I've always enjoyed playing games such as Gunbird and Metal Slug, both were on PS2 for me as my only proper exposure to those games. Really loved them!

What are your favourites? Any recommendations?

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[–] any1th3r3@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Shmups, I'm only a beginner but I have a few suggestions:

ESP Ra.De. - somewhat slower bullet hell with pretty interesting scoring, the "Psi" re-release has a lot of useful QoL features.
Espgaluda II - you could think of it as a successor to the former, it has refined gameplay and recent releases have great QoL features. Somewhat faster paced bullet hell?
Ikaruga / Radiant Silvergun - Although these are two very different games, they have entirely different mechanisms to most other shmups. Ikaruga feels like a "puzzle" game a lot of the time, while Radiant Silvergun has some light RPG elements. Both are somewhat hard to get into imo.
Dodonpachi Resurrection - great starting point re bullet hells, the recent re-release offers a ton of QoL features and the game itself has interesting scoring / gameplay. Soundtrack is awesome.
Raiden IV - Super biased, but I love the soundstrack. Pretty great, if simple, game otherwise.

I have many more shmups in my backlog (Ketsui, Dodonpachi Daioujou, Battle Garegga, Rolling Gunner, etc) which I'm sure I could recommend, but seeing as I haven't played them first hand yet... I'll leave it there for now.