Sky Force Reloaded

Today's game is Sky Force Reloaded. It's a shoot 'em up / bullet hell, and it's... incredibly bland.

This genre of games generally isn't anything complicated. You control a ship in top-down view (or side view, but not in this game) and shoot a lot of bullets to kill enemies who shoot a lot of bullets back. Because of the simplicity, most good examples of the genre have a lot of extra mechanics and challenges sprinkled in to keep the gameplay fresh, exciting, and challenging. Sky Force Reloaded doesn't.
To simply list out problems with the game, in no particular order:
1) All your attack patterns are very simple, with no variety. You just shoot forwards. Upgrades make your shots larger, faster, maybe give multiple columns, or a slight spread, but no fundamentally new shot patterns emerge.
2) Your hitbox is huge, encompassing your entire ship, instead of just a little piece of the center as is the accepted standard for bullet hell games. This signifincatly lowers the skill ceiling, as you're forced to always look for huge gaps in the enemy's attack pattern instead of allowing extremely precise dodging.
3) The ship variety, as far as I saw, is laughable. Wow! New ship! 10% more damage. That's all.
4) Your shots don't travel straight. Because the game is 3D with a perspective camera, and some genius decided to have it point slightly forward instead of completely top-down, your shots converge as they travel forwards, massively throwing off your aim.
5) Each level has the same nonsense challenges: "kill x% enemies", "don't get hit", "rescue people". I'm going to do these things anyways! Give me something different and exiting that might make me want to play differently. The overarching achievements are also dumb, mainly just "complete stage x".
And many more minor or slightly larger problems.

Point is, this game stands out in absolutely nothing. It filled out the minimum checklist for a shmup, and even then failed on a few points. I can in no way recommend this. There are way better examples to be played, such as one of my favorites Bullet Heaven 2. So go try that (or the first installement, or one of the games it says it's inspired by if you've already played it) instead if you want a bullet hell.