Konami's shmups are always this kinda odd brand of extreme scope and gravitas parsed against violently cruel design. III's the worst of this and Cold Comfort already gave the Grade-A thesis on it, so I ain't gonna re-tread ground.

How's the SNES version? For my money, really good. Slowdown be damned, these games need this shit to ease the omnidirectional onslaught. Even thematically, the slowdown is kinda 'bullettime-y' and adds to the tension.

I was also surprised how solid the SNES soundtrack is - they brought over the series' echo-laden synths and celestial keys really well to a sample-based format, not to mention being a LAUNCH WINDOW game at that.

First half is pretty generous on difficulty, but the second half is where things get asinine even with the SNES-version modifications. Just constant barrages of unpatterned bullets, tight walls, shifting terrain, bosses with aggravating behaviors while narrow tubes guard their hitboxes, etc. And all of this is still with Konami's patented 'fuck up once and give up' Gradius Syndrome. It's all just too overkill for my tastes.