Ibara is very similar to 8ing/Raizing's Battle Garegga and Battle Bakraid games.So much so that Ibara could be considered a pseudo-sequel or, at least, a spiritual successor. The similarities are numerous - some are subtle, some are easily spotted. These include combining archaic technology such as biplanes with more advanced machinery; firing and power-up system; and a medal collecting system which drastically increases scoring. The game features a similar method of earning bombs and a delay when launching them as well. A notable feature of Ibara is the inclusion of a variable, real-time difficulty system by way of the Rank system. The player's rank increases as they acquire more items and cause more damage, increasing the difficulty of the game along with it. The number of enemies does not increase but the number of bullets fired towards the user does, often reaching a ridiculous level of bullet density. There are ways of lowering this rank system if the odds appear too much. The only known way of decreasing the player's Rank in Ibara is to die. The more lives you have, the less the rank decreases when you die.
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This blending-together of two titanic shmup entities--Yagawa (famous for his work at his former developer, Raizing), and CAVE--is a delight. The former's signature articulating arm enemies and slow-moving groups of battleships and fly-apart explosions look stunning when rendered with Cave's art team; and the latter has clearly influenced many of the bullet patterns and general bullet visibility for the better, making Ibara feel smoother and comfier, overall, than the thorny Garegga. (Also, there's nothing as cheap as the Black Heart Vulcan Shot here, thank god.)
I appreciate that they did away with the clunky option-switching system in favor of a much more intuitive and fun "spreading" mechanic where your guns rotate based on input when not firing, and lock into place when firing. Also, the addition of the "Hadou" gun (a kind of super bomb that casts a pathway of invincibility as it travels up the screen) kicks ass.
Everything Ibara adds is for the better in my book, but still, some frustrating bullshit remains. In spite of the fact that visibility is improved from Garegga, it's still not great; Yagawa seems to use visual confusion as a game mechanic itself, creating background elements that move rapidly and distract the player from clusters of bullets coming at them (e.g. middle of Stage 5), and small sawblade enemies that blend infuriatingly into their environment. There are enemies that (seemingly-randomly) can't be sealed, leading to maddening deaths; and far more RNG than is reasonable, making certain bosses into hell-demons or pussycats from one run to the next.
Ibara's shortcomings are clear-as-day, but I was able to get over them in time, in large part due to the fact that the presentation is so superb. The stage designs and bosses are some of the most unique in any Cave game I've yet played. Centipede-like trains careen up the screen in Stage 3; tanks weave in and out of baroque archways at night in Stage 5; blue and orange flowers explode from enemies for massive points... it all looks really, really stylistically cohesive and cool.
Finally, what's most impressive about the game is just how deep it is. I played for a low-score / survival 1CC, not even touching the medal system or researching how to gain certain special weapons or utilizing a plethora of known high-scoring strategies. There's so much game here. What's equally disheartening, then, is how difficult it is to play it: with no modern ports, you have to either hunt down a PS2 copy or resort to MAME, and the latter requires some serious tweaking to get feeling optimal (cpu speed adjustments, low latency mode, etc etc).
It's worth it, though. Ibara rules, and it's a shame that it wasn't met with accolades upon its release. It couldn't be clearer that Yagawa is just a man ahead of his time.
NOTE: Tried out the PS2 arrange a little bit and it's really cool, but I've heard it's similar enough to Ibara Kuro: Black Label (a later arcade release of Ibara with even more Cave-ified elements) that I'll probably just wait to comment about it until I've played that.