Sisters Royale: Five Sisters Under Fire Review (QED)
When I first purchased this game, I was very new to shmups in general, having only real experience with Touhou. I was surprised to see so many recommendations for this title considering it seems to do pretty much everything I've now been taught is terrible within the genre: momentum based stage gimmicks, visual obscuration, do-nothing enemies that come in predictable blobs, uninspired scenery and samey music, etc. etc... All of that not mentioning the technical side of things, which is for some reason a rule in shmups, where rebinding the controls or even getting the game to recognize your controller properly is a feat in and of itself. For some reason the 'skip cutscene' key is also hidden and not able to be rebound, so have fun hunting around for that.
Aside from the cast of the characters and their portraits being somewhat interesting, the story is as meaningless as you'd expect it to be, and none of the bosses stand out in terms of mechanics or patterns. I will say that the grazing mechanic which powers up your shots when you're close to a bullet is cool, but it's not enough on its own to redeem what is otherwise a lukewarm flop of a game. Gave it more than a few tries, but it just doesn't hold up to other stand-outs in the genre.