I normally loathe checkpoint shooters, but this one definitely hit different. You have a ton of different options for your, uh, options...but the clear winner here is "search" mode which will have them auto-target things for you.

Some people seem to get a bad first impression of this game due to how visually busy/distracting the first stage is, and to that, I'd say look at Thunder Force IV and its heaps of hard to read/follow projectiles and obstacles throughout the whole thing. It's definitely not a good thing, but I can assure you the rest of the game's art direction is fine although nothing groundbreaking.

Also, i gotta give bonus points to the OST. It may not hit the highs of Thunder Force, but the instrumentation sounds quite a bit like the stuff Buster's Hidden Treasure had going on and I love it for that.