The best shmup I've played, yet!
I normally hate shmups. I normally don't give them the time of day unless they're really old classics that I fondly remember and always wished I could have been better at. This one I actually played through to the end without questioning it.
About a poor review this game got: recently, Dwarf Fortress got a write-up at Slashdot and if you didn't know that vaguely roguelike RTS had a bad menu interface before, you'd know it after reading the /. comments. All of a sudden it's hip for every pompous windbag to criticise a game's menus and interfaces. I don't know what kind of too-busy crowd wants their shmup perfectly modularized with their spreadsheet program or pipelined through vii, but there's not a god damned thing wrong with the shop and garage menus, and if the other menu options are distracting you too much, maybe you should up your ritalin dosage.
What's obvious is that the critic never got very far in the game. Early on, some ships that appear to be accompanied by entourage of fighters show up again in full speed coming at you like tetris blocks. And some big bulbous ships you thought would always be harmless don't seem so harmless when they are hemming you in from all corners four at a time. There's not a ship wasted in the whole game and anybody who believes otherwise simply didn't play far enough.
The first levels of each planet are perfectly balanced to give you a taste of what to expect in the rest of the planet's stages without giving too much away or discouraging you from going on. There are a few spots where you'll have to find the exact right combination of weapons to equip to get through a stage and others where you'll be fine if you just go balls to the wall with the craziest shit you have in your inventory.
It's a great game and I spent two hours beating it.
