9 Lives to Defend is the latest 2D arena shooter to be added to Xbox, having released on Steam much earlier this year. You play as Loki, a cat who defends his home from intruders that are insects, whilst its owners are away on vacation. You’ll have nine lives to fend off the intruders with a handful of different upgrade cards, amulets and special skills available to help you protect the house.
There are multiple different versions of Loki to choose from, with some stronger than others in specific aspects such as dash cooldown, main weapon damage and movement speed. Each of them have their own unique abilities, stats and weapons, allowing you to pick the cat which suits your play style or simply takes your fancy. Three of them are available straight away whilst the rest can be unlocked by completing specific tasks, which is the same case for the maps.
Upgrades are available for each Loki in the hideout, allowing you to improve certain stats up to maximum level five. In order to purchase upgrades you’ll need kibble which is the currency that you can gain from defeating enemies and opening chests, you’ll earn extra kibble for each boss you defeat and every time you win a match depending on the difficulty and the length you decide to choose.
The nine lives sometimes don’t seem like much especially when playing on wild or brutal difficulty
Wild and brutal difficulty are named that for a reason in this game, not only is it chaotic but it’s downright all over the place. Enemies and bosses move a lot faster, have a lot more health and you’re constantly dodging projectiles every couple of seconds especially after the halfway mark which sometimes makes it extremely hard to focus on so many things at once. With lots of enemies I would often find myself cornered accepting the fact that I would lose a life no matter how hard I tried to preserve them, you technically had 27 lives or rather you could take damage that many times, for each three hits you took you would lose a life. Now that sounds very generous which it is, considering most games you can only take a couple of hits before the words “game over” appear on screen.
Despite being able to take that many hits it often felt like they went in an instant. At the beginning of the matches up until around the first five minutes I would end up losing two lives maximum, this was purely because it wasn’t that chaotic and none of the annoying and hard hitting enemies spawned yet. But once it got over that mark I lost my lives extremely quickly. There were some points where I was able to hold onto a life for a minute or two, but then straight after I would lose one in ten seconds. Now this was partially down to the fact that the Loki I equipped wasn’t upgraded enough and that I didn’t have strong enough amulets, both of which determined how much I would struggle.
To put it bluntly, it’s next to impossible to beat a match regardless of the difficulty or length with any Loki which hasn’t had one single upgrade. The damage of the main weapon isn’t enough, the cooldown is too long and it takes a while to recharge the dash, which is arguably one of the most important abilities to upgrade. Though once you upgrade a certain Loki considerably and buy some good amulets, completing matches will be so much easier, granted it does take some time to get enough kibble to actually be able to max out abilities, but it’s worth it in the end.
There are also modifiers which allows you to add in extra obstacles if you’d like, making the matches a bit tougher but also granting you extra kibble towards upgrades. You can also gain them by completing missions and capturing chests, so the game doesn’t make the process of getting them grueling and long.
Despite the simple and straightforward combat, I found it rather refreshing and enjoyable
The combat mechanics aren’t exactly the most complicated or exciting aspect of Nine Lives to Defend, it quite literally consists of moving up, down, left and right. The main weapon attack fires automatically to the enemy closest to you, though you can manually control it by moving the analog stick into any direction to fire at specific enemies. I found this very useful when wanting to prioritize enemies which were very weak, but apart from that it was just something else to focus on amidst the chaos, there was also the chance of completely missing the attack which just put me off using it even more.
There are a ton of fun, wacky and unique abilities available to use each match which made the gameplay a lot more fun and unique. Upgrade cards give you abilities amongst other things to aid you in the match, allowing for different playstyles and combinations. Each time you leveled up you would have the option of 4 upgrade cards to pick, there were over 40 of them each with different effects. Some cards gave you access to new primary attacks depending on the Loki you’re playing as, it also gave you the chance of picking from several secondary attacks, some were quite frankly bizarre but honestly refreshing to see.
Other helpful ones included being able to refill a life, have seven chances to reroll the upgrade options given to you, add extra bowls of kibbles on the map which would replenish a life whenever you collected the specific amount to fill up the bar and many more. Upgrade cards could be upgraded to maximum level seven or five, with some a lot more beneficial than others. Most times I would often go for the same ones each match since I knew what ones were the strongest and most important, but to shake it up a bit some games I would completely go for a new build just so I could use at least each upgrade card once and see how powerful they can really be.
To add to the combat each Loki also had their own feline instinct, a power up if you’d like which essentially was a massive attack that was able to deal massive amounts of damage and take out a horde of enemies instantly. It didn’t come easy of course, you had to fill up the feline instinct bar by killing enemies. Some feline instincts are much more powerful than others depending on the Loki, regardless they’re really handy and saved my skin a lot especially when the big bosses appeared.
The enemies and bosses were a real handful at times despite their appearances
Like in most games enemies no matter how strong will always be annoying, whether it’s because they’re so common, hit hard or have specific attacks which either deal a lot of damage or inflict statuses on you. The enemies in Nine Lives to Defend aren’t any different, yeah they don’t carry a massive sword neither do they tower over you (apart from the bosses) but despite being only insects and animals they were still a threat, especially when playing on wild or brutal difficulty as mentioned earlier, since there are just so many of them at all times.
While most enemies didn’t pose much of a threat there were a couple I found that would always hit me or were just extremely annoying. One of which were the slugs which seemed to fire what looked like mucus in the form of a ball, now it only took one life off of you and they weren’t that fast either so dodging the projectiles wasn’t a problem at first, but once more enemies started piling in having to avoid getting hit by them as well as the mucus was quite difficult. Since there was so much going on I sometimes wouldn’t notice the several projectiles before it was too late, this actually ended up taking more lives off of me than I expected which is why I found the slugs to be a handful.
Another enemy which I disliked and thought were the biggest threat amongst the common enemies were the beetles, which shot a purple projectile that made you unable to control Loki for a couple of seconds, and getting hit by that when surrounded by several enemies most of the time ended up in losing a life, unless you picked the upgrade card which negated effects from projectiles, though that was only a single use.
I should also touch on the several bosses which you’ll encounter along the way, there aren’t too many of them but on the hardest modes they have a lot of health with their attacks dealing two hearts, so you really don’t want to get hit by any of them. They come in four minute intervals so you rarely had to deal with two at once unless you weren’t able to kill one in four minutes which is highly unlikely, that is unless you’re playing on wild or brutal difficulty with a Loki that hasn’t received any upgrades, in that case I wish you the best of luck because you’ll definitely need it.
Feline instinct was definitely the easiest way to defeat the bosses, I made sure that just before they appeared it was fully charged, so that I could use it straight away and it would most of the time take around a quarter off of their health or even more, though that depended on the difficulty. I also made sure to pick the upgrade card which charges feline instinct quicker, this made dealing with the bosses and large hordes of enemies so much easier.
Amulets also made dealing with bosses and enemies in general much easier too, especially the extremely powerful ones, though they do cost around 3000 kibble each, so it might take an hour or two of grinding to get your hands on them, but it’s definitely worth it in the end. There are quite a few of them, some offer small advantages whilst others completely change the game for you, which allow for several unique combinations when synergized with upgrade cards.
