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<p>OverPowered Team are a small squad of just five, currently known for crafting such intriguingly stylish games as <em>Baka-Pipes</em>, <em>SAM</em>, <em>Radiance</em>, <em>Vex</em>, <em>Ruin Raiders</em> and most recently <em>Profane</em>. <em>Profane</em> is an isometric-looking shooter centred wholly on the premise of against-the-clock boss fights. This may sound basic and un-convoluted but when it&nbsp;begins blubbing bullets, it starts pouring projectiles like nothing else. As you load this title up you find out that you are to embody Talaal, the last of God&rsquo;s seven masks, and you must fight against your siblings to retain the power of your masks from their evil clutches.</p>

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<p>Visually, <em>Profane</em> is a stonker. Everything moves fluidly and impressively given the sheer number of things going on at any one time. Arenas full of particles would weigh heavy on any system, but in handheld&nbsp;on Switch,&nbsp;it looks the part and rarely ever relents both in terms of framerate and difficulty. Every enemy is well crafted and beautifully rendered, which is a necessity in this blast &#39;em up, as every level effectively has one foe to defeat.&nbsp;It is, after all, a boss battler at heart. This means that there is no exploration, no traversing landscapes and solving riddles to unlock the boss dungeon;&nbsp;there is categorically no fluff bulking out this title. Bosses are presented to you in the style of an ultra-bold,&nbsp;stylish&nbsp;screen, their name on the top and an animated version of them on the right-hand side. They have witty names like Tutoriaal, and Dhum, that gives you a little insight as to the humour of the developers. I love the colourful artstyle deployed in this game, and I love the fact that though it has probably been done to cut down on the detail on screen in order to maintain the intense framerate, it fits so well and looks so awesome.&nbsp;It&#39;s dazzling.</p>

<p>Controlling the game is as simple as any twin-stick shooter, with one stick for movement, and the other for firing a constant salvo of shots back at your enemy. The game feels like a kind of 360-degree shooter, like <em>Asteroids</em>, except in this evolution the rocks fire back hails of bullets for you to dodge. You can set your skills to any of the shoulder or trigger buttons, and you can pause the onslaught to&nbsp;get some reprieve by hitting the plus button. The refined nature of these controls means anyone of any ability can pick this up and get blasting within seconds. It&#39;s difficult to put down, but even harder to master. It really takes a certain knack to get good at <em>Profane</em>.</p>

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<p>Out of the gates, the Tutoriaal boss fight was pretty damn solid. <em>Profane</em> has to be one of the toughest games I have had the painful pleasure of firing&nbsp;up on my Switch in recent months. The agony of losing repeatedly is etched into my soul, and at one point, very early on, I even thought &quot;Can I actually get into playing this game, let alone review it?&quot;&nbsp;Alas, trial and error, and my tendency to try my hardest to see things through and compete against all odds always prevails. Khalepo is the next boss you will encounter, and cleverly this one comprises of four unique sections of the totem pole that it is. To say that this was difficult to beat would be an understatement. Don&#39;t get me wrong, I&#39;m not the best at these types of games, but I like to think that I have a little savvy running through me thanks to years of playing games such as&nbsp;<em>Ikaruga</em>, <em>Metal Slug</em>, and the like. I found this game incredibly frustrating and gruelling. I can&#39;t stress that enough;&nbsp;this game was a toughy to play. In a way I feel it forced me to become a better gamer by letting me appreciate how pairing traits and items strategically could yield a more lethal combination. Failing to prepare really is preparing to fail, as going full-on guns blazing, balls to the wall gung-ho are not the keys to burrowing through <em>Profane</em>&#39;s dynamic depths.</p>

<p><em>Profane</em> combines your health bar with your time limit to produce a very intense style of play. The higher-powered your attacks, the less time you have and therefore less health. The more health bar you have the more time you can spend thwarting the baddies in more creative ways. Sometimes you have to experiment to find the right balance, and this means dying plenty to get those manoeuvres and tactics dialled in. It&#39;s very rare that you will walk into a battle with the correct attributes, or enough time to figure out where or how to strike the first time, and even more scarce that you will be victorious in&nbsp;your opening battles.</p>

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<p>Along with Tutoriaal and Khalepo, Mobus, Drakhul, Dhum, Ylaudit, Nuuraanag, Sentiel, Cindael, and finally Garodal await you, with multiple energy bars to deplete per boss, each with their own unique design and traits. For example, you have the pulsating mechanical worm boss, Mobus, that vanishes into caves and reemerges, the arachnid Nurraanag, that spews swarms of projectiles at you, you have a ball-style boss, Dhum, that rolls and bounces around erratically trying to mow you down or flatten you with his bounding form and disembodied&nbsp;fists. There are also the more traditional, human-form, bosses like Cindael with his glowing green spear, and others like Sentiel with gnashing rock-like entities on chains attempting to gore you to death, and spirit-style traditional scrolling shooter-esque boss named Ylaudit, who moves around almost ethereally, punishing you at every opportunity. If all of that wasn&#39;t enough,&nbsp;there are fricking skulls spitting fricking laser beams too, Drakhul is <em>Ghost &#39;n&#39;&nbsp;Goblins-</em>style old-school beastliness! The sheer variety of the bosses is brilliant, and the relative randomness of their attacks make for different battles every time, though once you know their attack patterns it&#39;s more a matter of attempting to trash them from whichever location you find yourself at onscreen. Each boss has an arena that enhances their abilities, such as Cindael&#39;s spike encrusted arena and Drakhul&#39;s lava pits, which makes for even more of a challenge when trying to outfox them and find that Achilles heel.</p>

<p>Throughout the adventure, you have to unlock a series of skills ranging from a useful burst of teleportation to dodge out of the path of a deadly blast, or multiply your firepower, or charge and blast with more powerful traits to help you drain increasingly more powerful enemies more suitably. You can even add additional time to your bar by unlocking the higher tier power-ups, though equipping these takes up a slot, so it is all about finding a balance. These are activated by using the Arcane and Occult codexes at the hub world between battles. Bolting on these skills and powers costs you time though. The more higher-powered attacks or buffs you deploy, the more time you have to trade off against it. This means that if you&#39;re confident that you could slam three energy bars off of a said enemy within a lower time frame but with a certain combination of skills:&nbsp;go for it, prove yourself, and reign victorious! Forty skills eventually populate your loadout and they enhance your ability to battle against tougher foes when combined to optimise your playstyle.</p>

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<p><em>Profane</em> offers several modes to keep you entertained. The obligatory story mode&nbsp;is standardly available to set the scene and let you strive to live up to your legend, smashing through stage after stage until you die or succeed. Arena mode is a solid addition from the get-go that allows you to tackle any of the bosses in any order, with no holds barred, thanks to everything being unlocked for you to choose from. The daily challenge pits you against one foe, just once per day, and each time they have different levels of aggression and you have no choice but to use specific predetermined skills to defeat them. Finally, you have the leaderboards which bring out the competitive side of you and your friends. The ability to brag about how fast you did it, how little hits you took or how you used a wild or unorthodox power or ability to do so is excellent. It really lifts the spirits and draws you in to strive to do better than your pals.</p>

<p>The fun comes from learning patterns, identifying weak spots and recognising when and how aggressively to strike. Calculating gaps in the crossfire and taking advantage of these moments of clarity can really get you fired up. Profane is unforgiving at best, and every boss has multiple health bars for you to chip away at. The endorphin rush associated with cracking into these teeny-tiny windows of opportunity is immense, and the sense of achievement once you realise that you are making a huge impact is off the charts. However, if you make one wrong move, or forget which sequence you are currently enduring during the waves of insanity, you will be punished hard.</p>

<p><em>Profane</em> is fantastic at what it sets out to be:&nbsp;bullet-hell boss fights.&nbsp;Nothing more, nothing less. The learning curve is more of a straight line through the ceiling thanks to insane difficulty from the second you start playing. If you are into this <em>Dark Souls</em>-style of play you will get an absolute kick out of how solid this game is, which is entirely unassuming given how simple it looks and feels. If you don&#39;t favour this genre though, you won&#39;t find much appeal to this game, and you will find it frustratingly hard throughout.</p>