlocks new "resonance" modifications on the already vast weapon pool. I played this bad boy on the steam deck and would recommend a controller for the best experience, but it is still enjoyable with keyboard and mouse. It provides the perfect pick-up-and-play that arcade games and roguelikes excel at while also managing to suck you into multiple runs if you have the time. Vital Shell - 9/10