Pretty shabby in the aesthetics department -- some sprites are cool but most are pretty meh, and the OST is functionally tense and thematic but otherwise forgettable.

However -- the gameplay here is meat-and-potatoes shmup goodness, solidly-constructed and gimmick-free. Choose one of six fighters, all of whom feel compellingly different, and then shoot stuff before it shoots you. [Pro tip: choose Aine and point-blank-bomb the everloving shit out of basically every boss for a (relatively) straightforward 1-ALL, especially if you play on a port where you can keep the stage order consistent (in the arcade version, the first three are always random, something that makes for compelling casual repetition, but makes repetition for learning's sake rather frustrating ).]

This was my first Psikyo game, and if nothing else it made me excited to try their other stuff to see just how this formula--fast bullets + emphasis on speedkills + plentiful resources--evolves.

what a fantastic game to start the new year with

fun puzzles and mechanics, great spooky atmosphere, intriguing story, pretty humorous as well, didnt need a guide at all either

definitely can understand why this is up there as one of the greats

Yea this game is a shmup

S
H
Man I beat the third boss without even moving
U
Pissed on my bed last night

I have not played enough DoDonPachi to make this statement but it has to be said anyway: This is the DMC2 of DoDonPachi.

Tacky-ass bootleg art direction, no sense of rhythm or flow, no elegance to its placement of enemies or bullet patterns, - it has no punch to its player feedback, no stab to its sound direction, and no groove to make you want to ride its wave. The few moments of genuine challenge are impossible to care about because of how boring and laughably bad the preceding setpieces are.

The ONLY thing this game does well is that you can graze bullets to charge your bomb meter, and in some fights you can chain continuous bombs this way and it feels pretty fucking raw. If ANYONE knows if this mechanic exists in a different shmup, I'm DYING to know.

God-tier.

Espgaluda finds Cave stripping away everything that made its former titles renowned (insane difficulty, strict and occasionally obtuse scoring mechanics, 2nd loops, TLBs) in search of pure fun. This is not to say that the game isn't difficult--it is, very much so! But the curve is a gloriously smooth ramp this time, instead of a series of impenetrable spike-walls; and, more importantly, the best mechanic in any shmup I've yet played is on offer: Kakusei mode. Or, in layman's terms, motherfucking bullet time.

Honestly, ever since I began playing these games, I fantasized about one that would let me slow bullets down at will--even just as a practice-mode mechanic, or something. Cave have done much more than that, though -- they've integrated manual bullet-time into the normal arcade version of a game, perfectly balancing it to not feel too much like a blatant crutch.

Essentially, killing enemies builds your Kakusei meter, up to a maximum of 500. It depletes quickly once activated, and is tied intimately to scoring -- for every enemy killed in Kakusei mode, valuable gold ingots are acquired. Additionally, each enemy killed in slow-mo depletes your meter by a large chunk; meaning there's a great risk/reward tightrope to be walked, between stashing Kakusei for survival, or spending it liberally to cash in on mega-points. (It should be noted that points can get you extends, AND the bullets shot by enemies killed in Kakusei mode are cancelled! So the choice for a survival-focused run is not at all black and white).

It's in the flexibility, and the split-second choices that evolve from this system that makes the game's fun so pure. Have trouble with a particular midboss? Make sure your meter is full when you reach it, and you can coast through in bullet-time. Is a cluster of bullets hurtling toward you, and you fear that you might not be able to dodge through even in slo-mo? Activate Kakusei and fry the enemy who shot them with your giant laser, and watch those bullets disappear.

I believe this is how the game gets its reputation for being one of Cave's "easier" offerings--its design is extremely player-friendly, and strategies for both survival and scoring can be developed organically. That being said, it still took me around 100 hours to 1CC, so be careful going into it thinking it's going to be a cake walk if you're a beginner or intermediate shmup player. The last boss--especially their final form--is a real asshole.

As far as presentation goes, the sprites are cool, and the backgrounds are very Cave-y in that they provide sufficient narrative context without getting in the way of the action at all. The music seems generic, sure, but it grew on me as I played: it's the kind of stuff you don't mind hearing over and over again if you're going to put the time and effort into clearing this, and it's suitably hype.

Espgaluda might be my favorite Cave game I've played so far. It is just infinitely satisfying to stop-start time as you're rushing through hails of bullets, wrecking steampunk airships and fairy-tale villain bosses with your psychic powers.

Just a cool fucking game.

I can tell that there’s a perfect game here, but unfortunately I can’t access it. The PS2 version is a perfect port of an imperfect, imbalanced version of the game—White Label—while the Xbox 360 port is a shoddy, ugly port of the definitive version of the game—Black Label. Running Black Label in MAME has given me results about equivalent to the 360 version… nowhere near the optimization of the Arika PS2 port, which, I must stress, feels like PURE SEX to play, and is definitely worth checking out.

I’ve put a hundred or so hours into this for a 1CC, and am still having plenty of fun playing—the music is a big step up from DDP, the hyper system is a blast, and stage 5 is most likely the best bullet hell level ever designed, period—but until I can get my hands on some OG hardware or the equivalent (PCB or FPGA), or until a better port comes out, I feel like I’ve gotta table it and move on to other things.