Mystic Gate from eastasiasoft and ZOO Corporation is a top-down roguelite twin-stick shooter set beyond a magical portal created by the gods. Learn more in our Mystic Gate review!

 

Mystic Gate from eastasiasoft and ZOO Corporation is a top-down roguelite twin-stick shooter set beyond a magical portal created by the gods. After this gate appears, many adventurers enter it to face the trials that must be completed in order to be granted their greatest wish. You decide to take on the trials alongside your robotic companion as you try to uncover the many secrets that lie past the portal.

Since this one is a roguelite experience, that means you’ll be taking on sets of procedurally generated levels as you learn the movement and attack patterns of the many enemies and bosses that you’ll be fighting up against. This twin-stick shooter is also of the bullet hell variety, which means you’ll need to dodge a ton of incoming attacks as you try to line your shots to land just right so that you can survive for one more round.

You can play this one by selecting one of two difficulties: Normal and Hard. Normal offers the standard experience, balanced to be challenging but not unfairly so. If you decide to play in the Hard difficulty setting, then enemies will become stronger, there will be more enemies to defeat in each area, the price of items at the store will increase, but the amount of Gems you’ll obtain when you defeat a boss will be increased, which is a nice bonus to keep in mind since Gems are what you need to boost your character – more on Gems in a bit.

 

But first, how are you going to be playing this one? Due to the game’s nature, you’ll control your character with the left analog stick as you aim with the right one. Your attacks are mapped to the R1 and R2 buttons, and you can use melee weapons as well as long-range weapons depending on what you end up finding during each run. You can switch between weapons by pressing left and right on the D-Pad.

You can dash with the L1 or L2 buttons, which will give your character a short window of invincibility. Once you have an active skill equipped, you’ll be able to use it with the Square button. Pressing in on the Touchpad on the DualSense will pull up the map for that dungeon. This will make it a lot easier to see where you’ve already been and what exits you still need to take. You can also use this map to teleport between the different energy portals you’ve unlocked for that dungeon thus far.

For each run that you do, your general objective will be simple and to the point: survive! On top of that, you’ll need to explore each dungeon to try and locate the keys needed to open the door that will allow you to enter the boss room. Keys are either dropped by enemies when defeated or located inside treasure chests. Once you have enough keys and can enter the boss’ room, you’ll have to do your best and give it your all so that you can complete that particular trial.

 

And now, back to Gems! By beating the boss for each trial, as well as for completing a series of objectives for the Adventurer’s Association, you’ll be rewarded with some powerful Gems. You can also visit the Knowledge Seeker, who will give you Gems in exchange for the information you obtain on the weapons you find during your adventure, as well as the enemies that you defeat. You’ll receive two Gems for every item that you fill in his weapons and enemies encyclopedia.

Gems can be exchanged for passive or active skills for your character. Passive skills are those that function at all times without a need for you to do anything other than unlock them. These include things such as increasing gold drops, reducing weapon reload time, adding a small chance that you’ll completely avoid enemy attacks if your HP value is 1, or boosting the attack power of shotgun weapons. Active skills need to be used so that they can, well, activate. For these, you can unlock a heal that will recover 2 HP, an Aura of Mighty that will reduce enemy attack frequency over a set period of time, or add a shield for a short bit that will surround your character while nullifying enemy attacks.

While exploring dungeons and defeating enemies, you’ll collect many gold pieces. These can be used at the different stores that you’ll find along the way so that you can purchase useful items such as a recovery potion that can heal one HP, additional weapons for that particular run, or skills that can only be useful to your character up until it’s defeated and is kicked out of the portal and back to the village.

 

Mystic Gate has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy waiting for you. Since this one is a Cross-Buy title, that means that if you own a PlayStation 5 console, your purchase will allow you to download both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost. The list includes 6 Bronze trophies, 13 Silver trophies, and 6 Gold trophies for you to work on. It’s not going to be an easy trophy run. The easiest trophy to get will be the one for completing the game’s tutorial, which is not a bad idea since it will teach you all of the basics so that you don’t end up dying over and over again.

After that, there are trophies for beating each boss to complete each trial, as well as for beating the game. This is not something you’ll be able to do during your first run since, as mentioned before, you have to first gain enough resources to boost up your character for subsequent runs. You’ll also have to unlock 40 or more weapons in the weapons encyclopedia, obtain a total of 40,000 gold, defeat 1500 enemies in total, beat 40 enemies with melee weapons, defeat enemies with the help of your robotic sidekick, beat 10 enemies by dropping into holes or dying from falling into a hole. If you need some extra help, then be sure to check out this Mystic Gate Trophy Guide.

Mystic Gate is a top-down roguelite twin-stick shooter with a dose of bullet hell in which you’ll travel beyond a magical portal with a series of trials. Beat those trials, and you can manage to receive the greatest wish granted. While it only technically has five levels, you won’t be strolling through all of them during your first run. As long as you learn from your mistakes and continue to upgrade your character with the Gems that you collect, you’ll eventually be good enough to complete all five levels in one go. Mystic Gate is available as a Cross-Buy title, so your $9.99 purchase will allow you to download both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost.

Disclaimer
This Mystic Gate review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by eastasiasoft.