Like Sengoku Ace, I found Gunbird to be kind of prickly and tough to get into at first. The visuals are nicer in this one, sure, but the same nasty design principles are on full display: bullets fly at you faster than you can think, the hitbox is mighty big, and the first three stages flip around randomly, hampering your ability to get your bearings quickly through memorization, and forcing you to just kind of learn how to roll with the game's punches.

After playing for a while, and letting go of my shmup fundamentals a bit, everything started to click. I discovered the Psikyo 'rhythm:' hang back, charge up, dodge some bullets, and then get up in something's face and let it loose, cratering its HP... then do it again. The way tanky enemies and bosses go down in seconds if you're aggressive enough here is addictive.

I chose Valnus, the communist robot(!), as my number one dude, but there are plenty of different characters to experiment with, each with their own little quirks. Some have charge shots that cancel bullets, some are better at close range than others, some have i-frame bombs and some don't. I played for a while with each one and enjoyed myself, before finally settling on Valnus, which is a testament to how nicely balanced they are.

There's nothing much more to it beyond that. Gunbird is fast, brutish, and short, and though it feels nails-tough at first, there are plenty of ways to tip the scales in your favor with high-risk play. It's fun!