i picked up silpheed randomly in a thrift store last year without really knowing much, i usually do so if i see a game i'm not familiar with in a place like that and when i did my research on it i was shocked i hadn't heard of it before, a crossover production between trasure and *game arts* how was this not considered a classic in the genre and even after beating it i'm still not sure how it isn't considered one, it's pretty, ambitious, stylish and a ton of fun to play, though maybe not the most accessable game in the genre.

silpheed sets itself apart in 2 major ways, the first of these is presentation, it's an outright beautiful game, maybe even one of the best looking on the ps2 which is even more impressive when you consider that this game came out in 2000 near the launch of the system and it somehow looks as good if not better than far later ps2 shmups like raiden 3, it just radiates style and money in a way not that many games in the genre do, it feels like its reaching way harder than it needed to, the environments look great and have some really cool liquid and smoke effects thrown in, boulders break apart when shot and the second level boss has some really cool fire effects that admittedly make him really tough because its hard to discern it from the background, but it looks impressive anyway. it also has some really cool designs, it goes for a biological infection kind of theme with its enemies, so you'll have normal ships that have been infected and have tenticles growing from them, it reminds me a little of like a soma or a resi game, it looks great! and horriffic, scary even maybe and all the weapon effects are really cool, the green lazors from the wiper weapon look great and i loved how the napalm looked, though i wish it was a brighter game at times, it can be very dark and a little grey, but that does make the red enemies standout more. it also has some amazing looking cutscenes, they almost feel right out of a square game (which fits since square would publish the next silpheed game which would double down on these), they look amazing even now and can be very dramatic and scary, they're worth playing the game for alone i think.

the game plays kind of standard for a shmup, though maybe a little more oldschool than a lot of the ps2 shmup library, it feels much closer to many ps1 shmups, which isn't a bad thing and it makes it feel a little novel even, you don't have bombs or bullet hell patterns here, just dodging standard waves, some of which do have unique ways of attack like suicide bombing or having lazer attacks that can take up large chunks of the screen in a line. the major distinction here is the weapon system which gives you 9 weapons of varying usefulness that you can attach to each side of your ship, you can mix and match or just go two of the same, my go-tos were the duel napalm or the napalm and lazer, the napalm is a must use i think because it covers your back and sides and is downright invaluble, but you can also just go with a cheese strat and use just the napalm, you don't have to aim with it really, just focus on dodging and staying out of direct fire since the napalm goes in all directions except your direct front, making it easy to stay out of harms way. the bosses are also really fun, my favourites were a sword ship near the end that feels right out of something like radiant silvergun and a boss that lives inside of a tire where you have to attack his sides as he rides around, the lava boss kind of sucks but does deserve a mention just because he looks really cool with how he destroys buildings and has really neat lava effects, but he does represent a big difficulty spike, it's not the hardest game in the genre, far from it, but it does have these little spikes and the last level took me 5 or 6 tries, you have infinite continues but it does make you restart a stage, it's a short game at least, maybe an hour and a half if you're good but it took me closer to 2 and a half, but i've seen some people online for who it took almost 5, you also cannot seem to save mid stage which is a shame, or save at all really, there is also no easy mode, just hard and normal.

there's also weirdly a lot of lore and dialogue, it's not as story heavy as say a raiden 5 but it's got huge text crawls at the start of every level, plus the cutscenes and near constant raido chatter (that's sadly very difficult to make out due to bad sound mixing) and it's all localised into english by working designs, now how much you like this will vary with how many working designs-isms you can put up with but this felt a lot less bad than their rpg translations, sound mixing asside, there's some good VA work and all the accents are super varied! it's not a bad story either, it's weirdly dark and horriffic and it has an amazing inspirational speech in there, it's worth experiancing. the music is great, it's not like, on the level with many cave shmups and some songs don't fit super well, it has a very classic feel to the ost, it's very ps1 or even like a more advanced SNES OST, things like the boss songs are great with the sub boss theme (and stage 5) being my favourite because it sounds like a boss theme from a classic JRPG but the main boss theme (and stage 4) sounds right out of jumping flash,, the opening is hype, the weapon selection theme would fit right in a ps1 megaman game, stage 1 is a perfect opener to get you excited to get into it and stage 3 almost feels like a house of the dead song, it's a very solid ost and some of those songs are really worth a listen to.

the game would go on to have a single sequel with the square published project silpheed for the 360, a dogfighting game with rpg cutscenes and some really good character designs, it's not one i've played a ton of but i really enjoyed what i played, it's a lot like a JRPG styled ace combat but that's about the last place the series would go, no new ports or games and both game arts and treasure would go very quiet, game arts kept making games like grandia 3 and lunar genisis and would eventually make their last games on psvita with a personal favourite of mine ragnarok odyssey and the also great dokuro, a 2D puzzle platformer with a chalk art style, it's great and both of those games need far more recognition than they get, they also did do a few grandia ports later but that's kind of it. trasure would do a fair amount in the years following like stretch panic, ikaruga, warioworld, gradius 5 and some of my favourite bleach games with bleach: dark souls and bleach: versus crusade, but as the 10s went on they also not do much outside of ports and a few monhun style games for the 3DS with the geist crusher series, something that's been on my radar for a long time, i really need to get on those. Masato Maegawa the games co-director would go on to lead treasure for years after, produce many of the games mentioned as well as things like sin and punishment 2, some bengai-o games and dragon drive: d masters and still runs trasure today, the other director Kanta Watanabe wouldn't make too much after this beyond warioworld, stretch panic and glory of heracles, but he did help make a bunch of games before like asuka 120% and panzer bandit! i absolutely reccomend this if you have the chance to play it, it's short, cheap and a lot of fun, just know it's not the easiest of games.