Acceleration of SUGURI 2

hyper fast projectile focused fighting game. I like my hands so I don't play it much but it's sick af

Cool as hell shoot em' up turned into a fast-paced fighting game. It is glorious. Highlight of my year.

An incredibly sick VS Shmup - the union of fighting games and shmups.

It's got fairly intuitive controls, based on the delightful free-movement system from SUGURI, and a wide variety of characters from Suguri and Sora. Basically the idea is "what if you could play as all the bosses in Suguri?" So it came out pretty sick. The Heat gauge lends this really exciting dynamic to the basics of dodging and shooting, where you get penalized with extra damage taken if you overuse your Dash.

But most importantly: it has Star Breaker, the blasting fuse of this world's end. She has a command grab! In a shmup!!!

Absolutely brilliant game. Well worth a bit of investment, especially if you like the idea of Maiden & Spell but want something a little more breakneck.

Plus if you buy the excellent soundtracks by DEKU, they'll add tracks to this game!

Before reading this, please keep in mind that English is my second language.
Acceleration of Suguri 2 is a fantastic multiplayer bullet hell experience, In my opinion, the gameplay is timeless. While singleplayer content is a bit limited, the game's smooth combat, unique characters, the variety, and the amazing music makes it a fantastic buy.
I played on Normal difficulty, mainly using Kae. I tried using the other characters, some felt harder to master, though they'd probably have insane advantages if used skillfully and spent more time with them, I say this as I only had around 12 hours of gameplay time to experience this myself. That said, a few characters felt a bit underpowered, requiring a lot of thinking to make them viable, but this could be my own issue. There's definitely plenty of variety and you could probably find a character that suits your own gameplay style, I do think some balancing tweaks would be great though.
The gameplay feels smooth, with a good mix of fast reflexes and critical thinking. Honestly, it was a bit overwhelming at first to learn basic combos and controls, given I'm not much of a fighting game player myself, but once I got the hang of it, everything felt engaging. The game is beginner-friendly but becomes even more rewarding once you learn each character's strength and combos. The overall battle system, alongside the music, is probably the best thing about this game.
Most of my playtime came from the multiplayer experience, which was very fun despite occasional server sync issues. These issues sometimes required me and my friend to restart our games, but it was worth it for the intense matches. Disappointingly, there's no option to play more than 2 players. Sometimes I'd love to include a third or a fourth player in our matches, but it's not much of a problem, although I can see why this could be a turn off for some players. The arcade mode and multiplayer are solid, but the replayability value of this game depends mostly on how much you enjoy the multiplayer and the battle experience.
The graphics and animations are really good—clean, and high quality. The thing that I love the most about this game's art are the characters in the character selection screen, and the animations when they fight. Although what I genuinely love about this game the most is the soundtrack. It's unbelievable how much of the game's music is underrated, even if you don't want to buy the game, I'd recommend at least giving the soundtrack a listen, it's just incredible. It's honestly one of the best parts about this game and has earned a spot in my personal Spotify playlist.
Sadly, I can't comment much on the story since I've only played Sora briefly, so if you're planning to buy this game based off story, I can't help you much on this review. Although I do think the game's main focus clearly leans more towards gameplay.
If you love bullet hells or competitive games, definitely pick it up—and grab a copy for a friend to enjoy the multiplayer together.
Would I recommend it? Yes, especially if you've played Sora, SUGURI, or even 100% Orange Juice before, it's how I discovered this game anyway. It's a solid entry point to the series, and it's what made me love these characters more and made me want to see more of this series. If you want story though, I'd suggest trying SUGURI first for the story connection.

This is not a Shmup. It's an arena fighter. Playing with the community means accept that you're going to have to learn combos instead of just being able to play nuetral. If you want a REAL versus Shmup, something more pure, there are other options. As much as I've been hurt playing this game, it's still a good one if you can accept what you've read above.

I am a sucker for bullet hell vs shooters and this really got me to look more into the other OJ games I still have and play and still do content here and there.
Not often you come across a game like this that is easy to get into and yet can be as deep as other fighting games.

Playing this in the past when my laptop still intel pentium and 4gb ram. But never beat the games in the past. Kind of nostalgic.