Mostly plays fine but has no sauce whatsoever in the audiovisual department. Musha Aleste precedes this by two years and hits all the same notes with far more grace and confidence than Imperium could ever dream of. Give that game a go instead, it's hard not to compare the two with how it blows this one out of the water.

I was wondering why this didn't feel the tiniest bit like Vic Tokai's shmups on Genesis and then learned it was actually developed by Jorudan instead, tragically also responsible for Xardion and Musya (not to be confused with Musha). All three of these were also released in the same year for the same console. Maybe that's why they're all super weak and hardly feel like final products, but who can say for sure.