It's a really great game. There are some weird bugs in it though. I was playing co-op today with a friend (superb netcode btw, there's zero lag - and he's from Finland) and he disconnected right at the start of stage 3. He then sends me a message saying he got a disc read error. On an XBLA game. He also told me his game freezes when he checks the leaderboards, but that hasn't happened to me. And sometimes during co-op, the stage 5 boss won't appear. I think we kill him before he spawns by firing random missiles. lol.
Hard mode is pretty fun. It's basically like Normal mode but the bullets are a little faster and some of the patterns are tougher. Still, this is not a bullet hell game. The patterns generally have pretty large gaps for you to fly through. The terrain and stage design play a pretty big role in the game as well. Every stage besides the first one has at least one section where you have to navigate fairly tight spaces and deal with enemies at the same time. Thankfully, touching the walls does not damage you (unless you ram into them for a few seconds), so it's not frustrating like R-Type or something.
Expert mode is tough. Every enemy shoots suicide bullets and the regular patterns have a few more bullets to them. That'll be a tough 1cc for anyone.
Oh, and to get the ending + credits and fight the TLB, you have to play on Hard or Expert. You can't continue while fighting him either, so if you die, game over. He seems tough at first, but once you learn how to fight him properly he's not so bad.
Anyway, game's awesome. My favorite shooter on XBLA (not that there's much competition). I like it more than some retail games too, like Otomedius and Strike Witches.
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and Daifukkatsu
