YMMV / Ikaruga

• Awesome Music: Practically the entire soundtrack, though the boss Leitmotif "Butsutekkai" is the one most people fondly remember.
• Breather Level: Chapter 5 "Metempsychosis" is substantially easier than the previous two chapters and has extremely simple chains. Even the Fake Ultimate Mooks that appear before the boss firing massive bullet storms only fire in one color, allowing players to easily build up the Homing Laser attack to finish them off. Of course, this is simply to give players time to relax before the sequentially-tiered Final Boss.
• Broken Base: All ports of the game after the GameCube port, including the Xbox Live Arcade, Steam, and NESiCA×Live ports. Many enjoy these versions for keeping the game easy to buy or play without having to spend a fortune while giving the game an HD facelift. Some top-level players, however, have a hard time enjoying them due to the altered chain patterns, while others are disappointed that they lack the Conquest Mode that the GameCube port has.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Chapter 5, the Breather Level. Enjoy your constant MAX CHAINs before you take on the final bosses.
  • Alternatively, Radiant Silvergun players will find therapy in DESTROYING the Stone-Like for good, since it is responsible for both the "Groundhog Day" Loop and Downer Ending of that game, and finally defeating it frees humanity from the eternal cycle of destruction and creation, although the heroes die in the process.
• Contested Sequel: While both this game and its Spiritual Predecessor Radiant Silvergun are highly-acclaimed, some fans tend to argue over which game is better. Silvergun is praised for its complexity and intense storyline while Ikaruga is lauded for having the opposite. Understandably, while Silvergun is a darker Deconstruction of the Shoot 'Em Up genre, Ikaruga is a softer Reconstruction.
• Good Bad Bugs: Due to a programming glitch in the Nintendo GameCube port, it's possible to trick the game into giving an extra continue on "No Continue Runs" by unplugging the controller from the first slot into the second controller port during the last credit of a continue.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Another (vastly different) Bullet Hell game, with a dysfunctional protagonist dealing with the hard times and godly entities throughout the story, and that recognizes Pacifist Runs for the gameplay? Undertale has one, too.
    • Even better, both Undertale and Ikaruga can be played on computers via Steam services.
    • The battle with Photoshop Flowey in Undertale also mirrors that of Stone-Like.
    • The exact same thing can be said of the Final Boss of Sonic Frontiers.
  • In Stage 4, the battle against Misago has the player(s) attacking its core's barriers before reaching said core, just like the core battleships from Gradius. 3 years later and Treasure developed Gradius V, which even has Ikaruga's metallic aesthetics and signature boss explosions, along with a cherry-topping of Bullet Hell.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!:
  • Its infamous barrier to entry as touted by many reviewers prevents many people who are inexperienced with shmups from looking at this game positively. Not only does this game feature the intimidation factor of Bullet Hell, but one also needs to constantly switch polarities and thus keep track of two different flavors of bullets to avoid getting blown up spectacularly, something that many gamers feel they lack the coordination for.
  • Amongst scoring-minded shmup fans, the game is well-known for how it demands rote memorization to pull off halfway-decent chains and scores, and feels more like a demanding orchestra piece than a game with how a lot of the scoring routes don't seem obvious at first or require some very intensive rehearsal.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • WARNING: The big enemy is approaching at full throttle. According to the data, it is identified as "Butsutekkai". NO REFUGE^Explanation Rather than the nonsensical Boss Subtitles like its predecessor, with the exception of the Final Boss, this message will always be seen just as the end-level boss appears. Irony ensues because while players can't avoid fighting the boss (hence "no refuge"), they can deliberately run the timer down to zero, thereby Pacifist Run "beating" the boss without destroying it.
  • Ikaruga is a puzzle game.^Explanation Due to the game's chaining system and easier-to-memorize placement of enemies, which involves carefully picking off enemies of the same color, many players joke Ikaruga feels more like it fits into the Puzzle Game genre rather than the one it's intended to be.
• Most Wonderful Sound: MAX CHAIN. MAX CHAIN. MAX CHAIN.
• Polished Port:
  • The GameCube port, which was the first international release, is best known for adding Conquest Mode, a "practice parts of the stage" mode that also comes with replays showing optimal ways to tackle each section, something exclusive to this port. Perhaps because of this, it is the most favored version of the game by enthusiasts. Arcade purists praise the 'Cube port for the ability to play the game in Tate Mode for the legitimate Portrait screen orientation without letterboxing, as well as the extremely optimized code that removes some of the lag present in the arcade original.
  • The Xbox Live Arcade version gives it a graphical overhaul.
  • The PC version on Steam restores the original enemy patterns and adds a Double Play mode, in a nod to a famous superplay video of someone clearing the game controlling both ships at the same time.
  • The Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 versions are based on the Steam version, and additionally the PS4 version can run at up to 4K resolution on a PS4 Pro.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: On paper, it seems like it would be easier than its predecessor Radiant Silvergun due to not requiring learning the game's scoring system to power up your weapons and keep them reasonably-powered relative to the enemies you fight and the chaining system no longer locking you into one color until the boss fight at the end of the current section. However, this game also features noticably more complex bullet patterns, as having two different colors of bullets and two polarities to match each one means you have to keep track of two layers of bullets. Scoring-wise, it's even harder since enemies are often placed in tricky patterns and you have to destroy all of the enemies to achieve a relatively competitive score.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Radiant Silvergun. Tageri's very definitely final form, and what happened to those who came across it, is extremely similar to what happened to the researchers in Silvergun.
  • It's also a game about switching between two different stances, making enemies of the opposite stance take more damage, similar to the earlier Treasure-created Silhouette Mirage.
• That One Boss:
  • The Chapter 4 boss due to a claustrophobic "arena" with little moving space for players, all the while the edge of the "arena" fires beams of opposing black/white colors to deter movement and/or force players to take a misstep into one of the beams that will likely destroy their fighter. In order to attack the core, players must shoot down the "gates" leading to the core (of opposing colors, again). Note that throughout the fight the core is rotating, forcing players to rotate along with it, lest they hit the corridor leading to the core. After the first rotation or so, the core fires a laser down the corridor where players are (assuming players have opened all corridor "gates", making the core vulnerable), and since enemy lasers push back the fighter, it becomes another obstacle for players to ensure the fighter stays within the confines of the corridor without hitting the sides that could lead to the loss of life.
  • Similarly, first-time players might be slightly overwhelmed by the Chapter 3 boss, though this is mitigated by the fact the boss only fires lasers once half of the turrets that comprise the boss are destroyed. This can be easily circumvented by destroying all turrets of one color first, allowing players to concentrate on navigating through the small "gates" that are rotating in the "arena", since they can have their fighter stay in the same color polarity as the remaining same-colored turrets and absorb their fire.
• That One Level:
  • Chapter 3, "Faith", is arguably the hardest of the game, not just the chaining, but the way the level speeds up through so many obstacles for you to avoid, putting the Speed Zones from Gradius or the Turbo Tunnel from Battletoads to shame, not helped by the fact that if you play on Hard mode, enemies will return fire, making things even harder to dodge. And then there's That One Boss.
  • Chapter 4 "Reality", though from a scoring run perspective. Not only is the environment an obstacle (at least in the first third of it), but high scorers must carefully navigate through this Battleship Raid level to destroy the appropriate colored enemies and earn consecutive chains. Meanwhile, the chains don't stop counting during the mini-sections where the turrets are firing, forcing players to place their shots carefully to ensure their chains don't get cut for misfires.
• That One Rule: The color-chaining mechanic from Radiant Silvergun returns (shoot three enemies of the same color and get a bonus, repeat successive times without shooting an incorrect enemy to get increasing bonuses), with all the complex chaining routes that entail. This time, you can switch colors between chains rather than being locked into only shooting enemies of one color, but that also means you have to chain most of the enemies to get a good score now. Fortunately this time, weapon power is not tied to score and the only benefit of chaining is earning a couple of extra lives, so the player can choose how much or how little they want to engage with the chaining system.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Two of the common complaints with the Xbox Live Arcade port are the altering of enemy patterns, which can screw up players who are used to the old ones, as well as not bringing back Conquest Mode from the GameCube port. Furthermore, all subsequent ports use the XBLA port as a basis, rather than any prior version of the game. Yes, even the Nintendo Switch port, which one would expect to be based off the GC version given the company that made both systems.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Conquest Mode, a practice mode that lets you play stage segments one at a time instead of starting from the beginning of the stage, slow down the game to refine strategies, and watch strategy-oriented replays, was added as part of the GameCube port, but was not brought back for subsequent consumer versions, all of which use the Xbox 360 port as the basis for the code. This is one of the reasons the GameCube version is most sought-after by hardcore players.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: The chapter titles - "Ideal", "Trial", "Faith", "Reality", and "Metempsychosis" - represent man's struggle towards enlightenment, with the aura-enveloped Ikaruga and Ginkei symbolizing the human soul.