Been playing this game on the regular for more than half a year, and finally 1CCed, and still feel like I fucking suck at it. It's that hard, that long, that dense an STG.
In these ways it's a step down from the all-around comfier, simpler Espgaluda, adding another scoring mechanic on top of an already very good one (here, you can still go into Kakusei mode to slow down and cancel bullets, and collect gold ingots; but you can also go into Zetsushikai mode to slow down bullets AND create a shitload of revenge bullets for every enemy you kill, in exchange for amping up scoring five-fold). I mostly skirted cautiously around this system, trying it on occasion for survival, ultimately feeling like it was just one layer deeper than I wanted to plunge. It's certainly appealing to an STG fan who would want to make this their "main game" (not me!).
It's beautiful-looking, the arrange soundtrack is really nice, and there are tons of different modes with different mechanics on the Switch/360 ports if you need a change of pace. It's great! I'm just... done with it, having scraped up against the ceiling where exhaustion from the difficult grind obscures the fun.
(Forgot to mention: I don't like stage 4 in this. It's one of the only stages in a Cave game I've played where I've actively dreaded it in runs, not just for its general difficulty but for the specifically annoying nature of its clusters of suicide bomber enemies and the way they force you to stream very slowly or die. I like to play fast and frenetic and you just can't do that in Stage 4. However -- the BOSS of stage 4 is awesome, and has some of the most crazy-unique patterns you'll see in a danmaku).
In these ways it's a step down from the all-around comfier, simpler Espgaluda, adding another scoring mechanic on top of an already very good one (here, you can still go into Kakusei mode to slow down and cancel bullets, and collect gold ingots; but you can also go into Zetsushikai mode to slow down bullets AND create a shitload of revenge bullets for every enemy you kill, in exchange for amping up scoring five-fold). I mostly skirted cautiously around this system, trying it on occasion for survival, ultimately feeling like it was just one layer deeper than I wanted to plunge. It's certainly appealing to an STG fan who would want to make this their "main game" (not me!).
It's beautiful-looking, the arrange soundtrack is really nice, and there are tons of different modes with different mechanics on the Switch/360 ports if you need a change of pace. It's great! I'm just... done with it, having scraped up against the ceiling where exhaustion from the difficult grind obscures the fun.
(Forgot to mention: I don't like stage 4 in this. It's one of the only stages in a Cave game I've played where I've actively dreaded it in runs, not just for its general difficulty but for the specifically annoying nature of its clusters of suicide bomber enemies and the way they force you to stream very slowly or die. I like to play fast and frenetic and you just can't do that in Stage 4. However -- the BOSS of stage 4 is awesome, and has some of the most crazy-unique patterns you'll see in a danmaku).