Steel Vampire

This Japanese shoot 'em up tries to be different, but I didn't like it. First, the enemies are too big and your ship is too big with an uncertain hit zone making you an easier target. Second, it's recommended in the tutorial to shoot the enemies before they manage to even shoot and even better if it's in close-up. That means staying close to the top half of the screen and not seeing the enemies much. Third, bullets just go too fast making them very difficult to avoid. Fourth, to improve your ship incrementally requires a lot of dying and grinding. Last, after the boring tutorial, the only difficulty level is "very hard". It's a bit of a joke and a warning, but it was indeed too hard for me.

Steel Vampire is a hard-edged vertical shoot-’em-up developed by Akiragoya and published by Henteko Doujin that unapologetically embraces intensity, aggression, and score-driven design. Rooted in classic arcade traditions but sharpened by modern risk-reward systems, the game presents itself as a challenge not just of reflexes, but of nerve. From the opening moments, it signals that survival alone is not the goal; instead, players are encouraged to fly dangerously close to enemy fire, constantly weighing safety against the promise of higher rewards. The game’s dystopian science-fiction premise provides a bleak yet effective backdrop for the relentless action. Humanity, having long eliminated war and suffering, finds itself blindsided by the sudden appearance of hostile machines known as Steel Vampires. These flying monstrosities threaten total annihilation, forcing the revival of a long-frozen and deeply unstable warrior as a last resort. While the narrative remains mostly in the background, it lends thematic cohesion to the game’s harsh tone and reinforces the sense that this is a desperate, all-or-nothing struggle rather than a heroic power fantasy. Mechanically, Steel Vampire d…

Interesting mechanics, I like it.

Good game.

This kicks ass, actually.

Just not that good of a schmup imho