Overall: Good, Recommended
Platforms: PC via Steam

Clears as of writing:
Very Hard ALL using euro mode type assists
Extra Genocide 1ALL using aforementioned
Genocide Hard as the first ship (the one on the cover!)

the ramble:
This shmup plays very uniquely I feel. Its focus on heavy aggression rather than careful dodging, and "bullet hell becomes enemy hell". You're rewarded for closing the distance to enemies to kill them before they shoot or to minimize how much they shoot, and staying back deals less damage and is more dangerous. Taking hits drops rank and spent shield charges can be recharged via heart crystals, which you get a lot of by close range destruction. hitbox is smaller than your rather large craft though, so dont worry. encouraged to drive the rank up using red box powerups for more points and thus more shield charges, but you can bomb and collect green box powerups to lower it back down to more manageable levels. It has strange difficulty naming. Very Hard lets you use collected weapons to adjust your powerlevel and stats before a run, like a "euro" shooter, as does "Extra Genocide", while MHN Hard and Genocide Hard give you five preset ships. I like the way ship upgrading in the modes that have it is done, you get rewarded with more powerful equipment by playing from the start on any difficulty, the higher the difficulty the better equipment (unsure, more citation needed), which could be motivation to try the other difficulties even if you only want to play on the easier modes. Enemy collision is a non-issue, and results in bopping yourself and enemies around a tiny bit. bombs (Voburn) are encouraged for use as a heavy attack rather than as a defensive mechanism, and there are no penalties for using them.

Some of the music choice is a bit odd but isnt too out of place for Akiragoya games I feel. theres also no autofire button, which I solved by binding my A button to keyboard key Z to use the focus shot and activating turbo on my mayflash arcade stick for X so I wasnt having to mash as much.

overall I think this is a very good game if you like hyper aggressive shmups like Raiden Fighters or if you've played Akiragoya's recent release Angel At Dusk, which I dont have a copy of yet so I cannot say much on it. I do find myself vibing with this idea they're trying with both SV and ATD of a "Skeletal Shmup" built based on what they describe as the pure fundamentals of shoot em ups: large enemy count, fast gameplay, chunky explosions, and near relentless aggression, the level of which is left up to the player to decide for themselves how hot or chill they want the game to be. Not a lot of games play like this, which makes it a treat for me whenever I come across one promoting such calculated rampaging.