1CC'd with Yusuke at 41 hours and 24 minutes. https://youtu.be/1xLUxvuavPI

ESP Ra.De. is not usual CAVE fare. It's still bullet hell, but the approach you take in this game is much different than in games like DoDonPachi and Mushihimesama. Patterns in this game do not require nearly as much micrododging, but the game often demands you macrododge. It doesn't like it if you try to dodge in a corner, it will wall you and force a hit. It wants you to keep moving from one side of the screen to the next. It takes it further by forcing you kill enemies quick, or you will miss out on items that both increase your score and your supply of energy. The risk/reward keeps increasing with each stage. The routing for stages 4 and 5 is very strict, demanding you make no mistakes, and the final boss tests everything you have learned, by being a moving target with a small hitbox that you need to keep on top of. It's so meticulously made and so very addicting to play. I'm not the best at reviewing, but I urge you to play this if you even have the most minuscule amount of interest in shoot 'em ups or CAVE. It's fucking peak.

1CC:d with all characters.

I love the aesthetic and general pace of this game and it was the first CAVE game that grabbed me. But it has some really janky things I cant dismiss:
- When you end slow movement by releasing the fire button there is 0.5s delay until you begin moving full speed again. This results in a burst of speed outside of your control unless you do a planned stop in place while unfocusing. Extremely weird design decision. The delay only makes sense for entering slow movement (without a rapid button), not exiting.
- One of the heaviest and most annoying slowdown behavior in any CAVE game. Super heavy slowdowns at parts of the game. At least it's not affected by player fire as much as SDOJ.
- Scoring system ruined with broken boss milking. Big portion goes to End bonus though so there is definitely something to play for after clearing the game. However M2:s PSI PS4/Switch ports alternate mode basically fixes the system.

It's interesting to look back at the year 1998 as a shooting game fan. It is a year where it feels like every company in the business was firing on all cylinders, yet simultaneously, the genre hung in the balance. In 1997 Cave released Dodonpachi, undoubtedly the most important shooting game made since their former selves in Toaplan put out flying shark in '87. And whilst it's basic formula defined both cave and the post-milennium shooter space, in 98 it was far from set in stone.

When you look at the other games from 98, it's easy to see a world where Radiant Silvergun, Armed Police Batrider, Dangun Feveron, Raiden Fighters Jet, Raycrisis or even Gunbird 2 and Blazing Star come out on top. A whole pile of ridiculously high-quality games that you can all make the case are the dev's finest, all at once. And whilst many of those games are still influencial, particularly RSG and Batrider - ESPrade is the one that truly came out on top.

Which is a bit odd on the face of it. Particulary in the western space a lack of localisation, ports and rights issues left it particularly obscure even among cave games, when it's stupidly important to shmup history and is one of Cave's absolute finest games.

The most important facet to ESPrade is it's presentation. Flying people over a cyberpunk tokyo fighting psychic battles with huge tanks, the psychic Yakuza and old women sitting on the cooles sprite of a statue head ever - it's all extremely cool. There's clearly a lot taken from Akira here (probably among others) but its far from a ripoff and is definetly itself. Artist and Mangaka had been working with Toaplan and it's offshoots Gazelle and Cave since 1991 but ESPrade was his first real shot to lead a whole project artistically and it's absolutely glorious. ESPrade is to this day Cave's best looking game and it's not particularly close. The stage backgrounds alone are some of the best sprtie art you'll ever see, but there's particularly fantastic use of renders here - particularly in the main characters which allows a ridiculous number of animation frames in their movement whilst somehow still blending in well. Cave rarely dropped rendered characters in the years following and they have never looked as good as they have here, it's incredible.

Junya Inoue is also, frankly, whilst an extremely talented worldbuilder and artist, is really best at either adding flavour to existing, drier worlds like he does with Dodonpachi in Daioujou, or leaving a decent amount to the imagination, and ESPrade is the true encapsulation of the latter. You get a tiny amount of short scenes to set up plot and conflict and if you want more all you'll get is a ridiculous barrage of art because Inoue has drawn each of these characters like 900 times, sometimes in his Manga BTOOM! without permission, but nary a lick of story to defile a perfect setup and payoff. As you do.

And there's just great majesty to it. Radiant Silvergun's remarkable storytelling beats it out for sure, and Taito were way ahead of the curve on this in general, but ESPrade's management of tension and minimal storytelling is just done so damn well. It's helped by effectively having 3 Stage 1s thanks to each character have their own and then playing the other twos, and they all benefit from the traditional lengths cave goes to making stage 1s incredible - but stage 5 is the real killer. A brutal part 1 the game testing all your abilities of routing and throwing piles of the enemies you've previously fought in greater density - only then to face an eerie, nigh-horrific stage 5b where you mow down hundreds of creepy psychic clones before facing down Ms. Garra.

Oh and Ms. Garra might be the best shooting game boss fight ever. A 7 phase behemoth, and even if you split them up they'd all make the top 20 cave bosses. Despite the ludicrous amount of amazing artistry the game has to offer, the image of Ms Garra casting huge wings across the snowy tokyo night, firing a beautiful mirage of bullets will always define ESPrade. It, and the earlier, also exceptional fight against Satouro Oumi are basically copied beat for beat by Windows-era Touhou. I do not blame ZUN one bit.

Aside from incredible bosses though, ESPrade just has a fantastic game loop. It does take a bit to get to grips with but tagging enemies with power shot then killing with normal to score is exceptionally fun and in a true CAVE moment, they didnt really give it another go. Stage design is also top tier.

Being such a fantastic refinement of Dodonpachi's ideas and a great encapsulation of it's own makes ESPrade the true shining star of 1998. Flying people, 10 phase bosses, emphasis on pacing and bombast, bullet patterns like blooming flowers fired by cute anime girls - whilst Story of Eastern Wonderland beats it by a few months, and DoDonPachi set the ground work, ESPrade is the true catalyst of the Shooting tropes that would define everything up to the modern era.

But more than that, it's just one of CAVE's finest. I'd say their second best game after Ketsui, and one of the top 10 shooting games outright. Only really Taito has beaten out it's presentation and matched with some of Cave's best ever work, its an utter classic.

When looked at among the class of 98, it's easy to contemplate and lust for the world of shooters we could have got if say, Dangun Feveron was the game to catch on - like if dragons dogma had been the game to define RPGs of the 2010s instead of demon souls, for instance - but like with Demon souls, when you look back on that spark - its hard to blame it for the road it lead us down.

Backloggd Game of the Week (20 Dec – 26 Dec, 2022).

So I don't really play shmups? I think Ive played like one or two at actual arcades and that's about it, havent got anything against them, just not really my thing. So I don't really know what my opinion is worth on this but here we go.

It was pretty cool visually. The bosses (especially the non robot ones) had a lot of personality conveyed just in their movesets and I was sort of invested in seeing just what the hell else the game was going to throw at me. That being said, there is no way in hell I could have beat this without infinite lives.

Again, I don't play these games so my playstyle mainly involves spamming the attack button, tokenly trying to avoid projectiles until I get hit and adding another credit. So no comment on difficulty/balance for people trying to get good at this. Anyways, it was an entertaining 30 or so minutes and Id even replay it with someone else if they offered.

Game #3 of my "seasonal game binge"

Very fun with a friend, kinda felt like the easiest Cave shmup I played yet since I had under 10 deaths? Yet it was still damn tough.

Mechanically it felt pretty similar to Castle Shikigami 2 to me since the health bar, shield aura, "flying person" graphic/hitbox, bombs recharging when hit, bosses with multi-phase health bars, two shot types which can't be used at the same time, and speed dependent on whether the player is shooting are all there.

That said it has some interesting mechanics to set it apart from other shmups. My favourite is the bomb charge. Holding the charge longer for extra damage and shield duration is extremely valuable for boss fights in particular.

Gameplay aside, the aesthetic is pretty nice. The pixel art animations are all quite fluid; even random enemies in the background can explode into bloody bits quite graphically and the bosses all have multiple phases with cool unique animations. The music was mostly alright but that boss theme alone ranks it above average overall due to how intense it was.

Loses half a star due to the screeching enemies in the last level alone good god. I also wish each character was more dramatically different like in Castle Shikigami personally, and the Christmas theming doesn't really pop up until the very end.

Anyhow, saving Christmas felt pretty nice. Would rec a playthrough to all shmup fans, especially via co-op.

[PROTECT THE WORLD, EVEN IF THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD IS UNCERTAIN.]

[THE POWER OF ESP. ONE WHO HAS THE POWER IS DESTINED FOR TRAGEDY.]

[DESPERATE CRIES ECHO. THE SCREAM OF ANGER SHAKES THE EARTH, AND YOU DISCOVER THAT IT CAME FROM YOUR SOUL.]

Extremely sick, and very easy to pretend that this is a Mob Psycho shmup. Love how much character is built from the five-second long introductions for the cast, and the rollercoaster of psy spectacle keeps ramping up until the final moment.

I saw others playing it and I've always been curious about this game so what did I think? It's not a masterpiece like Deathsmiles is to me but man this game is pretty great too. I think I just really love the spectacle of these kind of shmups. Even if I'm awful at them.

You can play as three different characters though I played with only Irori for the game. You can't really swap unless you beat the game or reset the run you're on. You have this normal shot that makes you slower when using it. You also have this stronger projectile that has to recharge very quickly. The best part has to be with the next weapon where you surround yourself with a shield and can shoot huge lasers at the enemies! You can also use it to collect chips and powerups from bullets with the shield which feels very satisfying. Just be careful as you can only restore energy from grabbing energy items or dying.

This game is very challenging as it is a bullet hell. I'm not sure if it's because I've played Deathsmiles a lot so I can get decently far without dying but I felt like this game was harder then that one. Though it's still not the biggest challenge ever at least from other bullet shmups I've seen.

The bosses can be pretty hard and I think it's because I'm too dumb to know where my hitbox is. I know it's small but idk where it is on my sprite. Maybe I'm stupid. It can feel really satisfying to get good dodges on projectiles. That's why I like these games sometimes, even if I'm awful at them I still feel like I'm having a blast.

The game looks pretty good for 1998 and there's some good music here. This game also has cool level end screens. The game did lag for me but I think that's just cause my computer sucks so it's probably fine on real hardware. I also like the voice clip that plays when Irori powers up.

I'm glad I tried this and will gladly replay it next year because man these kind of games can be fun. Maybe someday I'll try to buy a copy on switch if it's cheap. I'm happy to give it a try. If you haven't played this then you are missing out if it interests you. Go play it now!

Okay, so this is a very odd review to post on Christmas, but here it goes.

Despite being a tad bit of a shmuphead I've only dipped my toes oh so much into the danmaku/maniac shooter genre, I'm not entirely sure the exact reason, but I feel like it's because I'm just really attached to using cute spaceships and enjoying having my ass kicked by mean-spirited R-Type stage design. Just call me "Paleozoic Pete" or something, but it's a genre that always kinda flew over my head, and I never made a big effort to indulge myself. I'm more than prepared for your barrage of fresh fruit.

Given I've only gotten a single clear on ESP Ra.De. it feels a tad icky to make a review of it already given the nature of these games and their reliance on repeated playthroughs in order to make your personal numbers go up and knock Jackass Joe's hi-score off the number one leaderboard of the cabinet, but it was the Backloggd Game of the Week, so my hand is forced. Either way, my only big complaints aside from my own lack of skill is that the second boss is way too complacent on pretending to be the final boss and never giving me a moment's peace as to kindly die, and the final stage having enemies that scream like Jerry Mouse for some god forsaken reason that annoys me greatly as I mow them down. Probably minor stuff, but regardless.

I guess it's probably good, but as of this moment I only feel impressed by the backgrounds and sprites which are unfortunately covered by bullets most of the time, and the cool boss music that felt like it took up half the game for me. I'll probably need to give it some more goes another time and see if it grows on me, but for now it's kind of a "that's nice I suppose" kind of game. It can rest easy knowing it's at least better than a certain someone's game, who recently clogged my toilet and threw out my plunger.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Dec. 20 – Dec. 26, 2022).

While the DonPachi series has been a big hit amongst fans, other CAVE titles have been more overlooked. This is particularly true of ESP Ra.De., which did not receive an overhaul until 2019, despite making several major alterations to the traditional danmaku formula. As a result, ESP Ra.De. now enjoys cult status within the community. No doubt inspired by Touhou in the concept of having playable characters, rather than gunships, the title also features innovations that inspired ZUN franchise's revival in return. The primary focus is on standard shooting, with the ability to modulate the speed of movement, by holding down the button. This choice gives the player greater flexibility and makes ESP Ra.De. a more accessible entry than other CAVE games.

The player assumes the role of one of three espers, in a futuristic Tokyo. They go on a crusade against Garra Ono, who seeks to destroy humanity and replace it with clones. Each character has their own normal attack, as well as a Power Shot, which consumes a bar of energy and recharges fairly quickly. This second weapon allows for more versatile positioning. The classic smart bomb is replaced by a shield, drawing on another energy bar – limited for each life. This absorbs opposing projectiles and turns them into a bonus: when released, a laser tears the screen and enemies, its power being proportional to the number of attacks received. Once again, the game thus becomes more energetic, as it is possible to use this weapon either very offensively or very conservatively, depending on the situation.

This generally reduces the difficulty of the game, compared to CAVE standards. There are fewer projectiles and the game has a more manageable progression for beginners. Depending on the character chosen, the first four levels are played in a specific order: to compensate for these variations, the game lowers the number of projectiles in the initial stages. For veterans, the attack patterns will generally be quite readable and do not pose any major problems, as long as they are handled methodically. From the fourth stage onwards, however, the difficulty rises fairly sharply and seems to constitute a wall for the 1cc. Only a few sequences can be excessively brutal: I had trouble with some lenghty parts of the last stage as well as the fourth phase of Garra Ono, which caught me off guard with some very fast shotgun shots.

The subtlety of the game comes mainly from its scoring system, built around a multiplier mechanic. This multiplier increases for each Power Shot projectile that hits its target and is confirmed when the enemy is killed with a normal attack. In this way, a genuine dance takes place, to accumulate the maximum number of points, with a two-step tempo that is quite exhilarating. The bosses are no exception, since the maximalist strategy consists of milking them, by shooting them with the first part of the Power Shot salvo. Less powerful than the tail of the attack, it allows the player to maximise the number of points scored: this strategy requires shooting from the side to control the shot's angle of incidence. It can sometimes lead to moments of high tension when the screen is bloated with enemy projectiles. These elements contribute to the very enjoyable quality of ESP Ra.De., also led by very pleasant visual effects, score – 'WANGAN RAPID LINE 2nd' has such a great groove! – and scenery. In this respect, the last stage is exemplary, with a mixture of cyberpunk modernity and baroque seriousness, culminating in a duel high above the Tokyo buildings. The only major downside is perhaps the hitbox, difficult to identify, resulting in superfluous deaths: Touhou 06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002) solved this issue by displaying the hitbox when the character enters the Phantom Mode.

It's quite interesting to see ESP Ra.De.'s secret influence on the genre, as the game has been shelved for too long, despite the success of Espgaluda (2003). Although it can be considered as a somewhat lightweight title in CAVE's catalogue, as it sometimes lacks some polish and fights against Satoru Oumi and Garra Ono are perhaps a bit too long, ESP Ra.De. is driven by an impeccable production, brimming with small details, and can't help but charm through its refreshing nature. The Psi version has a solid reputation, and pays a fitting tribute to this historic title, continuing the legacy of M2's portage work. For those who like the way Touhou's danmaku is constructed, ESP Ra.De. is an essential experience, bridging the works of ZUN and CAVE.

I am writing this right after getting the 1cc clear, and I think I know enough of this game by trying scoring and survival for a while. All I have to say is that this game really needed that Psi port. That janky hitbox of the player is never shown, and optimizing scoring in this game is extremely dumb. Human bosses have waaaaay too much health and this goes for both versions. Player characters also feel a bit underpowered even if this isn't the most difficult Cave game. They all have something that annoys me greatly even if the difficulty is up to par with them. It does feel like the forgot to program in the last level.

Aside from that, this game does a lot of things right. The patterns are great and served as inspirations for many other maniac shooters to come. The bomb system is really unique and it being tied to the scoring truly makes survival and scoring connected which is something I always like, and the scoring does cater to that DonPachi style or shorter, burst style chains which I like way more than being punished greatly during a full stage chain like in DDP or Guwange. The game in general does feel like a building block for what Cave would use for future games. It's a very unique take on the shmup genre in a subgenre that was already breaking the mold.

I know some people absolutely love the game and I can see why, and while I like well enough to give a positive score, it does end up being one of the weakest cave shmups imho, I much prefer playing their other installments, or the games from other developers that would use it to build their games, most notably the Touhou franchise.