Comes close to matching the blistering pace of Sin and Punishment, and makes the smart decision to reward players with enough credits to comfortably see the ending, while pushing veterans to stay on the razor’s edge by making your extra powerful “Sun Blade'' siphon off your health. It’s a weapon that changes the way you see fights, a line of energy that can destroy bullets and damage multiple enemies at once- in its best moments you’ll be fanning the screen to negate a wave of projectiles before repositioning to cut through the entirety of a boss. Use it long enough and you’ll get a critical bonus which causes new bosses and enemy patterns to appear, giving you even more of a reason to push yourself outside your comfort zone.

Suffers a bit from a sense of déjà vu throughout, with most of the encounters matching you against some jagged monstrosity that barrages you with lasers from the top of the screen- think the game could benefited from a few more curveballs in terms of stage and boss design, hazards that might force to you to more carefully track enemies and reorient yourself more often. This might be the downside of being such a thrillride, where a cool section or enemy might only get a few seconds of screentime before being deleted.

Good stuff otherwise, always glad to see a game carry on the lineage of having a stanza as the boss warning.