I wasn't familiar with this top down run n gun series but it's really creative with its designs and art direction that seems to take inspiration from Japanese yokai folklore, while also having some nice music. Not only is there the expected rapid fire shooting but also a defensive melee move that deflects projectiles and knocks back certain enemies while keeping you at a standstill. There's also a dash that can traverse over holes/gaps and a limited use special attack. There are multiple playable characters with different abilities and in single player story mode you are automatically assigned a specific character and eventually you get different playable characters to play as. In one of the later levels you unlock a couple of new abilities that are activated by pressing the shoot button repeated to gain some form or extra offensive power and holding the deflect button to gain a defensive power. You can collect different powerups that increase the damage output of your rapid fire shot and also change its range. There are different shot type powerups and each time you collect the same shot type powerup then your damage and range increases. I think after getting the same one three times, any subsequent time you get the same one you get a time limited max damage shot. Getting hit powers you down.

The way the game is designed, it does make me wish this had twin stick controls to control shooting and movement independently. But understandably it sticks to its roots where movement and shooting are controlled by the same left dpad/stick.

The game is also challenging but somewhat short with eight stages. You definitely have to use all your abilities and have a plan of attack for different areas. In story mode, there are checkpoints in each level and if you quit the game you actually can continue from the checkpoint within the last level you got to. As has been stated many times by pretty much anybody who's played the game, story mode only allows for one player, which is very silly. I'm sure the devs had their reasons for this but none of them could be justifiable. And having to beat single player story mode to unlock free mode which allows two players and also collect 3000 coins to unlock easy mode (with a single level only allowing you to get a max of 999 coins) is absurd. Just a terrible way to force players to replay the game by locking away features & modes that should be available from the start. I only managed to get 3000 coins after reaching the last part of stage 7 after about three hours of total play. However, apparently there is a secret code to unlock free mode. But even free mode itself has odd limitations like not having easy mode and not saving progress like story mode does. It would be nice after beating the game to have stage select so you can play specific stages and practice them.

Despite these dumb choices for available modes and unlocking, the gameplay is fun with a variety of offense and defense from different playable characters that facilitate different play styles.