Started slow for me at first, but once I started to gain more upgrades and explore more and more it clicked with me super hard. Exploring and finding new passages and discovering items is satisfying and it always felt like I was discovering something new. The game as often noted is incredibly non-linear, it's more than willing to point you in the right direction when needed but you absolutely do not need to follow that and can make your own path. The level of sequence breaking potential this game has is nuts. Admittedly, some of the levels can be sorta sluggish to traverse and I think that just has to do with the enemies. Once you get the yellow orb, it's just holding down the shoot button and hitting them with that.

Still, this game was really addicting and I was a big, big fan of the bullet hell aspect, especially with the boss battles. They can be challenging even on normal difficulty, but I think for the most part they are fair and almost every attack they do seems dodgeable. Note though, I only played up to chapter 5 which is the conclusion of the main story so I am unsure of the difficulty past that chapter and the DLC. If you are unfamiliar with bullet hell games or not into them, this might be more difficult to get into but I think it's absolutely worth it. The combat itself is a blast, trying to pull off combos with the hammer in conjunction with your mana attack feels really good.

The artstyle for the portraits is a bit much and while I think the designs and art itself is nicely drawn, the sorta lowkey horny aspect of it can be a bit offputting. Spritework wise though the game looks fantastic and the music really nice. There isn't much to say about the cast, personally I did find the lot of them charming, especially Erina herself (shoutout to my poverty stricken cat friend Cocoa) but they can be one note. This isn't exactly the kinda game you'd play for the story, but for the exciting bullet hell bosses and the sprawling exploration. Great game

Fantastic game that still holds up incredibly well nearly 20 years later. The gameplay is consistently fun, blasting enemies and keeping your weapons leveled up along with fluid controls that make it easy to keep playing. The story is somewhat minimal, yet manages to be pretty effective and has quite a few surprises. It has excellent pacing and there's only one section i feel the game loses it's pacing a bit but it's not a huge deal with how short it is. It's easy to see why this game had as big of an impact as it did.

Played blind on my first playthrough with a guide on the second. I know the final area for the true end tends to be seen as a big difficulty spike, but I personally had a lot of fun with it. One of my favorite parts of the game by far.