ESP Ra. De. (Arcade) - Irori All

Played on MAME 0.256 I had played this before but I never really tried to clear it until now, for me it was basically one of these games that stays forever in your backlog and you think "...one day I'll get to it". A stupid move on my end because this game is awesome, I find the setting and artstyle super cool and the mechanics are pretty interesting, like the barrier which is a surprisingly flexible bomb system. Irori is fun but somewhat weak. The power loss after the first death is usually horrible, in stages because enemies barely die and during bosses low shot power makes the slowdown on some patterns feel more unstable. The main struggle for clearing is the endgame. Garra is a long boss fight and many of her phases can be pretty scary. Thankfully the barrier can take out a good chunk of HP from each phase without too much energy consumed, and this game is fairly short so choking at the end doesn't feel too bad.