Senko No Ronde is a bit of an oddity in the Xbox360 library; it’s unabashedly Japanese and yet somehow managed to make the jump across the pacific.  If only that could be said for some of the bullet hell shooters languishing on the far side of the ocean.

I’m going to file this, now that I’ve completed it, under “Super Pretty, but Really Hard” – I had to set it down to Easy to beat the story modes, and even with that crutch it still took me upwards of a dozen times to clear Culian’s final boss.

I’ve heard it compared to Virtual On, and I think that’s not an entirely unfair comparison; both games are fighting games that feature giant robots and mix up their range combat and melee neatly, and both inspire a very niche crowd of fanatics.   I haven’t played any Virtual On games since the Saturn, though (and I was dreadful at the game, to boot) so I really can’t get any deeper than that.

For whatever reason, playing this game made my hands HURT.  I don’t think I’ll be putting it back in the machine any time soon, but I think I got my $10 worth from it.