For any shmup fan this purchase should be an immediate addition to your library.
Where to begin... There were so many good design choices made here.

Level design is spot on. They never feel stagnant and there is plenty of eye candy on the screen. You actually feel like you are flying "through" the level and not just on some wallpaper with bumper-bowling style terrain like most shooters. The levels are dynamically changing constantly and framing the story of your hard-fought battle.

Enemy design is widely varied and top notch with some very creative attacks to keep you guessing. While this falls into the realm of a bullet hell shooter, this particular game game focuses on a quality-over-quantity approach that favors fast and eccentric moving projectiles over an excessive amount of slow moving ones. This keeps the action fast and intense while forcing you to use your head and identify attack patterns in tight situations.

Gameplay has returned to a back-to-basics style that rewards aggressive tactics. You have two weapons to constantly switch between in your arsenal, and that's all you need for firepower. Your ship has a very small and easy-to-identify hitbox that really makes close calls rewarding and helps encourage aggressive piloting. The fast and aggressive style which you are encouraged to pilot gives Devil Blade a unique and refreshing feel of its own. While there are many visuals and characteristics in this game that seem to be inspired by major popular shmup franchises, I would never, ever say "This game plays like (some other game)."

The pixel graphics are perfect for this game, and I wouldn't have them any other way. Sound and background music design are also spot on.

In summary, this Devil Blade is the whole package, and there is no excuse for any shmup fan to skip over it. The developer knows what makes this genre fun, and has really done their homework to make the best design choices possible.

If this game ever gets ported to Switch, it's immediately going on the road with me.

it's peam

I'm not that much of a SHMUP fan. I usually find them too punitive but this game scales its difficulty so that you can enjoy everything here immediately, with the ability to increase the challenge as you become more capable. I find it much more approachable than most games in the genre, which is great, because the presentation is so good that you will want to see it all. The visuals and the audio are so good (even the ridiculously flat voice lines).

Other positives:
+ Very tight game feel
+ Priced right
+ Novel scoring system

Negatives:
- I'm still a giant POS