A novel, jazzy re-working of II, I definitely like it more than that game. Had an admittedly rough time w/ this but I can see most of its problems (aggravating speedup system, evil checkpoints, odd boss balancing) becoming less intrusive with practice, as any good shmup should.

Except that slowdown, I can stomach slowdown but there's zero rhyme or reason to it here, you'll tap a direction and the game does a DVD fast-forward into a brick wall.