ZeroRanger

Yeah, getting the true ending/achievement sucks, BUT even just playing through the game until that point is completely worth it. Through the amazing use of color theory to the addicting continue mechanic, this game is truly a hidden gem, so do yourself a favor and go play it!

This game is an extremely fun shmup that I actually do recommend you play. And then you should just not bother completing at the final level. ZeroRanger is another game in the infamous "developers fumble the bag right at the finish line" genre. Up until the very end, the mechanics of this shmup are extremely fun, and it really feels like the game wants you to complete it by converting your score into more permanent continues, plus you can restart the game from any stage, not having to play the whole game from the very start every time. It's a great setup for a shmup. And then the final level just throws all that out the window and stops respecting your time. Is it bad because it's hard? No, not really, I actually think the final boss is fine, and the second phase especially is a spectacular challenge that was really fun the first couple of times. But this final level has insane amounts of time wasting garbage that you have to wade through every time you want to re-attempt it, and that second phase is blocked by a first phase that is tedious and annoying. not actually even that hard, just annoying, and it takes a couple minutes to get through. And then once you do get to that very fun second phase, your enjoyment is ruined when you realize that you need to conserve continues for the true final boss, which converts your continues into lives, and if you lose all those lives, the game erases you save file (which you thankfully can back up), so you're just tilted and stressed which makes you lose all those continues you desperately need. The final level of this otherwise really fun game just fumbles the bag so hard at the end. It really is a shame. Don't waste your players' time, it's disrespectful.