KABUKI FIRE Review

KABUKI FIRE is a chaotic on-rails arcade shooter developed and published by Atmosphere Entertainment Studio Ltd. Before getting tossed into the action, you select the difficulty level. Kihon is the easiest option, where you learn the basics and your score is divided by four. Shiai is the difficulty that is automatically selected when you are competing in a tournament. Hard is the full KABUKI FIRE experience, where you will earn full points, and it also features a global leaderboard along with belt grading.

KABUKI FIRE doesn’t tell its story through cutscenes or movies; instead, it is shown as a comic strip displayed on the main menu. It introduces the backstory of Kamoku Shimazu, whose father was killed by thieves searching for a special sword in his possession. Nine years later, she is a member of the yakuza and is asked by the boss to represent them in the KABUKI FIRE tournament, where the best shooters compete. If she is successful and earns her red belt, she will cement her position as his personal bodyguard.

One of the first things you will notice about KABUKI FIRE is its crazy, upbeat soundtrack and vibrant, hand-painted visual style. They are eye-catching, although you do not get much time to admire them because this is a fast-paced game. Originally, you only had five minutes to achieve the highest score possible, but with the latest update, the amount of time has been increased to seven minutes. It goes by insanely fast, if you last long enough to reach the end of the stage, that is.

At first, the game is not entirely clear about what you need to do. You are thrown straight into the fray with a personal coach named Hiroshi offering advice along the way. If you are like me, you will run out of energy and die frequently before fully understanding everything required to succeed. Tips from your coach, such as grabbing falling hammers with the right mouse button and using them against enemies by pressing the space bar, are very helpful. You also learn that there are calm zones with no enemies, allowing you to slowly restore your energy.

KABUKI FIRE has you control your character using only the mouse. The camera moves side to side from one side of the stage to the other, all while you try to shoot down enemies and dodge their incoming blasts. You may be thinking a swarm of mosquitoes can’t be that much of a threat, right? Well, that’s what I mistakenly assumed! Sure, you can easily target the foes and falling targets with the mouse shooting using the left mouse button, but the sheer amount of stuff going on in the stage is overwhelming! 

It’s tricky to figure out what you need to destroy first, and if you choose the wrong thing and the enemy target gets to the other side of the screen, exiting the play area, you will lose energy. I found out many times over that you don’t have very much health to spare, so your run can end quickly.                   

Besides all the chaos going on, your gun will freeze up if an icy shot from a demon hits it, meaning it can’t shoot until you mash the right mouse button to free it, causing a second of panic as the foe gets closer to escaping the play area. The primary enemies you will target in this on-rails experience are mosquitoes wearing straw hats (which are pretty cute, I have to admit) and demons in multiple colours. There are also environmental objects, such as decorative plates, that you can shoot to make them explode and damage any enemies caught in their path. Just make sure you do whatever you can to stop them from getting to the other side, or there is no way you will last for five minutes, let alone the expanded time giving you seven minutes to get points. 

If you take too much damage from incoming shots or allow enemies to escape the play area, you will run out of energy and turn into a mindless zombie. Fortunately, when this happens, a shaman brings you back to the world of the living, and you start your run once again, trying to survive and achieve the highest score possible. You will die repeatedly, but the experience is very addictive and feels extremely satisfying when you beat your previous best.

I have played multiple rounds of KABUKI FIRE, and I can say I have yet to get to the seven-minute mark. The game doesn’t do a great job explaining how everything works and how you can be successful, so you will need to do a lot of trial and error to learn what all the different items can do and the best strategy to use. However, I do feel that with each new run, I am doing better at figuring out what threats I need to target first to reserve my energy so that I can keep increasing my score and get closer to earning the red belt.