Earthion review

Introduction

Earthion puts players in the cockpit of pilot Azusa Takanashi, fighting through eight increasingly chaotic levels to repel an alien invasion, built as a genuine, native 16-bit-era shoot-'em-up rather than a mere pixel-art homage. Developed by Ancient Corporation alongside Bitwave Games and published by Limited Run Games, it released 31 July 2025 to a "Very Positive" reception: 297 of its 309 English-language reviews recommend it, a sample of which this review reads 100. Three decades after helping define the Sega Genesis's golden age, composer and Ancient Corporation founder Yuzo Koshiro returns to the genre with a game reviewers describe less as nostalgia bait and more as a genuine, technically remarkable continuation of that legacy.

A soundtrack reviewers call some of Koshiro's finest work

No single element of Earthion draws more universal praise than its music. One reviewer declares simply "we have been blessed by another Yuzo Koshiro/Ancient release," while another calls the stage 2 music potentially "up there with End of Raging Waves," a reference to one of Koshiro's most celebrated prior compositions. A reviewer with decades of Genesis and Sega CD experience calls the presentation "the single most visually impressive Genesis/Megadrive title" they've played, crediting Koshiro's score as inseparable from that achievement. Several reviewers say they'd have bought the game for the soundtrack alone, a sentiment that recurs often enough in the sample to suggest it's the single biggest driver of the game's acclaim.

Built to run on real 16-bit hardware, and it shows

Beyond the music, reviewers are consistently struck by the technical achievement of a game genuinely engineered for Genesis/Mega Drive hardware rather than merely styled after it. One reviewer calls the console's continued capability "amazing" given what Earthion pulls off graphically, while another marvels that a "modern Sega Genesis game" exists at all in 2025. Multiple reviewers reference the graphical scaling effects specifically as evidence of genuine technical mastery, comparing the results favorably to celebrated genre classics like Thunder Force IV, Gradius, and Blazing Star. This authenticity is a double-edged sword for a small number of purist reviewers, however, several of whom resent that the game runs through a Limited Run Games-built proprietary emulator rather than allowing tools like RetroArch.

Accessible difficulty without losing its teeth

A recurring theme among reviewers who don't consider themselves shoot-'em-up experts is how well the game scales to different skill levels. One reviewer who "went through on Easy" still came away impressed, calling the technical execution "fantastic" even while admitting they weren't skilled enough for harder settings. Another describes the shield and weapon-leveling systems as "insanely fun" mechanically, independent of the presentation, praising the game for offering "different skill levels" real accommodation rather than a single punishing difficulty curve. A password-based continue system, similar to classic arcade shooters, lets players bank hard-won progress, though a few reviewers wish for a faster retry option when practicing specific stages.

Launch bugs, quickly patched

A meaningful minority of the sample's criticism centers on launch-week technical rough edges rather than fundamental design flaws. Several reviewers flag bullet visibility issues, with some bullets difficult to read against busy backgrounds, though the developers responded fast: one reviewer's review explicitly notes "Patch to improve visibility released on August 4rd (fast!)," while another updated their review after the fix to say the game "now feels as sharp, fair, and exhilarating as it should." Other smaller complaints include language settings randomly switching away from English for some players and control remapping not always persisting between sessions, both described as annoyances rather than dealbreakers by the reviewers who encountered them.

A deliberately thin story, and reviewers say that's the point

Earthion tells almost nothing of its alien-invasion premise beyond a handful of cinematic bookends, and the sample treats that minimalism as a feature rather than a gap. One reviewer reflects that the game "brings me back to a simpler time when games just put you right into the action," adding it made them realize "everything needs a massive exposition and a long lore to make a game interesting" is a modern assumption the genre never actually required. Another reviewer frames the game's identity in similarly stripped-back terms, noting it establishes exactly what it is "within minutes of starting" and never strays from that arcade-shooter focus. For a genre built around reflexes and pattern recognition rather than narrative investment, the sample's consensus is that Earthion's near-total lack of story is exactly calibrated to what longtime shoot-'em-up fans actually want from it.

What the achievement data shows

Earthion's 26 tracked achievements track cleanly against its eight-stage structure, falling steadily from 86.6 percent after Stage 1 to 27.6 percent for full game completion, a reasonably strong finish rate for a challenging arcade shooter. Optional mastery achievements drop much further: maxing out shields sits at 19.0 percent, and clearing the hardest "Shooter" difficulty setting bottoms out at just 0.6 percent, alongside several late-stage boss-specific achievements in the 1-3 percent range. This spread matches the sample's account of a game that most owners can finish on accessible settings while reserving genuine, narrow-margin mastery for a small population of dedicated genre veterans.

Value

At NZ$33.99 with no discount active at review time, Earthion draws consistent praise for its pricing relative to what's on offer, with one reviewer calling it "crazy value for $20 bucks" in reference to its US pricing. Given the density of content packed into its eight-stage, multi-difficulty structure, plus leaderboard and challenge-mode support for players chasing high scores, the sample's consensus is that this is a premium presentation and soundtrack at a fair, unremarkable arcade-shooter price point.

Final Verdict

Earthion is a remarkable, technically genuine return to the Genesis-era shoot-'em-up that reviewers overwhelmingly credit with recapturing, and in some specific ways surpassing, the genre's 1990s peak. Yuzo Koshiro's soundtrack and the game's authentic 16-bit presentation earn some of the strongest praise this review series has seen for any recent release, and while a proprietary emulator, minor launch bugs, and a lack of quick-retry options are real if modest frustrations, they do little to dent a reception that treats this as an essential purchase for shoot-'em-up fans of any era.