ALLTYNEX Second

I've spent more time than I planned losing lives to ALLTYNEX Second, and I want to tell you exactly why that kept happening. This is a vertically scrolling bullet-hell shooter from Japanese doujin circle SITER SKAIN, originally born as a remake of a mid-90s FM Towns title, polished into a 2.5D arcade sprint across five stages that respects your time while absolutely refusing to hold your hand. The community around shmups has kept this one alive quietly for years, and there's a reason the dedicated players still post high scores on forums rather than moving on. The core design pivots around a two-mode ship called the Armed Saboteur. In Fighter Mode you're fast, you collect energy chips automatically, and your gatling spread shot mows through smaller formations. Switch to Armor Mode and everything changes: you slow down, stop auto-collecting, but your blade can slice incoming bullets out of the air and carve through mid-to-large enemies at close range. Homing Lasers and the Buster Rifle round out four weapons total, both drawing from a shared energy bar. The real tension lives between these two modes. Play it safe and plink from distance, or close in with the blade and tear through a boss in seconds by finding that manufactured safe-spot right in its face. The risk calculus never gets old. Scoring adds another layer: chains trigger after the fourth kill in quick succession, and a combo multiplier climbs from x2 up to x16 when enemies die to blade or beam in Armor Mode. Chasing that ceiling while staying alive is where the genuine depth hides. The five stages are short by any measure, but the bosses earn their keep. Stage 2 sends you against an entire space station as the level itself, complete with platoons of interceptors, a writhing metallic snake you have to hide inside to survive its own plasma cannon barrage, and a final orbital laser that fills the entire screen if you let it charge. That kind of layered set-piece design keeps the playthrough feeling handcrafted rather than template-generated. Stage 3's boss Ajattara has a deserved reputation for being harder than anything before or after it, including the final boss Satariel, which is the sort of difficulty spike that will frustrate newcomers but delight anyone chasing a clean single-credit clear. Three difficulty settings plus an unlockable "return shot" mode, where every killed enemy fires one last curtain of bullets, extend the lifespan considerably. A second unlockable ship with different handling gives dedicated players a fresh challenge angle. What the game is not: a long experience. Five stages at pace means a skilled run clocks in fast. The 3D visuals, while functional and clear in reading bullet patterns, are not going to dazzle anyone used to modern shader work. Hardcore Gaming 101 noted the graphics and sound are the weaker elements compared to SITER SKAIN's own RefleX, and that's fair. The soundtrack is propulsive high-energy synth that does exactly what it needs to do, keeping your pulse up during dense patterns, but it doesn't linger the way some doujin composers' work does. A minor community complaint around the Steam version involves tate mode display stretching, worth knowing if you play on a rotated monitor. Where ALLTYNEX Second earns its place is in that very specific feeling of a game that knows what it is and refuses to be anything else. The melee mechanic is not decoration. The scoring system is not background noise. The limited continues, two hits before your ship folds, and no infinite retries mean every run carries weight. If you bounced off bullet-hell shmups because they felt like pure memorisation, this one's different enough to be worth a second look. The blade changes the contract between you and the screen. Start on Easy to read the patterns, move to Normal once the rhythm clicks, and enjoy the fact that SITER SKAIN built something coherent and complete rather than padded. Kai, Scout Team