3/10

Askin' the wrong guy.

Bullet Hells are not for me and I don't understand the joy that is gained from forcing your eyes to water from straining and stressing over and over with ostensibly arbitrary rules on what is or isn't OK to do in a game that seemingly revels in sadism.

I was forced into this game and, of course, my completionist self is all, "Hey you GOTTA do 100%, especially since you managed to do 90%! Just ONE more, man."

But the last achievement is what really makes this game terrible for me.

The goal of getting 1million points is virtually impossible because a lot of the ways to get it (certain bosses and long-winded endless runs) are either extremely difficult for the reason mentioned above or will crash because of poor programming. And since this game is no longer supported, the chances of you earning this final achievement is much more difficult.

Sound design is relatively poor as well. It has what I feel like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 did: try to soyboy the sounds so that it's just a bunch of soft pewwwwwwwwws and booooops so that the destruction of your enemies feels like an afterthought and have powerful weapons just feels like your thumb slightly twitched.

If you're going to do Bullet Hell, you should ramp up the feelings of what makes players enjoy Bullet Hell.

RNG is a natural part of the genre but this game does it a lot more by peppering you with 10-20 smaller enemies that fly around on their own patterns while big bosses have their artillery, missiles, and beams firing on you on independent patterns. Meaning - you see the boss face you so you dodge to the side thinking you'll evade its cannon only to be blasted by it anyway because its on it's own turret while the bombs litter the front of the boss all while little ships are whirling around you with unblockable buzzsaws that you either have to dodge or block (both of which were used up because the boss unexpectedly just blasted you in the face).

It could be that I'm simply not good at these games and playing on nightmare takes a lot of the fun out, but then you're arguing for what the true experience of the game is. Is playing on EASY mode what the developers intended? Is fighting the toughest boss on the highest difficulty not the only way to achieve 1million points? Are players supposed to just sit in a comfort zone and not experience the rest of the game because it's too hard? Are you supposed to laugh and go, "GEE WHILLIKERS! THE GAME SHORE GOT ME! HUH HYUK! GUESS I GOTTA PLAY THOSE LAST 10 MINUTES AGAIN AND STRESS MY EYES TILL THEY TURN PINK! OH BOY!!!"

Maxed out weapons? Naw, the Boss has BILLIONS of HP so your mere 1.6k damage per super blast is not gonna take less than 20 min of constant fire to kill it.

If you can recommend a GOOD bullett hell game, perhaps I will re-evaluate on how good this genre is. Otherwise the genre itself already causes this to be a 4/10 and the general ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the high difficulty decreases it by a further -1.

Reverse the score if you just love maiming yourself. 7/10 for you psychos.