Among the most noteworthy indie success stories in the last generation, the humbly-priced Vampire Survivors broke onto the scene and managed to make believers out of a wide swath of gamers. What impressed me with it most was how it convinced a die-hard twin-stick shooting fan like me that a game where I was generally relinquishing control of the aiming, and focusing only on my dodging movements, could still be fun. OK, so make that a lot of fun. Of course, success at that scale tends to breed imitation, and we spent the rest of the generation enduring a lot of poorly-made clones, but there were thankfully some that went the extra mile and delivered.

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel is a title I actually played quite a lot on PC when it first came out, and it quickly became one of my favorite variations on the Survivors formula. First, I’m a sucker for mythology, and the mix of different deities, locations, and well-rendered beast-like Jotun that act as each stage’s final bosses were already a treat. More critically though, while Jotunnslayer may still have the same autofire core as its inspiration, the fact that you can and should be using the second stick to aim absolutely helped make it more satisfying. Given that as you reach tougher areas or crank up the difficulty that the screen can fill up quickly with enemies, I’ve found that you can really use any advantage you can get.

While I’m thrilled that the game has finally made its way to the Switch 2, at least in its launch state I’m unfortunately also the bearer of bad news. Simply put, this is a pretty inferior port on a number of levels, and that’s disappointing. Not only are the game’s gorgeous visuals more washed out and lacking in fine detail, even with those aesthetic compromises when things get particularly intense the system begins to struggle. You may see some jitters, or hear the game’s sound start to crackle, but the real deal killer is that especially as you get to later levels, more enemies on screen, and more intense spell effects adding to the chaos… it has a tendency to simply crash. Across about 15 runs I had the game crash 5 times, and a few of those were very deep into the run, which further compounded frustrations. While the game is a load of fun, unless it gets a serious patching overhaul I would recommend playing it on another system if you have one available.