BIL wrote:
Granada is badass.
This game is profound and will always be new! Now,
HIT DE BOOST 
I have you played Ex-Ranza aka Ranger-X (MD/GEN)? Sidescrolling mecha action by Granda's director Toshio Toyota. Despite the format change, the range of meticulously detailed player/enemy mechanics (and the love of screen-juddering destruction) is unmistakable. Gets off to an unfortunately trying start with stage 2's lengthy cavern maze - it's well done but aesthetically glum - but stick with it, it returns to st1's open battlefields promptly.
No
fiery Sakuraba OST this time, unfortunately.
Advance "GRANADA!" Now that is some
fuckin heartful action BGM for
making shit explode violently!

I've given Ex-Ranza a whirl and it's on the backlog, but I have not played through the whole thing just yet. Loved the bike management from the little I did play though.
And yeah, Granada is definitely detailed to the point of feeling alive. Alive in a very mechanical, non-organic way, which gels well with the visuals, IMO.
Level 2 (as seen in your gif) is so cool. I love taking down giant fortress air ships.
I've long been fascinated by games that try to marry the feel of a shmup with freedom of movement. I don't know if that was what the devs were going for (first level suggests some gauntlet influence, with the generators), but it can definitely be interpreted as such. To that end, I think the positioning certainly felt like something out of a hori, especially in some of the more perilous or narrow sections. Also due to the feedback (as in, what happens with the same input next frame depends on the previous inputs) nature of the movement (in this case rotation) commonly seen in horis (e.g. option positioning). But the dodging was quite different from what you'd see in an autoscroller. Lots of hit and run and off screen shooting due to the blaster range and knockback. In some ways, it's a little disappointing (the explosions happen out of sight, although the screen shakes nicely to let you know), but it also fixes the problem where the hit and run tactics don't feel so, well, spastic like they do in e.g. Thunder Force 2 or Bosconian. It's also just plain fun. Moving away from oncoming bullets due to knockback makes them feel slow motion, momentarily, which also affects dodge timing. Nevertheless, the game did capture autoscroller enemy aggression somewhat, which is admirable - freedom of movement tends to make enemies passive.
IMO that particular subgenre is still in it's infancy, because it's so sparse and everything in it is so different from everything else in it. I'd love to see something that builds on Granada in particular (I mean, within the same format), I feel it really gets a lot right but there's also lots of room to push and refine the design.
EDIT: This
run is very cool, but might be TAS. See
timestamp. Or maybe there's a trick to pre-positioning the orb to break through the two top turrets.