2026 is off to an excellent start with some heavy hitters already out, split equally between indie games and AAA developers, and it’s only April yet. Homura Hime is another new release that caught me completely off-guard with its unique blend of three extremely difficult genres. Developed by Crimson Dusk and published by Playism, Homura Hime is an action game that combines three major genres into one and nails it perfectly. It features bullet-hell fights mixed with hack-and-slash action and some soulslike mechanics thrown in the mix for added fun. This is our review of the PC Steam release of Homura Hime, in which we eliminate some archdemons and master some cool combos.
In Homura Hime, you step into the shoes of a titular character of the same name and follow her journey through a beautifully detailed world to get rid of the archdemons infesting it. Homura is a ‘Flame Princess,’ and she is accompanied by her companion, Ann, who is the strongest exorcist in the world. Assigned by the High Priestess, both of them begin their journey to hunt down the five archdemon girls and save the world. The main area of the game is the Mihare Shrine, which serves as your central hub. While you are not out on missions hunting demons, you will spend your time here buying upgrades, interacting with NPCs, and preparing for upcoming missions.
After selecting a mission, you step through a gate and arrive in a distant area where you explore fairly linear areas filled with collectibles, challenges, fight arenas, and finally, a main boss at the end. After defeating the boss, you head back to Mihare Shrine and keep at it until you can defeat all archdemons. While the game features a fairly decent color tone, most of its inner themes are on the much darker side. Quite often, you will run into friendly NPCs who have been possessed by demons. The world changes its color palette quite quickly in different scenarios, reminding you that it is a dark adventure after all.
Homura Hime shines when it comes to its combat and gameplay. Each level has some basic ingredients, including fight arenas, boss fights, challenges, collectibles, and platforming sections. The levels are strictly linear and only open up where you fight enemies or bosses. The paths are either tighter or become platforming sections where you use a special grapple ability to use glyphs to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. In battle arenas, you will encounter a large number of demons and must kill them all to progress. There are tons of boxes and other containers lying here and there in each level, which give you resources and health, so smashing them is always rewarding.
Coming to the game’s combat, Homura Hime is a pure hack-and-slash game. You have a light attack and a heavy attack. Combining their inputs, you can land a ton of skills and abilities on enemies. You can purchase these combos from different in-game stores with Konpeito, the in-game currency, or you can get some abilities after defeating bosses or heavier enemies. You can assign four abilities to your quick-use circle and instantly land powerful attacks or repel incoming attacks using them.
To complement your attacks, you can jump up and land some aerial attacks on enemies, dash in four directions to avoid incoming attacks, and if you are good, parry incoming attacks to avoid them. The enemy attacks are color-coded in red and orange depending on their strength level. Red attacks can be countered with a well-timed parry, while orange attacks need to be dodged. This is where the soulslike mechanics come into play, but the game tones it down by allowing you to spam this parry mechanic and get out of tougher situations easily. Instead of a hardcore approach like Sekiro, which requires extremely precise timing, Homura Hime allows you to spam this parry to avoid taking incoming damage. But on the other hand, it also rewards for perfecting a parry. If you manage to land a perfect parry, you get a small amount of health back.
Your partner Ann also helps you out in battles using her abilities to rapidly fire bullets and not only damage enemies but take down their blue shields as well, which are only damageable by Ann’s bullets. Some barriers will need a different method to take them down, so as you progress in the story, the challenge only gets tougher. When all of these mechanics combine, you get a solid range of attacks and mechanics to easily control the battle arenas. Most of the smaller enemies rely on generic ranged attacks, which are much easier to dodge or parry, but the boss battles, on the other hand, are much more interesting.
At the end of each level or sometimes in the middle, you will come face to face with massive bosses that not only rely on normal physical attacks, but they also have bullet-hell sequences where the entire screen gets filled with incoming bullets, and you have to avoid damage by precise controls and movement. A small mistake here becomes a challenge because most attacks are followed by additional attacks, and you can easily get stuck in a damage loop unless you can quickly parry and recover. This is evident from the very first boss battle, which is your first actual challenge in the game. Nearly all boss battles have multiple stages, which are completely different from each other.
These fights require a delicate balance of different mechanics, such as your abilities, combos, and precise parries or dodges. While it sounds difficult on paper, the game itself is not very hard, and once your hand gets accustomed to the controls and different bosses’ attack patterns, you can easily defeat them all. The bullet-hell sections are not as brutal as some of the titles you may have played in the past, like Returnal, and they offer you decent dodge and evade spaces. This goes for hack and slash as well as the parry mechanic. While each mechanic brings a challenge, it is much simpler to manage them here when compared to other games.
This also makes Homura Hime an enjoyable game because it gives you a lot of different things to play around with while remaining manageable. At certain points, you will also need to complete some QTEs to damage bosses or complete platforming sections. They are somewhat confusing at the beginning, but once you solve one or two, they start to get easier. The game also offers a switchable difficulty option so you can change the setting on the go without the need of starting a brand-new game. One aspect that did not impress me much was its soundtrack. I found most of the music dull and not up to the mark, considering how action-packed its gameplay can get.
There are some optimization issues and translation bits here and there that require patching. I did notice some grammatical mistakes, and despite the game recommending a controller at the start, the support for the PS5 DualSense controller was extremely glitchy. It notified me to switch to a wired connection for optimal performance, but even then, I was having problems with it to the point that I left it and switched to my Xbox controller. Not everyone has an Xbox controller on the ready. If you are specifically advising players to use a controller with the game, at least support the most common set of options currently available in the market.
Final Verdict:
Homura Hime is an interesting blend of bullet-hell, hack and slash, and soulslike genres. It does not try to excel in any of these genres, but instead it manages to deliver a satisfying experience by offering a toned-down version of each. It is an excellent title for players who love playing bullet-hell and action games that feature impressive combat and point-blank accuracy for survival. The visuals are cool, and the level design is fairly decent as well. You do not have to be a master of any of these specific genres to enjoy your time in Homura Hime.
Final Score: 9.0/10
Disclaimer: A PC Steam code for Homura Hime was provided by Evolve PR on behalf of Playism for this review. Read our Review Policy.
