This game has a lot of good going for it, including a kickass soundtrack and a cool sleek visual style to it. This game is pretty easy to understand through the tutorial and is the kind of game where you can upgrade your ship with gems earned while playing. It's a little bit odd though in that you can pause at any time and mess with your upgrades as you see fit. This alone makes the game very manageable and highly unusual for a SHMUP. This directly means that this is not a good game to get for those that want an arcade experience, but for those that like shop mechanics in other shmups and design elements akin to that of Gradius, Satazius, and other horizontal SHMUPs of those kind there's some cool set pieces in this game. The main gimmick of the game involves using an energy shield to absorb any energy based attacks and counterlaser damage back to enemies. It is integrated as a forced part of the game where you must absolutely use this or you will not be able to survive. As a result, many parts are designed around this and what gives the game it's unique feel. Ultimately pretty manageable to get through due to all of the options available to the player to customize your ship practically any way you want. Weapon order, main weapon, subshot, rear pod, options, ship speed, wall bumper toggle (this actually has upsides and downsides whether it is on or off) and some stat buffing are all at the player's fingers through the upgrade system to make the ideal ship of their vision.

The game's hardest difficulty Ridiculous is locked behind a playthrough which takes about 2 hours, and this is the mode where you die in one hit and comes much more in line for those looking for an arcade experience. Once you enable this, the game does legitimately get a bunch harder and shields become more valuable as an option to tank hits you didn't dodge or defend against correctly. I can see why the devs didn't want people to beeline straight to this difficulty without having seen the game through once first since enemies become notably more tanky to the point that dying is an extreme detriment and your reflector is the thing that will be your saving grace in any situation as a result. On a regular playthrough I would get hit occasionally and feel like I had no idea what hit me so there might be some visibility issues with bullets, enough so that by the end I was a little concerned about trying a Ridiculous playthrough right away. This game is an amazingly good pickup for those that like shop mechanics in SHMUPs and want to play something that doesn't feel overwhelmingly difficult starting off.

Edit: Arcade difficulty is also unlocked at the same time as Ridiculous, the main difference in this mode being that you can only pause once in the middle of a run to sort out upgrades and you have a 90 second time limit to do all of your things in that window. Otherwise you can only access the upgrades screen at the end of each level with a 90 second time limit. Honestly after playing after my first playthrough, Arcade mode is more or less what I expected this game to be going in and balances out the overpowering nature of being able to normally change your weapons on the fly at any given time in a normal/1st playthrough. I can generally recommend this game for anyone out there that is a fan of hori shmups.

❤️