Thanks to Clear River Games for the review code

Title: Under Defeat
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 02/06/2025

Story

In this G-Rev developed vertical shooter, you must set out to fend off an invading army! A pretty typical shmup story with the occasional voiceover, though I will give props to the narrative here for featuring two sides with distinct languages. You’re straight up a German army fighting an English army, and both sides communicate in their respective language, which is a neat touch. Still, not a plot that really excited me.

Presentation

This reissue offers a fun little assortment of presentations. The original Arcade version was a vertical shooting game from 2005, and thus Arcade mode is presented in that format, with several different display options including the tried and true vertical mode option if you have a rotating monitor or some kind of grip for handheld mode. Playing in this mode, it looks pretty OK on a TV with the borders on, but I really dug Arcade mode when playing handheld due to the TATE option. It seriously looks pretty nice in TATE mode, even with the 3D polygons looking pretty simple!

But new to this release are the additions of Widescreen modes called New Order, which still keeps the vertical scrolling and shooting, but expands the field of view to be a proper 16:9 aspect ratio, giving a lot more horizontal view and filling out a full screen, which is especially good looking on a HDTV. I still find vertical shooters in 16:9 to be pretty weird, as they give me vibes to Aero Fighters 2 and 3 with how zoomed in the action feels, but I found New Order to still be fine to look at, and it helps both modes have gameplay differences to make up for the wider screen.

The best presentational aspect of Under Defeat, and one that I felt makes up for the game’s basic visuals, was easily the soundtrack. The original OST from 2005 is beyond incredible, and easily the best factor to motivate you throughout the game. Just plenty of superb tracks from Shmup composer legends that make it really hard to choose a favorite, this just might be one of my favorite modern shmup OSTs alongside Raiden IV; seriously great stuff!

So great in fact, that G-Rev figured it’d be fun to redo the entire OST three more times, with different arranged versions. The first Arranged OST is pretty good, and keeps the original energy of the score in good fashion, but the other two, newer arrangements are a bit of a mixed bag. The New Order arrangements are fine, but lose a bit of the excitement of the original versions, and new to this port is City Connection’s Boosted Arrangement, which does what they tried doing with Batsugun and remix the OST in some very experimental ways.

Just like Batsugun’s Boosted OST, I didn’t really click with the arrangements as well as the other renditions, but I at least found myself liking a couple of the renditions here more than some of the New Order tracks, despite both arrangements being hard to top the sheer excellence of that 2005 score. Pretty great variety, and I just wish there was an in-game sound test to listen to the arrangements in an easier fashion.

Gameplay

Under Defeat is a vertical shooter, where you take control of a german aircraft in order to clear several stages of shooting action, picking from one of four ship types to embark with. Regardless of which you choose, the game plays a lot like your typical shot and bomb shooter, albeit with a tiny smidge of that Xevious-style ground targeting. You don’t have a dedicated button for ground aiming, but you do have a small red reticle that you can aim while firing your normal shot, and it’ll take out ground enemies and obstacles while you’re shooting.

Most notably about Under Defeat is how you don’t just aim straight ahead, but can even tilt your ship around and lock in your angle to shoot down foes from more than just the typical front facing method. This reminds me a lot of Zero Gunner 2 in that aspect, only as an actual good game instead of whatever the hell I played many years ago, and the angling adds to the fun of shooting down foes and more strategic boss fights.

Each of the four aircraft also have their own quirks to them, but most have the same sort of option system where refraining from firing for a certain period of time will charge up a meter, which will deploy an option for a few seconds. Since the option gets locked into the position you were aiming when deploying it, this ends up being a great way to fire on two fronts, being a pretty good strategic move, and essential if you want a big point bonus from clearing out all possible enemies.

Speaking of strategy, Under Defeat is a shooter where your normal instincts won’t always work. Besides having to get used to the different ships and how they operate, the aiming becomes more critical as you progress deeper into the game, with the third stage onward just becoming an absolute nightmare if you do not get the hang of that mechanic. Sure, bombing in a pinch still helps, as is getting the exact weapon you need and holding onto it for dear life, but if you want to dodge the enemy bullets and shoot down formations as quickly as possible, you need to get used to the aiming, and when playing Arcade Mode, (my preferred way of playing Under Defeat here) I eventually did get the hang of and found myself enjoying that mechanic quite a bit, as I kept at my 1CC attempts to climb that online leaderboard.

It also helps that compared to a lot of other shooters on Switch, Under Defeat is significantly more responsive than even some of the best emulated shooters I own on the system. Seriously, response times feel near instant and have helped me out of a pinch in runs more often than not, so there’s zero need to worry about input lag here. This applies to not just the Arcade mode, but the two New Order modes as well, which incorporate various design changes and difficulty curves to create a different experience per mode. I couldn’t really click with either of em compared to the Arcade mode, but of the two New Order variants I ended up enjoying New Order Plus a lot more since it felt a lot more bullet hell in nature, and being able to use the right analog stick to aim your shot felt pretty comfortable, even if I ended up preferring the traditional Arcade aiming system out of tradition.

There’s even local Co-Op available, although unfortunately I wasn’t able to test it for this review. Still, you have limited continues starting out, and using co-op makes those go down even faster. Nevertheless, I always appreciate a cool local Co-Op shooter, and with this game not having that many stages, I still feel it could be a feasible challenge to overcome with a buddy if the two of you are dedicated enough.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Under Defeat is a very enjoyable shooter, albeit not one that I’d say would blow your socks off, outside of that godly soundtrack. From multiple gameplay styles, some excellent music, top-notch response times and a very fun scoring curve, this is definitely another solid addition to your lineup of switch shooters, and the bonus remixed arranged soundtracks along with the new widescreen mode do add some extra variety to the experience to not make it just a one and done ordeal. This one’s just really darn fun to scorechase in, and I definitely see myself revisiting those Arcade leaderboards over and over in the months to come, especially with how silky smooth this port feels as a whole.

Really, I’m definitely hoping this is also a sign we get some other G-Rev shooter ports later on as well, such as Kokuga. All in all, this is yet another great shmup on a system with many of them, and while I wish the game itself looked a lot better, the scoring mechanics and ship variations do lead to a ton of replay value, and for the pricepoint you aren’t getting a bad deal if you’re a fan of shooters, especially ones from G-Rev.

I give Under Defeat a 7 out of 10.