Actually incredible game. Like goddamn, man what an experience. The gameplay and OST absolutely beautiful. Seriously this OST gives me life, it's so damn good. The glow up from DonPachi to this has to be studied. Now this is a game I'd replay constantly if I had an actual arcade.

But there's one problem....and that's the second half of the game. Which you can only get to if you not lose a single life not use a bomb, and score of 120 million points. Then I have to beat Ura Loop which has more red bullets and blue suicide bullets. And finally I have to beat the True Final Boss without dying once.

This is my SECOND SHUMP EVER...I literally can't do this. I'm still bad at this genre. Though I will say I was dodging a lot better in this game than in DonPachi. No clue if that was because it was "easier" or because the gears in my head are starting to turn with this genre. But it sucks that I can't see the second half of the game nor fight the True Final Boss unless I beat those conditions. Obviously I want to do it at some point. Unfortunately not now but hopefully and eventually later!

This game is basically the bush iraq war but you play on the side of the good guys instead.
It is incredibly difficult but I believe one step at a time I will be able to do the first loop...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CYz-95JZruk

edit: 1cc complete, aiming for omote next

What a fantastic game. Ketsui has all its elements just fall into place perfectly throughout its 5-stage run, where everything feels tightly designed and memorable.

The core gameplay element in Ketsui is the scoring system, where the player earns multiplier chips from 1 to 5 based on the proximity of the enemies destroyed. The closer you are, the higher the multiplier. Everything is designed around this scoring system and to that extent, it's what brings out the addictive and satisfying gameplay loop in Ketsui.

The game is really brutal but never unfair. Ketsui is one of the finest examples that arcade games are meant to be replayed and learned, where every second throughout its runtime is meant to be mastered. Ketsui keeps this process of learning interesting as every enemy layout is designed with the aforementioned scoring system. To play effectively, you have to be aggressive and keep in mind how the scoring works. And there are no cheap surprises, alongside minimal random factors that can sneak up behind you, any mistakes you make all feel like it's your fault rather than the game being underhanded.

Hesistation and playing it safe can actually lead to more errors and bigger obstacles over time as the enemies can pile up even more and lead to your potential death.

Each stage is also completely distinct, with its own set of enemies and completely unique patterns, which works well in creating both a challenge and a great way to make each part of the game distinctive and aid in memorization.

The attack patterns themselves feel organic, and once you learn how to get through them, it feels really good to just go with the flow and weave through them with like it's no effort. Coupled with the way you go through enemies as you rack up high multipliers consistently feels rhythm-like.

I clocked over 100 hours already with this game just to get my first single credit clear, and I'm still not tired of it. There's still a 2nd loop of the game that can be accessed, two different 2nd loops even. One where it requires the player to die or use bombs less than six times. And the even harder one, where it requires no deaths and no bombs while attaining at least 120 million in score, on which this more difficult loop features the true final boss of the game, which is also a genuine challenge on its own.

Ketsui quickly became one of my recent favorites. Alongside the strong gameplay design, there's also the great soundtrack that compliments the intensity of the game, and an excellent presentation that makes good use of pre-rendered models alongside its cohesive visual design of a grounded near-future military backdrop.

If you're a fan of shmups, or even just challenging games that you can replay over and over and find enjoyment in mastering well-designed levels and mechanics, I highly recommend checking out Ketsui.

My Victory Theme
I have to thank old reliable 1 and 2, for without them my atrophied gamer muscles would never have carried me through this chaotic maelstrom. Despite my faults as a g4m1ng g0d (and my reprehensible savescumming), I reached complete flow and registered no external stimulus other than good old red'n'blu until credits. Couldn't tell you what one of these levels or enemies looked like. I scraped through this like a person climbing Mtn. 3v3r3st with their bare hands over a truly gripping "25 Minutes". Taken at face value, your ultimate reward is a text dump. In japanese. Incredible. But to paraphrase a half-remembered backloggd dot com review, "God is the space in between the bullets", and this is the first shmup to have truly shown me the light. My first (reformed) action? I bound hell.

I've spent the past few days playing through a whole bunch of shmups. A big problem I have with shmups, as I do in life, is that I can't sit still for two seconds and take things in. Learn the patterns, only move when I need to? That's for dongers mate. Never stop rushing in and just instantly react to everything like a Real Gamer. The jury's out on life but in shmups this has historically led me to pretty poor results.
Ketsui is different. Ketsui wants me to rush in. Ketsui wants me to keep moving. Once the game really got going I felt like the threat of being overwhelmed was constant, that if I stopped fighting against the tide for those two seconds then it would waste no time in washing right over me. In most shmups I find it very easy to weather a storm, get cocky during a quiet moment, and then fly directly into the nearest bullet. That was a lot harder to do here because very rarely did I ever feel like the storm was not still ongoing. And it's good! It's absurdly fun! The game probably isn't quite as relentless as my perception of it in the moment was - there definitely is a clear difficulty curve as you progress - but man, I don't think I've played any others this past week that had me shitting it for such extended periods. Awesome.
The only real complaint I can level against it is that the colour palette and really the overall presentation is a bit bland compared to the other Cave stuff I've played, but I'm having way too much of a good time to really care. In a weird way this ridiculous onslaught has made me appreciate the other games I've played a bit more. Maybe I'll revisit those. Maybe I'll even try to play them properly!
None of this is to imply that I was inherently better at Ketsui than the rest, by the way. Finished it with 17 continues (EDIT: 14 on second run). Absolutely embarrassing. Great game though.

Ketsui's scoring mechanic is my favorite so far, and it synergizes perfectly with how the game is meant to be played. I much prefer it over collecting gems (mushihime), or trying to chain kills and/or colors (ddp, ikaurga...). It's all about getting close to the enemies and killing them, particularly smaller ones, to increase your multiplier and then use your laser on bigger ones to cash in on it. Laser also has a lock-on mechanic apparently unique to this game, sadly. And the closer you are to an enemy, the faster you can lock on it as well. While your laser will always shoot in front of you, you also shoot bullets aimed to the target you locked onto. Though in a way it makes certain bosses and minibosses a bit easier, knowing where to target big enemies and knowing when to switch to standard shot, in order to get chips during long battles makes a big difference.

Like I said, it really rewards aggressiveness and encourages getting up close, high risk/high reward gameplay which eclipses those games that focus just on being bullet hell. It definitely has a lot going on in later stages, but still I'd say Ketsui retains a nice balance. Groups of fodder enemies even when you're up top, are easier to move around with macrododging, while the bigger bulkier ones will throw more dense patterns that you will have an easier time fighting with your laser (which lets you move slower, more precisely) and auto target (helps you focus on the bullets and not so much in hitting). I wouldn't say it's easy though.

When things go well, the game looks easier than it actually is, because often the best strategy is to kill stuff up close before it has a chance to overwhelm you. It does expect you to be pushing constantly and if you fall behind things can go wrong quickly. It's not as easy to remain up close to enemies and clear the screen when enemies start to pile up and there's a lot more bullets and targets onscreen that there should be. There's always using a bomb as a last resort, which I find not really as punishing as in other cave games (unless going for ura loop but i'm not doing that lol), lives always count more than bombs and there's no other penalties.

During my first hours of the game my problem was actually dying without using my bombs, my deaths being mostly due to playing kamikaze style and running into bullets without looking, rather than getting caught in patterns. In retrospective, it's actually very funny that the story of this game is about some pilots getting sent on a suicide mission. The difficulty curve in stages is gentle and ramps up very naturally, you may run into walls but never feel that the game is suddenly throwing bullshit at you. Because it builds up so nicely on previous stuff, you only feel even more determined to face new challenges in harder stages. And because they're so well designed, going through earlier stages again does not become a chore as you get better; they are also nice warmups where you can improve your chaining skills. By the end stage 5 feels basically like 2 stages rolled into one. Still, to me there's the same drawback as with all other shmups, there's some parts where you have to play a bit until you learn the stage no matter what, but there's a lot you can get away with if you do well.

Bullet patterns are great. It has a lot of unique stuff and often it leans into compositions that move organically and are able to overwhelm a lot without clogging up the screen, giving you a challenge but also room for moving around and getting close to different enemies. Bosses in particular are just mesmerizing. While for some the visuals may be a bit generic, everything else in the presentation is wonderful, especially the music. Plus, the new UI on PS4 is really gorgeous and in-depth even if you won't be looking at it much. I really hope they port this to PC sometime.

In short, I love Ketsui's philosophy. Fairly straightforward, it only has two ships differing in shot type and speed, and practically a single approach. It doesn't need any more because it achieves perfection in simplicity and accomplishes what it sets out to do. Only thing I'd say it's missing is that bosses turning into giant anime girl robots like in dodonpachi resurrection.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
came here to scream after doing a run of it only to find out i was not the only one lol