Gemini Strike is a top-down arcade style bullet hell shooter with RPG elements that is way too hard for its own good. Almost everything can only be bought with premium currency that you accumulate too slowly and the options you have with the regular currency are pretty limited. But the spikes of terrible difficulty near the very beginning of the game are what turned me off it and I was sad not to be able to see more of its contents.
This game has some good ideas, you hold the screen to auto-fire and move your finger to move the ship, it works quite well - of course, dodging a very large number of bullets is difficult even with such well-adapted controls - you have a few items you can equip that provide additional firing points like homing missiles, spread shots and chaining lightning balls, so only by holding your finger to the screen you effectively shower the opposition with all your artillery. There are random weapon powers that drop from time to time and you activate them by double-tapping the screen, which feels awkward at times. You can only hold one at a time and they appear quite a lot, so why not just automatically fire them?
Besides that, you can buy ships - with premium currency - and more gear in mystery boxes - with premium currency. I really dislike the random box concept in games, you have to pay real money AND you potentially won't get what you want, forcing you to try again and spin the wheel once more. I'm not sure what the other ships are worth since I never got enough currency to get one. It's true that you can get it from playing, but it's extremely slow, of course.
And there's the difficulty. Only a few levels in I was confronted by a map where I couldn't shoot and there was stuff shooting at me from everywhere, I died and was presented with the option of paying to continue or just wait for my supply of pilots to grow back. Energy mechanics, oh boy. I managed to beat that level after a few shots and then got to a boss which I just couldn't defeat no matter how hard I tried. And that's that, way too tough, couldn't really figure out why, my gear was properly leveled and all that. Still too tough, oh well.
