After completing Void Stranger (my personal GOTY 2023), I decided to give a previous System Erasure game a shot. I was impressed by Zero Ranger as much as their next game, I even enjoyed it even more in some aspects.

Maybe it is not an impressive game for someone who 1CC'ed every single Cave game, but I enjoyed every single segment in this shmup. It was a joy getting used to every single pattern and trying to push your limits. While being hard in the second half of the game, I had no feeling that the game was unfair. I will never forget the last 3 bosses, one of the most memorable gaming experiences.

Great visuals with some interesting artistic decisions and an amazing soundtrack. There are also some unexpected narrative segments, which spice up the experience even more and make it unique and memorable.

I have mixed feelings only about one thing - how they decided to add a challenge in the ending. Without spoiling that much, it made the progression to the end a bit too long. I understand their decision and respect it though. On the other hand, it is still great to replay that game after getting used to more and more patterns. A choice of two ships and several powerups add more to the replay value. I certainly want to try to do a 1cc run and get into other shmups more now.

Lovely game, can not praise it and geniuses from System Erasure enough. They became one of my favourite video game developers.