I went in expecting a pretty cut-and-dry shmup, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that there's a little more under the surface, even with an incredibly narrow range of difficulties for having 6 options, down to "child easy" and "monkey easy." The complexity comes in with the Dragon Shot mechanic, where you launch your dragon forward, temporarily separating it from the rider in a burst of damage and then making it into a sort of stationary turret until recalled. To survive Dragon Blaze, you need to use the Dragon Shot frequently, but this becomes a challenge when now you need to keep track of the location of two entities instead of one. Provided, the dragon will not take damage, and will continue to shoot while it's separated from its rider, but the game provides bonuses for using the Dragon Shot at opportune times, extra coins drop from enemies, some enemies drop special point boosts when hit with the DS, and every boss has a very brief animation where they're prone to being one-shot by the DS, usually in the midst of a cloud of bullets that make navigation even more difficult.
Mechanically, it can feel a little dry compared to other shmups, especially with more modern advances in the genre, but it's charming in its simplicity, its art style is great, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it makes me think of Panzer Dragoon just a little bit so call me biased if you must.
Its one very very noticeable flaw is its absolute terrible UI, it feels right out of a mobile game port and reminds me of the early days of the Steam Chrono Trigger port that was just straight up the iphone port with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ default fonts and all

I went in expecting a pretty cut-and-dry shmup, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that there's a little more under the surface, even with an incredibly narrow range of difficulties for having 6 options, down to "child easy" and "monkey easy." The complexity comes in with the Dragon Shot mechanic, where you launch your dragon forward, temporarily separating it from the rider in a burst of damage and then making it into a sort of stationary turret until recalled. To survive Dragon Blaze, you need to use the Dragon Shot frequently, but this becomes a challenge when now you need to keep track of the location of two entities instead of one. Provided, the dragon will not take damage, and will continue to shoot while it's separated from its rider, but the game provides bonuses for using the Dragon Shot at opportune times, extra coins drop from enemies, some enemies drop special point boosts when hit with the DS, and every boss has a very brief animation where they're prone to being one-shot by the DS, usually in the midst of a cloud of bullets that make navigation even more difficult. Mechanically, it can feel a little dry compared to other shmups, especially with more modern advances in the genre, but it's charming in its simplicity, its art style is great, and goddamn it it makes me think of Panzer Dragoon just a little bit so call me biased if you must. Its one very very noticeable flaw is its absolute terrible UI, it feels right out of a mobile game port and reminds me of the early days of the Steam Chrono Trigger port that was just straight up the iphone port with shitty default fonts and all