Jason Savio

How many different magic bullets can you dodge at once? That’s the question – and the challenge – of the side-scrolling bombast that is Azure Reflections.

A bullet hell game in every sense of the term, Azure Reflections fills up the screen with an intimidating amount of enemy fire that is both colorful and near impossible to maneuver around. (For those unfamiliar, bullet hell games are a sub-genre of shooters that is based primarily on dodging a ridiculous number of objects coming your way, oftentimes from all different directions.)

Azure Reflections is an anime-style cartoon that is a continuation of the Touhou Project games to come out of Japan. The characters speak in Japanese, so if reading subtitles isn’t your thing, you might want to pass on this.

Set in a mystical world separated from our own, you start by playing as Reimu Hakurei, a young girl who flies around and is trying to get to the bottom something called the “Red Mist Incident,” which has the fairies up in arms.

There are a lot of fairies in this game, from the small Tinker Bell type to the full-grown bosses. But don’t let their innocent looks fool you; these girls are here to fight.

In order to put it to these unassuming badasses, you’ll equip yourself with a series of spirit cards that give you magic powers. While it can be easy to get in the habit of simply shooting off a firestorm of your own magic bullets at your enemies (you can choose if you want a straight shot, wide or homing), the name of the game is figuring out how to best use all the tools at your disposal. That means setting up a force field around yourself at critical moments to absorb enemy fire, so you can turn it back on them when you fire up a Danmaku Rush – basically just flying straight in to them really hard until they fall back. When the boss is down and vulnerable, that’s a good time to try your luck at one of the spirit cards that can do heavier damage.

There is also a lot of humor in Azure Reflections, some unintentional and some flat-out awkward, possibly because of clashing styles of humor between different cultures. One of the bosses is a very non-threatening librarian who calls you out to fight in a very librarian tone of voice. You expect her to transform into some sort of demon, seeing as how she’s carrying a book with the sign of Satan on it, but she doesn’t.

After the fight, a strange conversation begins between her and your Reimu Hakurei about the former’s dry skin issues. It’s weird, to say the least, partly because one gets the feeling it’s not meant to be funny.

But if there was ever a common bond that Japanese and American gamers can share, it’s shooting colorful things at a rapid pace in a made-up world, and Azure Reflections has that down to a science.

For more information, visit nintendo.com/games/detail/azure-reflections-switch.