izigame.me

This is the best scrolling shooter I have ever played hands down.
I played the Saturn version first so do note my playtime maybe isn't accurately represented here.
Arcade space shooters are usually a pretty simple and exhausted genre so I'll get straight to what makes this game stand out and why I like it so much better than anything else out there. Treasure really was cooking at the drawing board when they designed the mechanics.
This was originally an ST-V and Saturn exclusive so you have six main weapons, one for each button on the Saturn pad (they are put into three categories), and an energy blade you can swiftly pull out or drag behind your ship by holding the right bumper. Each weapon group has an XP meter accumulated by however many points you score with that weapon. The different weapon types are necessary to hit enemies from certain angles as many of the later bosses will rotate the whole screen or cover themselves in shields that need to be circumvented, and often to clear the whole screen you need to cover more than just what's directly in front of you.
The energy blade is this game's answer to the shields and bombs common in other danmaku shooters, purple bullets can be absorbed by the blade to charge it up and the next time you use it will slice everything in front of you. You're invincible while using the fully charged blade so this is the time when you go in without any fear and aim wherever it's the most devastating, this includes using it to pass through walls.
In summary, you are rewarded for level memorization on repeated playthroughs and using weapons in the most appropriate situation. Using the blade also requires some risk-taking as it doesn't cover your entire ship and you need to be mindful of where you've positioned it else you kill yourself and waste all of the charge you just collected.
The bosses are really something special. Each stage boss is divided into several parts with independent health that all serve different functions. You can aim straight for the head and try to get it overwith as fast as possible, if you're willing to endure the full onslaught, but you can make it easier on yourself if you aim to disable the opponent's most annoying attacks first. You get a point bonus at the end of the battle for how thoroughly you destroyed it, so if you want you can sever all of a bosses limbs and kill it slowly for some extra weapon XP, with the obvious downside that you've extended the fight and thus given yourself more opportunities to screw up. You're given a bigger reward for playing smart and an even bigger reward for playing bold.
In the PC version you're provided with two main gamemodes, Arcade and Story, the major difference being that Arcade mode provides you a blank slate with a set number of lives and continues based on your settings, while the story mode has dialogue and allows you to save your upgrades for the next run. You can't continue the game after losing all your lives but the game gets significantly easier due to the accumulated weapon levels from past runs so this is perfect if you're just trying to get through the game. Story mode does almost butcher the game's difficulty after a certain point, but it's made up for with how fresh and engaging the level design and bosses are. If you're already familiar with the genre and want an authentic challenge then you will want to play the arcade mode instead, which is solely gameplay focused and maintains the difficulty, plus allows you to choose the order you'd like to play the levels in.
Regarding the story, it's pretty good, and honestly even if it was bad I would've applauded the attempt considering shmups are a genre almost purely consisting of unserious cartoon violence without much setting or worldbuilding. There are hand-animated cutscenes covering the game's prologue if you wait on the title screen. My only complaint is that the font used for English captions is hard to read and I think the lack of a proper English dub is a serious disappointment considering this isn't the kind of game where I can just look away from the action whenever I want, you need to be paying attention, so the English localization really does not help in making the story more accessible to a western audience.
The graphics in this game are astonishingly beautiful. Not like "realistic" but rather they leaned really well into the Saturn's hardware quirks of the time and created something that still holds up really well today in all of it's low-res glory, it's visually pleasing and has a uniquely identifiable art style.
And the soundtrack... The version used ingame is a sample-based sequenced cover (like tracker modules) of an orchestral score. It's composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto who you might know for Gradius 5 and some of the Final Fantasy series. It sells the atmosphere excellently and is highly memorable.
Conveniently the 8BitDo M30 in DInput mode works with this game out of the box, if you have that controller definitely use it here because that's the best way you'll experience this game. Any other six button controller with a similar layout like a Microsoft Sidewinder Pad can do the trick also. There is also a local two-player mode but I haven't tried it yet.
Please, please play this game. Even if you aren't a fan of bullethell games I think this is worth picking up and at least giving a shot.