As a sort-of sequel to Ginga Force, this is a lot easier, and a lot more fair to a newbie - there's a clear difficulty spike near the end that is essentially announced in the mission select, but most of the game is quite simple on normal. It's difficult enough that a shmup newbie will have trouble at points, but it isn't at all hard until the difficulty spike.
The game is generally somewhere between Gradius and danmaku, but more on the Gradius side in this game (Ginga Force feels more danmaku influenced than this). The game really pushes the player's selective focus by assaulting the player on all sides with fast bullets, requiring you to quickly switch focus from full screen, left focus, right focus and ship focus. This is really punishing after the difficulty spike, and in harder difficulties, where you WILL memorise the level and enemy spawns.
It is notable that this is less of an arcade shmup than a level-based shmup, though there is an arcade mode. The challenge is to finish the level. It's much less exacting than Ginga Force, though, so I can see it working as an arcade-style shmup. It feels a little like a compromise, though, where it doesn't quite work perfectly as either, and I think the Ginga Force direction is more interesting.
In story mode, you are also able to select a loadout for each mission. This is actually very important, as a certain weapon types are useless in some levels, but powerful in others. I appreciate in general how the story mode encourages you to think about things like this in a gentle way, while also providing tutorials for mechanics (which aren't very standard, so it's nice). You're nudged into thinking about weapon types by the level design, and that's nice preparation for the arcade mode, where you switch weapons mid-mission.
There isn't quite the same level of story & character integration into the game as there is in Ginga Force, but it's still better than most shmups. You mostly only interact with the enemy character at the end of the stage, but you do at least understand what is going on and the characters do have personality.
Issues? Visibility is occasionally an issue, but this is much reduced compared to Ginga Force, and it's only really a problem with particular fast-moving stages.
Also, the space elevator stage objective is a misdirection that probably seemed smart to the developers but it leads the player to approach the level in the wrong way, and I don't like it.
Overall, I'm a big fan of this and I recommend it to any shmup player. It's good for newbies too, but understand that it will get hard and I don't think it's the best newbie game given how difficult it gets.
