izigame.me

I double dipped on this game as its so good. For the past several months i have been playing Raiden III on PS4 and it has been my most played shooter this year. In general i feel the game gets looked over and not widely spoken about.
The pc version runs very smooth at 60fps, no stutters or jank like Sol Cresta. The gameplay is mainly old school in nature with enemies firing directly at you, some mid bosses/bosses have more bullet hell patterns to negotiate. This mix of styles gives the game a good flow, level design is varied and interesting.
Being a game from the PS2 era, the graphics are a product of the time, they are not the most detailed or high resolution but they suit the game well and look stylish. The backgrounds appear less detailed and lower resolution than the foreground elements and ships which do look like they have been reworked. It does create an odd mixture but i don't find it distracting. Those of you playing on a 4k 40+ inch display will be disappointed at the quality but that will be the same for most remasters of old shmup games. I play on a 1080p 24" monitor and it looks fine. Tate mode is in the display options and runs fullscreen.
From a latency point of the view the game is snappy and crisp, its purely subjective as i have no latency measuring gear but from my decades of playing shooters it feels great to play.
The ship speed is quite slow and requires you to think ahead and pre-empt where the bullets will be, playing reactionary is difficult as the bullet speed get real fast in later levels, learning the spawn points of enemies, bullet patterns and being one step ahead of the enemy fire is a gameplay loop i find very addictive.
The music is sensational in this game, the original soundtrack is great but the remixed versions are on a whole other level. The remixed tracks are locked in the game and can unlocked through beating levels and getting high scores, it gives a decent amount of replayability but most things can be got quickly enough to not feel like an unnaproachable grind. You can create your own playlist per level, this is a great addition as matching your favourite tracks to the levels elevates each stage and makes me want to play the levels more and more. If you want to listen to the music outside of the game you have access the wav files in the games bgm folder.
Overall the package is complete with stage select, score attack, 1/2 player and dual player modes which add a lot of value. Its one of my favourite shooters and is a joy to play.
The biggest negative i have is the game does not run on Steamdeck.