The game draws inspiration from classic action games such as Strider (Arcade) and Contra, enabling the player to swiftly cut enemies with one of four weapon types while dashing and sliding across Ishtar's Ziggurat. The storyline can take different turns depending on whether you spare or kill the bosses of each level.
Tropes featured in this game include:
- Badass Transplant: Cataegis' right arm is mechanical. It's one thing that ties her to Caeliger, even if she has her doubts over their policies.
- Big Damn Heroes: If you lose to the Death Dampener while Euryale is allied with you, then she'll suddenly turn the entire machine to stone and rescue Cataegis.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Messor can spawn blades from his forearms.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: You can use charged attacks to knock Euryale into the spike pits of her arena.
- Charged Attack: Each weapon has two types of charged attacks.
- Continuing is Painful: You lose your current weapon upon dying, so make sure to swap back to the normal sword before it happens. Continuing from a checkpoint after a Game Over lets you farm points but takes away all your weapons and prevents you from fighting the secret boss.
- Coup de Grâce Cutscene: Messor will calm down and surrender after being defeated, but on a Bloodlust run Cataegis will ruthlessly cut him down anyway.
- Cranium Ride: Destroyed Flier Drones can be used as platforms.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: If you fight Kazazak a second time in the Ziggurat pit, there's no way to spare it.
- Cute Monster Girl: Euryale and Alruna, a Gorgeous Gorgon and a plant woman, respectively.
- Cutscene Boss: Ishtar. If you get an audience with her, Cataegis will strike her down in a single hit even if you told Euryale you weren't going to do so. One can't deny Cataegis gets things done, but the whole thing is so anticlimatical that the player will certainly want to look out for the other endings.
- Double Jump: Part of Cataegis' moveset. While falling in the Ziggurat pits, you can grind on the walls to be able to double jump again.
- Elevator Action Sequence: Ziggurat Stage 4 is set on a long elevator ride.
- Final Boss: Kazazak, the Death Dampener or Messor, depending on what you do through the game.
- Foreshadowing: The Death Dampener's pilot claims the machine could take on death itself. Messor is sealed right in the next room. If you awaken him, the pilot will barely be able to seal him back and then die from his injuries.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: The guards at the Ziggurat give the Index Sword back to Cataegis without realizing it has special properties. If you make too much noise, either the two guards come to fight on their own or they come with reinforcements.
- Guest-Star Party Member: The Necromancer will help you against the Death Dampener if you managed to spare him a second time. He'll completely deflect two of the machine's attacks, but is a total dunce when it comes to dodging its machine gun fire and vertical laser blasts, which turns the battle into a Timed Mission to keep the Necromancer from dying.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Cataegis' weapon of choice is the Index Sword.
- Heroic Sacrifice: If you fight really badly against Messor but Euryale is on your side, she sacrifices herself for Cataegis and heals her with a Kiss of Life. You still have to finish the fight on your own so her sacrifice isn't in vain, though.
- I Fell for Hours: Ziggurat Stage 5 is an incredibly long Free-Fall Fight.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Some of the worst endings involve getting a Game Over from fighting the secret boss.
- Kneel Before Zod: In order to access Ishtar's throne room, Cataegis must kneel before her most trusted servant, Shiah. Once there, however, Cataegis will slice Ishtar as soon as Shiah turns her back on them. If you refuse and attack Shiah, Cataegis is thrown into the pits for an extra stage.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Upon eliminating any world threatening super being, the Caeliger organization wipes the memories of everyone in the planet, including its agents, in order to mantain the status quo. A secret cutscene will turn out to have the same mind-wiping tech behind it, rendering it unviewable once it ends.
- Mercy Rewarded:
- The best endings involve sparing the boss characters.
- Spare the Necromancer twice and he'll help you fight the Death Dampener. If you befriended Euryale, she'll rescue Cataegis if the battle is lost.
- The Minion Master: The Necromancer relies on reanimated corpses to fight. Destroy those and he'll be left helpless.
- Multiple Endings: A total of 32 endings, from good ones to bad and boring ones.
- New Game Plus: It's possible to unlock special powerups to use in your next playthroughs. You can only use one at a time.
- No-Sell: If you decide to attack Ishtar when she asks you to kneel, whatever you do won't harm her. Even the Shadow of Death spell will be blocked.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: During the Trap Room level, Cataegis will get crushed by a spider robot and pushed down to the dungeons. She has to go across one floor of traps with a single HP.
- Optional Boss: If you kill Kazazak and then get sent to the pits, the Necromancer will fuse its remains to a dead Alpha soldier if he's still alive by then.
- Orcus on His Throne: Ishtar does nothing but look sinister at her throne. In fact, you can kill her as soon as she leaves it, without her having said even a single word through the game.
- Perfect Run Final Boss: By defeating each boss without losing a life, you'll be able to face Messor in the Ziggurat's dungeons.
- Puzzle Boss: The Death Dampener is only vulnerable to charged attacks, and only when doing its huge laser attacks.
- Retraux: The game looks like something from the time of the Sega Master System. It uses some "Mode 7" effects at times, though.
- Samus Is a Girl: Cataegis is mistaken for a man by those who don't speak directly to her. Some endings reveal what she looks like under her armor.
- Smart Bomb: After unlocking the ability to become the shadow of death, you can spend a full special gauge to kill all nearby mooks and do some damage to bosses. You cannot use it over and over, though.
- Sound Test: The latter songs of the game are locked at first. You must find secret containers and open them with one of your weapons.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Upon being spared, Kazazak will still take a couple cheap shots at you before leaving.
- Un-person: The Caeliger order erases from history those who would upset the world's status quo.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- Picking a fight against the Ziggurat's guards at the beginning is optional, but worth valuable points.
- You can kill each of the four Ziggurat opponents and deny freedom to any surviving ones if you choose to leave the Ziggurat after defeating Kazazak. If you kill all four, then you can also kill Messor afterwards, which awards you a special attack.
- Ignoring Euryale when she comes to talk to you.
- Video Game Dashing: Cataegis can run and slide.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: One ending has Cataegis becoming the new shadow of death after killing Messor. You can choose to use this ability in your next playthroughs.
