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.