A bit of a frustrating experience, because it’s sooo close to being a very good to great shmup—weapon-switching on the fly is fun, and the levels are smartly laid out to encourage it; and the music and graphics are excellent—but there’s just too much bullshit design in the way. Tons of stuff kills you without any warning on the first attempt, so it basically comes down to memorization… and once you do memorize the few BS spots in each stage, the whole thing kind of becomes a cake walk.

It’s just not balanced well. I haven’t played IV yet, but I’m hoping it’s so lauded because they kept all of the good stuff about III, and excised all of the garbage, and got the difficulty balance just right…