Would this be another one of your attempts to see how far something can be stretched?
Because I'd think that the word "hell" in there implies difficulty...

Every time I see one of these releases I think, man what a waste because why even bother with these over M2's Toaplan releases?

Well, besides not being released for the PC and being more expensive (although you're paying for better quality).

Deathsmiles isn't too difficult if you don't trigger Death mode (by picking difficulty level 3 for all the stages and/or going to the extra stage). Deathsmiles 2 is even easier, like on the hardest difficulty it's probably still easier than Deathsmiles 1 selecting only the easiest difficulty level.

Getting a 1-all in Dodonpachi Resurrection with a Bomb or Strong type character isn't too unreasonable for an average player with a little work because of the auto bomb feature. (though qualifying for the second loop for a 2-all or TLB clear would probably still be difficult)

M2's Shot Triggers ports add in Super Easy arrange modes for novice players, which even someone who hasn't played the game before would probably be able to get a 1cc on their first try. As well as other bonus arrange modes for intermediate to average players like Deathtiny mode for Ketsui that's more about score or Premium mode for Battle Garegga where the rank is fixed at a specific level for each stage so you don't need a bloody phd in studying the rank system in order to clear the game.

Murasaki and Murasaki Tsurugi aren't too difficult outside of the extra stage and hard mode, although they're pretty atypical of the genre since they're basically Touhou + Irisu Syndrome.

That's an oxymoron. Look up bullet-heavens instead.

Alternatively as already suggested, maybe Touhou subgenre would be a better starting point. Imperishable night was mentioned, so I'll add TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival 1 and esp. part 2, or for something darker try eXceed 3rd - Jade Penetrate Black Package. Either of them should keep you busy for a while.

A little surprised that Caladrius Blaze wasn't mentioned, since uhhh... "naughty" games seem to be popular here.

That's something else, it's the Vampire Survivors genre. They reverse who's shooting excessive numbers of bullets in a pattern.

The reviews for it seem quite negative about the PC port.

Caladrius Blaze I wouldn't call a full-blown bullethell like CAVE games, but it's legit even as a rather barebones pc port. It's based on Raiden series and that's more classic shmup territory with some bullethell overlap as the series progressed, just like any modern shmups has some overlap...that's just how influential the bullethell subgenre became. Lack of options and fixed resolution just like raiden 3, but that's pretty much it. I remember finishing it with all trophies at x2 integer scale on 1440p display without thinking of it as a shoddy release. It's pretty average port, though I agree that on pc we tend to expect more from releases than e.g. switch userbase does, esp. in regards to having options, extra features and superior performance. Switch is notoriously laggy, yet very average/barebones ports are celebrated there for whatever reason. I would recommend Caladrius Blaze at a deep sale like now, i.e. ~3 bucks.


I'm fully aware of differences between bullethell and bulletheaven.

Speaking of the devil, there is an easiest difficulty in Caladrius Blaze where enemies don't shoot at you at all! So you needn't worry about the -hell aspect then as it becomes -heaven instead. Funny, eh?

The prices aren't too bad although I'm always suspicious of PC arcade ports of retro titles.

Does anybody if these come with extra options/features or are they just emulated roms of the originals?

Well, it looks like there is a bug in Batsugun. I can't throw a bomb, I start with three, but, pressing the CapsLock key just shoots bullets, remapping it to any other key will result in the same behavior. It's not a problem on my keyboard because other games work perfectly, in Truxton, for example, I can launch bombs with the standard key or any other key.

Is anyone else facing this problem?

My friend said he checked keyboard settings and that bomb works with left shift, even though the spacebar is set for bomb.

Thanks for the answer! But when I press the spacebar, the ship just shoots normal bullets, even if I move it to the left or any other side. This is weird! I have never had this type of error in any game and all games from this company work well on the keyboard with all keys. Maybe they hardcoded the game for certain keyboard models, I wonder for what, just to limit access? Strange...

Edit:

Well, forget some of the nonsense I said about keyboard models... The spacebar has the behavior I mentioned, but when I press left shift the ship launches the bombs. Either way, the default keyboard configuration is wrong, or conflicting in some way.