BLUE WISH DESIRE

x.x is based and all his past games are awesome, this game is no exception. one of my favorite doujin developers finally allow me to give them money for this awesome game. I can't wait for Edens Eclipse

As intense and frantic like a Cave game, the Blue Wish series is made as an homage to the structure and design ethos of DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu. Same brilliance in its adrenaline pumping bullet patterns and flow of the action.
But happily, it looks and feels much more close to a Takumi shooting game (of Giga Wing, Mars Matrix and Nigh Raid fame). With ship designs that instead of look anime, use the pre-rendered 3D models that were so typical in the mid-90s and early 2000s STG Japanese games. Seriously, this feels like an obscure Japanese shooting game for the Sega Saturn that your friend brought to your home burned on a CD-R, that you never saw covered in a magazine of the time. But that decades later, investigating about the game, you find that is sold in eBay, reaching prices of various hundreds of dollars.
And instead of the boring soundtracks of your typical Cave game, you have a 90s techno soundtrack, that most of the times has catchy and memorable melodic parts, resembling the Yuzo Koshiro compositions for the first two entries of Streets of Rage in its best moments. With well, other moments being more generic and forgettable, like the fourth level track.
Also, it's stupidly friendly for beginners, because in all modes you can play with an auto-bomb action activated, that has a score penalty at the end of the run. And the main mechanic is a bar that you can charge doing damage to the enemies. Once refilled, you can activate a special mode that will serve as a bomb, clearing the screen of bullets. Making all the normal enemies to transform the surrounding bullets in medals once destroyed while you're in this mode. And if you are hit by a bullet while you are in this state, you won't lose a live, but the trance state will end. So at the end, you have other auto-guard option, that also serves to greatly increase your score, no penalties, and that you can use in parts in which you're not so confident of your skills.
Making a super fun ride and accesible 1CC for novices in its Heaven difficulty mode. A super fast paced and challenging, but sill accesible to clear Normal mode. And a demented unlockable Hell difficulty mode for the experts, grating you many hours of entertainment.
The icing on the cake is a scoring system that is simple to understand, full of secrets and small subtle details, offering great opportunities for those mastering the layouts. But still super satisfying for more casual play, thanks to the medal madness that will occur every time that you open an hidden treasure chest in the scenario.
You can say that this is not an original or innovative game, but it makes a much more important thing: to show a masterful lesson in STG design, without a single flaw, and most importantly, opening the genre to all the publics, no matter the level of skill.

Very solid STG, says it doesn't support English but all menus/HUD are in English it's just the mode descriptions that aren't. There's original mode & heaven mode which seems like the novice mode you'd see in similar games. Very straightforward gameplay but the graphics look great and the soundtrack is super nice. Big rec if you're into the genre

Great gameplay, multiple difficulties and ships. What I wish it had is a tate option and online leaderboards. Otherwise it's great. Recommended.
Edit: Tate mode was added.

Really good bullet hell shmup. Basically plays a bit like DoDonPachi with it's hyper mechanic, but uses something similar to Ketsui's scoring system with collecting chips. Not a bad game for beginners either I'd say - the auto-bomb feature makes it easier for players to progress without having to worry about bomb usage, and there's a practice mode available as well. Music is fantastic too.
If you're looking for more Cave style games on Steam, buy this, it's just what you're looking for.

I have been playing this series for over a decade. Blue Wish Desire is by far the best Blue Wish game and arguably the best X.X Game Room project (at least until the new Eden game comes out). As a lifelong bullet hell enjoyer, I rank this amongst the best ever shooters in the genre, up there with things like Ketsui and DDPDFK, if not above. The pre-rendered art style is timeless, the music absolutely slaps, the visuals are high contrast enough to keep things readable during even the most intense bullet patterns, and the bullet patterns themselves are super fun (and also innovative at times). I really cannot overstate how class this game is, it was a dream come true when it was announced and I wish I've had more free time since it released to dig deeper into it. If you like shmups, buy this and then go throw money at X.X's itch for the rest of the Blue Wish and Eden games. GOATed

YES