The summary/title is no lie, 90% of the game's content is committing genocide against bears. Eco-terrorism aside, Attack on the Curse is a very decent game. I'll attempt to thoroughly review the various aspects of this game without spoiling too much of its content.

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To briefly summarize what the game is, Attack on the Curse is a shooter game with (some) rogue-like elements. The game is heavily skill-based despite the various upgrades you can acquire to make your runs easier and thus may not be enjoyable for those unfamiliar with shooters and bullet hells (my personal completion time for this game was 2 hours, though I'm not completely new to these type of games).

The gameplay loop is very simple. Go out, shoot enemies, get money, die, get upgrades, repeat. There aren't a lot of variations of stages (about three for every normal stage) and you only need to go through five before reaching the unique final stage. It's a special boss-rush type stage where you must fight four different bosses to unlock the way to the final boss room. Here's a doodle of how the maps are laid out:

Very straightforward, perfect for my directionally challenged brain

Being a rather difficult game to begin with, I'm very appreciative that the player is not required to navigate a maze-like environment in addition to having to deal with the barrage of bullets and exploding enemies that start appearing in the later stages. The gameplay feels engaging, always keeping you on your toes, but does not frustrate you by adding complicated navigation to an already hectic shooter.

What are the outstanding key aspects of the game? Let's start with my most favorite feature of any game ever: an easy to comprehend and accessible tutorial.

I love optional tutorials

Tutorials are often overlooked, or worse ignored by the players, in many games both good and bad. Instead of a long and tedious cutscene segment that introduces basic game mechanics one by one, the game starts with a very brief intro and places the tutorial of the game entirely in a bunch of screenshots accompanied by text. This tutorial is accessible through a "how to play" book you can access in the base, which you can just read at any moment in your own time. It's very simple, visually appealing, and non-intrusive to the game.

Onto the actual gameplay aspects of the game, the main winning conditions for Attack on the Curse are by acquiring upgrades, items and leveling up. Leveling up is done by killing enemies but resets upon death, items are collected randomly from chests (or later purchased from the trader) but also resets upon death, and upgrades are purchased with money and retained after death. It's a pretty simple watered-down version of various elements commonly found in rogue-like games. In an RPGMaker game however, these mechanics are quite unique and translate very smoothly despite the many obvious restrictions the engine has (e.g. grid-based movement instead of a more free movement). If not for the default tileset, it wouldn't be very noticeable that the game is built on RPGMaker.

What I like the most about the game is the interesting bullet patterns for the enemies and bosses. The challenge does not come simply from increasingly high damage or the number of enemies, but mostly from the increasingly challenging combination of patterns you need to learn to dodge and overcome. It's very fun.

Is this Touhou?

Another thing I like is the stacking items and the special effects they give. If the game feels too difficult you can always farm money from monsters and keep buying items until you become an absolute tank.

Man confronts ages-long curse with the power of diabetes

But despite the various countermeasures to make the game balanced, I find that the game suffers a lot from imbalanced upgrade implementation. There are six different upgrades available: max health increase, armor increase, defense increase, damage increase, movement speed increase, and reload speed increase. Most games that provide a variety of upgrades (or any kind of customization) should typically allow for a diverse play style, letting any player choose which upgrade path they want to maximize to win the game. Here however, four of the upgrades are negligible in comparison to the other two.

This is injustice against fans of slow-moving heavy-hitter types

I can attest to this fact since in my own playthrough I was unable to reach the final stage until I have started upgrading movement speed. If that's the case I feel like there was no real point to having any other upgrades being made available to purchase than the two most impactful ones. Without spoiling too much, speed (in combination to skill) is extremely vital to survive against the final boss and its many phases. Stacking items helps of course, as I mentioned, but making a game that was supposed to be a rogue-like shooter, something that should be heavily skill-based, partially rely on grinding money and exp to win instead is a bad design in my personal opinion.

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Still, despite the heavy criticism I have against some important game design decisions in the game, I choose to give the game a high rating mostly in consideration to the excellent execution of an interesting game idea, visually attractive gameplay with many of its hand-drawn images and well-designed enemy attack patterns, and engaging gameplay that keeps you hooked until the end - assuming you have what it takes to complete the game that is. The game is not a casual game and if you can appreciate the gameplay despite that, then it is a very enjoyable experience to sit through.

9/10 great game, could benefit from improvement