Earthion Review – The Best Indie of 2025 Blasts Off!

Based on the title of this piece alone you might think I’m exaggerating my Earthion Review, but the reality is this gem really is the best indie of 2025. As an expert of the Shoot ’em up genre for years now, I can assure you that both hardcore fans of the genre and newcomers alike will love this one. As if it weren’t enough, fans of the Sega Megadrive as a system itself will be enamored with the mind bending visuals and earth shattering soundtrack.

Yes, I didn’t stutter, this is a real Megadrive game in 2025, the physical cartridge is coming in 2026. The team behind this piece of art is composed of many industry veterans, but unlike the usual ensemble of popular triple A names that fails to deliver, Yuzo Koshiro and Makoto Wada were a team up made in heaven. Ancient Corporation and those involved with the creative aspects of the game really outdid themselves in every possible aspect.

I was blown away by the amazing graphical display with just the intro alone, people need to remember this is just a 16-bit Megadrive game. I thought I was losing it, or that this was just fake, but the more I advanced through the eight treacherous stages the passion put into the making of it was real, it could be felt from the screen. It is very rare for a game nowadays to emanate such an aura of care and love, of genuine 90s creativity that never ages.

The fun part of this is that those who dislike old games and don’t provide valid criticism as to why they think they are bad cannot really use the nostalgia excuse to dismiss how good it is. Not like the deflection was even valid in the first place, things were much better back then than they are now, just open your eyes to the current paradigm of games. Between over-hyped titles that never deliver, to actual scams, the gaming world is rife with grifters who just want to make money of the next big thing.

Earthion breaks the mold of stagnation in the industry, a piece of art that works on a 30+ year old console is the best indie of 2025 so far. It truly is amazing that what people deem obsolete can keep bringing the same emotions that newer games fail to convey. The adrenaline filled soundtrack uses through every level, through every situation that happens in the game, which is to be expected from something composed by Yuzo Koshiro himself, a master of his craft. The FM waves are guaranteed to resonate with the emotions of everyone who attempts to complete the game.

Many might think this is yet another shoot em’ up, but they couldn’t be more wrong, those familiar with Thunder Force IV that have experienced this game agree that Earthion easily dethrones it. While Thunder Force IV was considered one of the best shoot em’ ups of the system in the past, this new title easily competes for the best game of the entire Megadrive catalogue. In my own opinion, this might even beat Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, who can only trade a fair share of blows but lose at the end.

The reason as to why Earthion is so good, is the fact that it applies some modern design philosophies that make it stand out from the retro crowd. Aside from having a vast array of sub weapons, each with their own use and unique identity, there’s another upgrade one can get, one that is seemingly useless at first, the Adaptation pod. By completing a stage by having picked an Adaptation pod, which they only pop up once per level, you can permanently upgrade your ship’s capabilities, such as shields, fire power, and more.

Earthion isn’t a one shot and you are done affair either, it implements a very inventive shield system that is a first for the Megadrive. By improving your ship with the Adaptation pod, you can increase those shields to last longer in battle, or you can also trade off slots to have more sub weapons equipped at the same time. For better chances of survival, since the challenges tend to be rather hectic, I really recommend dumping all upgrades on Shields, as it can help you tank the most difficult sections in case you are showered in bullets.

Being a shoot em’ up, Earthion is a tough one to crack, but it comes with four difficulty modes that adapt to every player. You can play on Easy Mode, which helps you learn the ropes of the game if you are new to the genre, along with levels being less manic. Normal mode is the intended way to play the game, and it presents a very interesting challenge you may not be able to clear in one go. Then you have Hard and Hotshot mode, the difficulties for those who really want to become true masters of Earthion. If you are a hardcore player, challenge mode will provide you some frantic Caravan Shooter action.

The plot of Earthion revolves around a tried but true standard in the genre, an Alien attack force plunges earth into chaos by waging war against us from the dark side of the moon. Our main character, Azusa Takanashi, loses her parents to the war and seeks revenge for what the aliens did, being the most important soldier in the Earthion force to reclaim planet earth from the grotesque invaders, who wield advanced technology, yet humanity manages to create a new ship with their stolen tech. You will travel through space, caves, and even bits of earth infested by the creepy and unnatural aliens, all of this and more in eight dangerous stages that put your skills on a test.

Every single enemy, every boss, and every backdrop is unique, and the artist behind the pixel art for Earthion really outdid themselves. This is one of the best looking Megadrive games on the library, perhaps even the best to date. The amount of parallax scrolling going on in Stage 2 is truly breathtaking, I couldn’t believe nor distinguish how many layers of parallax it had, but I can assure you it had many more than I would expect a Megadrive pulling. All of this is real too, no weird tricks, no nothing. The game was crafted on SGDK, a free and open source library for PC to make Megadrive games by using the C Programing Language.

For those who know, this feat is insane, Assembly is meant to work optimally and produce better games, yet Earthion never skips a frame, never stutters, as if it were coded in Assembly and not in C. Not only is the game a work of art both in sound, gameplay, and graphics, but the code behind it might be so optimized that it cleared a seemingly bad reputation for the library when it comes to software accuracy. You could even say Earthion is the best publicity to get people to play around with SGDK. If the challenge posed by Earthion is a tough one, you can use the password system to begin from Stage 1, but with all adaptation upgrades.

Earthion is highly re-playable too, the Steam version is layered with an emulator that connects to online records, and there’s even a challenge mode baked into the game itself, disregarding the emulation layer. Any issue that the game might have is associated with said emulation layer, many people including myself found that settings aren’t saved properly, not a killer but expected from Limited Run Games, publisher of Earthion and creator of the layer. Regardless, Ancient Corporation has been working hard at patching every single bug, with more patches down the pipeline that will improve both the emulator and some minor aspects of the game.

Earthion Review – Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Earthion was reviewed on PC and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]