Soundodger 2 is criminally underrated but at the same time has a few issues that hold it back from being perfect for me (but it's very close). The biggest of these is the way it handles game overs - if you take enough hits before your health can regenerate, then you die. Something that sounds good on paper but is nothing but frustrating when so many harder levels demand that you memorize their patterns for in some cases up to four minutes. It doesn't help that most of the power-ups meant to make completing levels easier are either overpowered or extremely situational, meaning it rarely feels right to use them.

This game's music selection and level designs rule though. Like, insanely rule. My only complaint with them is that higher difficulty levels are a genuinely insane difficulty spike from the easier ones, to the point where trying to move on is incredibly frustrating (see above). There are so many fun ideas in these levels, though, all put to great tracks which infuse the arena with pure vibes.

Soundodger 2 also has THE best level editor I've ever used, and I'm not joking. It encourages experimentation, and allows you to change everything going on in a level in a second. It makes creating levels in this game super easy as you're able to just brainstorm and barf out bullets onscreen.

Not to mention, SD2 has a great small but passionate custom levels community - so there's plenty of content beyond the base game. Mileage may vary though, and it certainly feels like a lot of it is far more difficult than the base game.