Akai Katana Shin

The game has borderline genius level design, and playing the A ship is very very fun. I love basically everything about it, except how long you take to come out of focus. I have died many times hitting bomb or transform, but with 3 or 4 frames of lag (it does feel laggier than Mushi or DFK to me), but getting a feel for doing it early is coming. It does sting hearing the transform sound, and also dying though lol. I got to the final boss on one credit finally, and will take down the original Akai Katana soon. Awesome videogame.

I'm a sucker for shumps so I ended up grabbing this during the spring sale and it's so much fun. It seems to give you unlimited lives, but I'm just happy challenging myself not to get hit. Boss difficulty increases dramatically after the 2nd one so buckle up.

I've had this game since I was 16 and I've always loved it, but playing it all these years later and actually focusing on a clear (getting close) really let the game show me how brilliant it is. And it's crazy because, if I recall, the original arcade version of this game was poorly received and actually was a big blunder for Cave. But the Shin arrange, treating it as the definitive mode of play, and porting it to the home gave this a much needed and much deserved second wind. It's not as brutal as some other games from them but, the scoring and mechanics make even the easier moments so engrossing to play. Cave is SO good at giving their alt fire formula a ton of purpose beyond the usually passive benefits and tradeoffs. The soul orb and katana system overlapping your rapid and laser shot is such a fun and delicate tightrope. But it stays a very excellent beginner/intermediate offering for a chaining system that leaves a lot of depth for experts. It's not super strict like Daioujou or Ketsui, but there are still a lot of fun execution checks to keep your chain rising that keeps things interesting. This game is a perfect kind of lenience I feel. It's also stunningly gorgeous. Every part of this game feels...regal. It's so detailed and confident more than Cave's usual absurdly high standards in some places. An excellent rock soundtrack that does not let up and very interesting premise for an STG if story is something you care for in arcade games. The technical side of things and setup is also just perfect. Menus are not only beautiful, but they have all the creature comforts I want in an STG AND a PC port. It runs flawlessly and is smooth as butter. It just accepts and reads my controllers with no fuss. I really appreciate option sets and the auto select feature. Saving control presets, training presets, and just immediately picking your fighter is the kind of thing these ports need to be doing more of. The game loads instantly, closes instantly, is alt tab friendly 100% of the time, and looks just right on a 16:9 display. It gets the small touches correct which I see way too many games skip today. The only thing I really criticize is no higher difficulty option or even a loop 2 (the former is preferred). I think some more teeth and this could easily be the best horizontal bullet hell STG. But other than that, this needs to be discussed more as one of Cave's many crown jewels. This is definitely a master class work and easy recommend to literally anyone who enjoys fun action.