Donpachi is very down-to-earth as an intersection between trad shmups and danmaku - almost too bland, but for what it's worth, it strikes the appeal of Toaplan's games pretty well while slowing working upwards to what Cave would later become. Simple, but serviceable, and the first three stages are extremely fair in their design. Sadly, 4 and 5 are a pretty gratuitous bump in difficulty, and I don't think the core design at play here is stylistic or creative enough to warrant chasing a 1CC.

If the beginner-friendly design extended to stages 4 and 5 as well, this would be a great game for people to learn shmup strategy conventions, and a nice side game for experts to drop into while cooling off from harder games. As-is, I don't dislike much of what it does, but it doesn't have much gripping power, and its legacy revolves exclusively around what it would later inspire within the genre.