oh man this game rocks. thunder force iv is also really good but iii is much easier, so i tend to play this one more often. great music, visuals etc. not much i can say about this game (and by extension the franchise) that hasn't already been said. iii is a good starting point for noobs, so even if you're nervous, play it!

Dropping the vertical bits helped them refine the rest of the gameplay enough to bring this up to par with the better games in the genre, especially with the weapon switching. It still suffers from repetitive combat and generic visuals though.