Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori: Anna Holinski saves the universe, alright?! Review

Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori: Anna Holinski saves the universe, alright?! Is certainly a mouthful of a game title but its playful nature tells you the kind of silly shoot ‘em up (or shmup) fun you can expect going in. The Nintendo Switch has become the home for Shmup fans, so how does this international release of Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori hold up, and is it worth a purchase?

Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori is a cute, charming, horizontally scrolling shooter that manages to be approachable to shmup newcomers and old hands alike. It accomplishes this via sensible use of the roguelite progression we see in so many modern games whilst also subtly shaking up genre standards to make them friendlier.

You probably read roguelite and shook your head, but Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori turns the permanent progression aspect into a fun way to replay the game. It also plays into the simple but amusing plot. Anna Holinski is an extremely chatty miner who is upset when UFOs arrive, and their occupants take all of Earth’s treasure for themselves; this sets up the core upgrade mechanic of mining. 

The game itself is a fairly standard horizontal shmup. You control Anna as the screen scrolls from right to left, shooting enemies and dodging enemy projectiles that come in two colours: pink or blue. Anna is surrounded by a force field that automatically slows down any pink bullets that enter its area of influence. This force field, combined with the fact that Anna’s movement slows whilst you are firing, enables even new players to manoeuvre through some otherwise incredibly difficult barrages of bullets.

That’s not to say the game is easy, however, but this is where the balance of the roguelite elements kick in. As you play, you’ll encounter “mining areas”, shootable walls filled with ore for you to collect. This is the in-game currency you use to upgrade many aspects of Anna’s abilities.

Each run you complete, the different ore you gather gets converted to gold, which you can spend at an in-game shop that appears throughout the game’s many stages. These upgrades improve not only your weaponry but also the size of your forcefield and how much mineral ore you can carry.

The option to restart from your most recent stage as well as this permanent upgrade system, means that even the newest player of this type of game will be able to get through it eventually. Each upgrade makes earlier sections progressively easier. However, for experts, a lot of the draw will be seeing how far you can get with minimal upgrades and completing the game starting from the very beginning.

This Western release of the game also includes the Umelda DLC from the original Japanese version, giving you a whole second campaign to play through, which is seen from the villain’s perspective. This takes place after Anna’s campaign and extends the life of the game considerably.

Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori is an extremely charming game and manages to strike a balance between being accessible to all, but that can also hold a veteran’s interest too. Anna’s chatty nature, which is sadly only voiced in Japanese, could rub you the wrong way, but fortunately, you do have the option of lowering the voice volume in-game independently of other settings.

If you are interested in shmups but haven’t really known where to start, Osyaberi! Horijyo! Gekihori is a great way to get into the genre. It’s easy to recommend to anyone who is after a cute, cheerful, Shmup whilst also spending a few hours with this chatty, treasure-hunting cutie recovering Earth’s treasure.