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Pawarumi Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Pawarumi
Developer: Manufacture43
Publisher: Manufacture43
Switch, PC, Xbox One, PS4

Sporting a multiple weapon system and three color polarity system, Pawarumi might immediately bring to mind Treasure’s shooter diptych of Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. But while it clearly draws inspiration from the two, Pawarumi is both simpler and more complex. It frequently overwhelms, but is balanced by allowing some messiness. Pawarumi might be balanced around a triangle of weapons, but it’s often a game of dichotomies.  

At the heart of Pawarumi is its three color weapon system. Red lasers home in on enemies, the green wave beam hits a wide area directly ahead, and the blue laser inflicts direct, steady damage in a small area. At first, Pawarumi seem follows the usual STG weapon balance, trading off between covering wider angles and doing direct damage. This is unfortunately undercut by two factors. 

Despite the varying beam styles and widescreen play space, weapons are generally only effective within a limited area straight ahead. Even the homing shot has a surprisingly small sideways lock on range. The utility of the weapon styles is cut down further by the color system, which makes the decision of where to deploy them dependent more on what resources you currently need to replenish. 

Using oppositely polarized colors causes more damage, reversing them charges your super weapon, and matching colors replenishes your shield. The problem with having a three color system is that it isn’t as immediately obvious what color is the opposite, especially since the three colors used are red, green, and blue, which don’t always have clean color complements. (It also creates readability problems with colorblindness, especially the common red/green form). To combat this the HUD prominently displays how the currently used weapon will react to other colors, animates as you fill up your shield and super meters. It’s an effective, if inelegant solution.

A lot of my attention ended up on these status bars rather than the situations themselves, placing a large emphasis on the resource management aspects of Pawarumi, rather than the shooting. Tactical choices become flattened, and I found myself more often choosing shots in response to which of my current resources was low, rather than responding to the current enemy formation. The three colors might initially hint at a more complex weapon triangle, it often feels just as binary, or even more restrictive, than in other shooters. There’s rarely a reason not to go for the most powerful color. 

These problems don’t make Pawarumi a bad game–there’s still a strong sense of feedback, and interesting decisions around its larger structure–but it does diminish the core appeal for me. Small touches like difficulty modes resulting in different stage orders and endings are interesting, but the ways Pawarumi approaches spaces and world design weren’t compelling enough to keep me interested in the little narrative there is. And while exploiting weaknesses can be fun, especially when facing bosses, the color system ultimately made the game feel less dynamic, as if there was a right answer to each situation, but without the instant readability that simpler systems provide. 

On top of that, Pawarumi essentially requires a one credit clear, instantly booting you to menu if you die, with no options to continue. To make any real progress, especially on normal or hard difficulties, I needed to reach a stage then scout it with practice mode until I understood what the right answer was for each situation, then go back and play it for real with added pressure. For some the process of slowly unraveling the stages might be satisfying, but it almost felt mandatory here, instantly turning it into a grind. Maybe I’m spoiled by other modern shooters, but I prefer to do a rough run through the game to understand what’s coming up, before refining it into a single credit run. 

Pawarumi is full of interesting ideas and concepts, but in practice it’s too messy to feel coherent. The tri-color system makes it difficult to quickly size up situations, and the variations in shot type end up as little more than aesthetic variations. The multiple routes provide a draw for replaying the game, but the strict continue system turns the initial experience into a grind. As a game, Pawarumi is fine, enjoyable as a thing to pick at. But as a shooter, it’s too unrefined to really deliver on the core concepts it tries to play with.