Hey, just finished the game a couple times. I enjoyed it a lot, the presentation is top notch. The shmup mechanics didn't feel as engaging but that's fine for the most part. It's a neat game and I got hooked on seeing what happens next.
Some random things that came to mind after playing it. Don't take the suggestion ones too seriously, this is some rambly stuff since I've played too many shmups.
There's seemingly no reason to not mash the shot button all the time. Doesn't feel like there is much interaction with the shot button as a result, especially if you assume player has autofire mapped. The decreased movement speed is still some incentive to manage it though. Reading older posts about an older version needing to manage a reloading shot sounds neat but can see how it isn't for everyone. The intense screenshake from firing would be more impactful if you were encouraged to time it more. A charged up shot by holding or not touching shot for a time would be interesting.
Movement speed of the player ship is a little slow to my liking but it's certainly playable and makes the game more challenging.
Stage 5 boss is a little underwhelming gameplay wise. Very cool visual/audio design but fighting it doesnt feel like a final boss encounter. Apart from the warping of the 2nd phase lasers I thought it was easier than other bosses. Stage 1 boss sort of sets a precedent of bosses getting stronger the further they go on and St4 boss goes further. The rotating laser/bullet stream gimmick was used on a lot of bosses(2,3,5?).
Closest it felt to a normal shmup was dealing with the enemies that shoot aimed return fire in stage 4 and stage 1 boss.
Stage 2 boss first form aimed turrets are really fast to react to the first time you get there. Then again after facing it once this is a non-issue and getting quickly killed like that does fit with the simple intensity of the game.
Enemy spawn location indicator on the player ship could pop out a bit more or instead show up on the screen edges. After playing a few times you get used to looking for it though. Movement speed is sorta slow so if players get an enemy wave start spawning on top of them its easy to get blown up. Stage 3 seems like the worst culprit. But again maybe this kind of simplicity and memorization works with the game in the end.
When starting out I got killed once or twice because of achievement popups, worst one was blowing up the last big suicide bullet enemy in stage 2 and flying into the aimed + suicide bullets because of achievement hiding everything for a moment. Did make me laugh though :)
Scoring focusing on speedkill is engaging already but would be interesting to also have extra enemies pop up when you're taking things out quickly. Many games have this as another way to promote quickkills that gets rid of empty space even if you're making short work of enemies (and/or sync stages, bosses to music). I like how you can use the critical low hp state to take out enemies faster.
Rym 9000 as a visual trip reminded me of Rez and Child of Eden, definitely memorable.
Bugs: I can't get rid of fullscreen mode for some reason. I switched it to windowed once and defaults once and ever since it's stuck in fullscreen regardless of setting. Launching the game with -force-d3d9 makes it run faster on my machine (using a mid-range laptop from 2013), maintains nearly constant framerate this way.