Recommended for: Players who live for the thrill of perfectly mastering levels through unrelenting, fast-paced, gradually increasing difficulty. This is perfectly crafted shmup bliss with the all the hallmarks one would expect from a bullet-hell shooter, but streamlined and turned up to 11.

Not recommended for: Players looking for depth in the form of extra content. This game is a finely-tuned, laser-focused experience. There's not a lot of bells and whistles, though, with only -just- enough variation to keep the repitition engaging. That means if you are not the type of player who is motivated by self-improvement and ranked leaderboards, then you'll probably find yourself frustrated at the lack of extra modes and levels.

As someone who loves shmups of all flavors, I can honestly say this is among the best.

At first, I was disappointed to learn that it was a screen-by-screen affair a bit like Binding of Isaac. However, once I started playing the different modes I quickly became accustomed to the way the action flows seemlessly from stage to stage. It had won me over almost immediately. The game does a great job of slowly escalating the action, breaking down each level by stages, and each stage by waves that become more and more difficult as you progress. I can't stress enough how well this all blends together. The action is so intense and demanding that you'll be relieved at the end of each stage, and thankful to have that 2 second reprieve.

As if the developers understood that there needs to be at least a small carrot on a stick for the non-competitive players, they threw in some cosmetic features that you can unlock with the medals you earn in each game. Those features are skins for your helmet, skins for your body, recolors for those skins, recolors for your bullets, and avatars. Sadly, considering how much mayhem will be going on on-screen at any given moment, these cosmetic changes are hardly noticeable at all.

The power-ups are a bit limited, but varied enough to keep each playthrough feeling fresh. Clearly, Housemarque understands that having too many different power-ups makes balancing a nightmare and can dramatically affect player experience if it's not handled well. Each level has been designed flawlessly, each enemy providing a unique type of threat that is cleverly either trigger-spawned or time-spawned, depending on it's role in that stage. And each stage contains secrets that must be discovered to fully maximize your score.

And the design gets deeper. Because you can spend all that time exploring all the nooks and crannies of each level and have complete knowledge of every secret, you might be inclined to believe you just need to discover them all to get a max score. But you'd be wrong. You're still racing against the clock, and at some point, all that extra stuff you found isn't going to make up for the lost time you spent getting it.

I know this because currently, all the players immediately ahead of me and below me in the rankings have -many- more unlocked secrets in their best runs, with the same number of deaths as me. I could be mistaken, though, I am convinced that over time the best run will not be the one with all the secrets.

Anywho, this review went on a lot longer than I had planned, so I'm gonna wrap it up here. I hope I've shed enough light to keep the right players in and the wrong ones out.