Mushihime-sama/YMMV


 * Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most players regard God Mode as the only thing worth playing in Futari Black Label.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Composed by shmup soundtrack legend Manabu Namiki, as well as Masaharu Iwata (composer of soundtracks for Soul Calibur IV, Final Fantasy XII, among others) and Kimihiro Abe for the sequel.
 * To Shinju Forest is an awesome kick-starter.
 * Like A Night of Shooting Stars is one of the most hypnotic and soothing tracks in any game, of any genre, ever.
 * The One Who Is Always In The Forest pumps you full of enough energy to face the final stage.
 * Fridge Brilliance -- Look closely at Reco and Palm on the Futari Stage 5 result screen: Not only does Reco's chest appear to be pressing against the back of Palm's head, Palm has an embarassed look on his face.
 * Fridge Horror -- If Palm makes it to Larsa, she fights you at the same strength as she would fight Reco with. Let that sink in for a moment.
 * Even Better Sequel: Futari.
 * Contested Expansion Pack: Futari Black Label.
 * Good Bad Bugs: The "counter banking" technique in the original game, allows you to get much higher scores than intended in Maniac and Ultra modes.
 * It's Easy, So It Sucks:
 * Averted with Futari Novice; many players regard it as well-designed and as an opportunity for non-shmup players to get into the genre. nto the genre.
 * On the other hand, played straight with Futari Black Label's Original and Maniac modes.
 * Moral Event Horizon -- In Futari, Queen Larsa goes batshit after her son dies in the previous game. Understandable by villain standards. She also decides to send her remaining child Palm out to die, dismissing him as someone she can replace anyway.
 * Porting Disaster: The PS2 port, handled by Cave itself, doesn't emulate the arcade version's slowdown properly, and the game is downscaled in screen resolution, causing it to look blurry when played with the game window oriented vertically to fill the screen.
 * Surprisingly Improved Sequel -- Mushihime-sama was interesting for its different premise and music, but otherwise had rather simple gameplay and visuals, especially compared to other CAVE games. In some ways it was even simpler than Do Don Pachi. Then Mushihime-sama Futari came along, turned the music Up to Eleven, made big improvements to the gameplay, and is considered to be one of the prettiest CAVE games of all time.
 * Tier Induced Scrappy: Almost no one uses Reco-Abnormal, and for good reason--her shots are difficult to master, and her speed when using her focus shot is faster than her normal speed, in a defiance of usual Bullet Hell conventions.