I'm not really sure why I played this game- I think literally just because of the cool boxart and title + the fact that Kenichi Nishi worked on the story. I find said "story" credit quite silly because the game itself has absolutely none, I must assume that the summaries I've found online come from the manual. You're diving inside some VR simulation to save a girl who has gotten stuck inside it, and that's all the context you get. It's got some neat bits, though, most of the levels have a bit of Akira-esque horror and I quite like that, it's a lot more atmospheric than your average one-hour action platformer from the era.

You play as either Ryo or Maria, who take what I presume must be superpowered avatars in the VR simulation, he's a knight guy with a lightsaber, she's a dominatrix lady with a whip, because of course. Movement feels slow until you realize holding L or R lets you dash, and then it feels alright, but there is some serious jankiness to the hitboxes which is especially noticeable as the game gets harder. The neat gimmick is that enemies drop crystals that upgrade your attack: Ryo gets spinning blades to replace his first sword and eventually turns into a cyborg that shoots beams everywhere, and Maria whips out metal claws to then turn into a fairy with super busted homing attacks. It's sort of the SHMUP issue of the difficulty being very reliant on how well you perform, stay on top and it's a cakewalk, die and you're fending off swarms of enemies with an un-upgraded dude.

Overall I'd say Psycho Dream's alright? Far from the best game on the system but if you play on Easy it's not the worst mindless romp, and can actually be quite fun. I recommend not bothering with the last level, though, it's the outlier in terms of art design quality and ends with a very frustrating final boss. Besides that, you could definitely do a lot worse when it comes to this genre and console, and I'd very much recommend fans of more surreal atmospheres to at least try out a little bit of it.