It's a flash euroshmup with a decent story. It does a lot better than most euroshmups, as it doesn't have inertia and you have a reasonable sized sprite/hitbox. There has also been some attempt to actually make use of the player having multiple weapons.
Sadly, the game is rather easy even on hard mode, with several bosses having rather large safespots in their only attack pattern, and the enemies being a bit sparse (though nowhere near as bad as other euroshmups). There's also the problem of grinding, as just rushing to new areas as fast as you can will result in the popcorn taking 2-3 seconds to kill. There are also situations where enemies/bosses can get into positions where they can be hard to damage without a certain weapon, which you might not have unlocked. Some bosses also have only parts of their sprite vulnerable, and it isn't always clear which parts those are. Your ship cannot enter the topmost/bottommost portions of the screen, but enemies can. There is one stage theme and one boss theme, both of which, along with the rest of the music, are awful. There is no scoring system. The game is still better than most euroshmups, and does get the RPG part mostly right.
RPG shooter: Stariwsh
Re: RPG shooter: Starwish
I finished the game on normal difficulty. It isn't much of a RPG; lacking significant choices, it's a shmup with a story dump every time you beat a new level. The story is somewhat predictable and too verbose, but still interesting (with a well managed transition from participating in a civil war of factions to saving the universe with cosmic power).
Several weapons become almost useless after a certain point, like the spread gun, obsoleted by the semi-spread particle weapon that goes through walls (but still decent to reach the small hitboxes of the "monolith" boss from a distance), or the plain machinegun and laser (still useful in open areas and against some bosses).
Other weapons are useless from the beginning, like the exploding shell, not dealing enough blast damage to be on par with a more dependable sweep of the unlimited-range machinegun or laser and too short ranged to be practical, and the charged beam, which cannot be used as a shield like the similar weapon in Recca (because it shoots automatically as soon as the charge meter is full or it touches an enemy) and doesn't do enough damage as an offensive weapon.
The slow charge megabeam "bomb" is extraordinarily weak: it hits everything on the screen, but past the first few levels it doesn't even clear popcorn enemies. It's still useful for the few seconds of invulnerability, both to run through walls and in tight spots.
Secondary weapons are quite irrelevant: sometimes they'll score a kill, but they are underpowered and basically designed to hit walls.
On a positive note, level design is repetitive but more than decent and bosses are easy but not trivial to beat. And thank God they adopted a good keyboard-based input system (arrows, space to shoot, 1-8 to switch weapons, zxcv to switch secondary weapons, o for the rarely used bomb).
Several weapons become almost useless after a certain point, like the spread gun, obsoleted by the semi-spread particle weapon that goes through walls (but still decent to reach the small hitboxes of the "monolith" boss from a distance), or the plain machinegun and laser (still useful in open areas and against some bosses).
Other weapons are useless from the beginning, like the exploding shell, not dealing enough blast damage to be on par with a more dependable sweep of the unlimited-range machinegun or laser and too short ranged to be practical, and the charged beam, which cannot be used as a shield like the similar weapon in Recca (because it shoots automatically as soon as the charge meter is full or it touches an enemy) and doesn't do enough damage as an offensive weapon.
The slow charge megabeam "bomb" is extraordinarily weak: it hits everything on the screen, but past the first few levels it doesn't even clear popcorn enemies. It's still useful for the few seconds of invulnerability, both to run through walls and in tight spots.
Secondary weapons are quite irrelevant: sometimes they'll score a kill, but they are underpowered and basically designed to hit walls.
On a positive note, level design is repetitive but more than decent and bosses are easy but not trivial to beat. And thank God they adopted a good keyboard-based input system (arrows, space to shoot, 1-8 to switch weapons, zxcv to switch secondary weapons, o for the rarely used bomb).