This game is so much fun that when I’m not playing it I can’t stop thinking about it.
The best thing about this game is just the gameplay. Blowing up everything in sight and dodging bullets is extremely fun. Even dodging simple patterns makes you feel amazing.The two firing modes also make the game feel unique from other shmups.The graphics look amazing especially the explosions and other effects like that. Even though the game is really difficult it honestly only makes me want to come back more. The controls are very sharp and concise, and make every death feel like it’s your fault. My only main issues with this game is the music felt a little generic and on a few stages the bullets can get a little difficult to see. Besides that very minor flaw this game is extremely fun and I recommend you give it a shot.

This game is weird to rate, really weird. On one hand, some sections and bosses of this game are one of the most fun I have ever played through in a shmup. On the other hand, there's a bunch of stage sections where it feels like they just sprayed a quintillion number of bullets on the screen and called it a day (looking at you Half of Hell). Stage 1 feels like it could have been cut and nothing would change much, it is too easy for Survival and even scoring.

Talking about scoring, some people sing praises for this game's scoring but to me it feels like the weakest in Cave's library. You cannot fuck up anywhere, and you can't bomb or get hit. You miss a chain in the middle of the stage and your run may as well be over. Having 0 recovery spots or ways to fiddle around the GP system like with other DDP games makes it actively frustrating. I'd even prefer DonPachi's scoring system over this.

This game does have a lot of options for the player, with 6 shot types across 3 ships. Sadly, the balance between is kinda wack for the 2nd Loop, and playing anything else that isn't the Laser types for a 2-All is going to be extremely frustrating. Overall all the ships are good enough for a 1-All and there's a ton of differences between them so that's nice.

It's a pretty good game but one with design decisions a bit too unrefined, and with some sections that aren't that fun to play, but overall, it's a good recommendation for people that want to try a Cave game for the first time.

When it comes to shmups, it's very simple, Caves just the best to ever do it.

Love this game. Almost feels like a remake of batsugun, which tracks as one of the founders of Cave actually did work on this game. I think it's visually stunning and very fun to look at. A friend told me that it was some what satisfying to watch, of course it probably would be a lot more if I wasn't dying every couple of seconds but regardless.

The movement feels great, not too fast not to slow. It gives the perfect amount of control to dodge around the insanity of color circles at you. Shooting is also very intuitive. A press of the shoot button shoots machine guns bullets in a wide range, holding the shoot button create a powerful laser that's smaller and focused. Just these two controls offer a lot in terms of figuring out stats to most effectively kill the enemies. It also has the stable bomb button, but something I adore is how the game rewards you for using the bomb at the right time. In these games shooting off a bomb clears the screen and should be used in an emergency. In this game it does the same, but it turns the bullets into objects to pick up and give points. Incredibly simple and satisfying to do on a boss screen.

Anyways I probably talked to much about a very simple game, but it is an easy rec to anyone who has never played a bullet hell/danmaku game. It's simple enough and challenging, but when you get in the zone with it - extremly metitative.

Something that attracts me to this genre is that it’s sort of like Game Design as Album, and it lets the player participate in the songwriting and performance each time. The game has to showcase all its mechanics and systems in as few as 20 curated minutes. That’s a very tight timeline on which to take the player on an entire journey, though like the best records, the best shooters use their limited time to create a very dense and rewarding experience, and invite endless replays to drink it all in.

As an album, DoDonPachi is fierce, loud, progressive, deliciously paced, and so catchy that after practicing it for hours I can sing you the full layouts of entire stages.

You’ve got the graceful refrains in Stage 1, where the game teaches its chaining system by having you continuously sweep all the way across the screen from left to right and back again, like hitting every key on the piano as you clean throngs of enemies off the screen. It’s a wonderful, destructive warmup exercise.

Stage 2 introduces big, tanky enemies and obstacles that take extra time to kill while you deal with the smaller threats at the same time, creating a bass-y drone of suspense. Having to kill different enemies that die at different tempos complicates the composition; to really jam with DoDonPachi you’re gonna have to ride those different grooves simultaneously.

My favorite part of Stage 3 has a feature that DoDonPachi only rarely dabbles in: bullet cancels. As numerous big enemy fighters spawn on screen and unleash a cacophony of bullets, you can destroy the nearby frigates to completely wipe out all the bullets on screen, giving you just a moment’s rest. You don’t want to blast these frigates immediately, you need to wait as long as you can before firing, letting as many bullets rain down at you as you can manage before pulling the trigger and throwing the screen into silence. Here DoDonPachi lets you play the conductor, and as they say, the notes you don’t play are just as important as the ones you do.

The boss of Stage 4 is about making the record skip. There’s a glitch you can trigger where if you survive its initial onslaught, then get its health to within a few pixels of a certain target, you can get it to freeze in place and become a sitting duck. To do so you’ll need impeccable timing as you dodge between and then fire during the rhythm of its twin cannon shots. Bam, bam. Bam, bam. Bam, b-... Bump the table right at the end of the measure and the needle slips, and the boss is helpless, the song of its cannons turned into an interminable rest.

If pulling one over on DoDonPachi and taking control of the song in Stage 4 felt empowering, Stage 5 is hellbent on taking that feeling away. The stage is infamous for a section that throws a sheer curtain of hundreds of enemies and bullets at you for the better part of a minute straight. If other encounters in DoDonPachi bring a prog rock sensibility to the genre, this section is a dive straight into harsh noise. It’s blunt, it’s punishing, it bangs and screams and scrapes at the same note on and on. But if you don’t crumble under the reverberating waves of death hurled at you, you will find a moment of peace on the other side. The boss of the stage has an exploit that allows you to sit in a safe spot right in front of its face. Inside that bubble of tension, the game offers a few breaths of serenity.

The finale occurs across the whole of Stage 6, where DoDonPachi brings to bear every trick, lick, dynamic and instrument it has in an attempt to blow you the hell up. It’s a two-and-a-half minute maximalist concerto and as the star soloist you had goddamn better know your part. Giant high-speed tanks slide onto screen and slam percussive, bunched up globs of bullets your way 40 at a time. Massive metal bees spawn repeatedly from the same spot while you try to deal with everything else, forming a downbeat for you to keep up with lest they have a chance to rev up and overwhelm you. The final boss has an array of deadly patterns it moves through in a set order, a last song-within-a-song for you to master. If you’ve made it this far and can still listen to what DoDonPachi is playing over the sound of your own heartbeat on this last track, you’ll be properly rewarded as all the lights go up, all the pyrotechnics flare, and the boss goes down with one final deafening power chord. Wipe the sweat off your brow, take the earplugs out, show’s over.

Of course, for the very best players, DoDonPachi lets you flip it over for a Side B that runs through all the same songs as before but with even more intensity, and with a special bonus track at the end: “Hibachi.” A true final boss to terrify even the most seasoned STG player, a blistering speed-metal apocalypse that I can only dream of getting good enough to experience live one day.

Like all the best albums, DoDonPachi rewards listening close, spinning it again and again, and picking out new nuances every time. It’s an impeccable journey, a delicately balanced and focused project, and a badass jam.