>>717633036
I think I can like all styles of shmups, but I can't really go earlier than late 80s and still find it honestly enjoyable for more than 10 minutes. Early 90s games already had a lot of rough or plain boring ones, once you get to mid to late 90s it's ludo after ludo though, and 2000s bros were eating good with CAVE. Which is to say, I certainly like danmaku.

Gradius unfortunately falls outside of this range, it shows its age with things like the checkpoint system giving no fucks about how difficult recovery might be(I would say no miss'ing the entire thing is literally easier than recovering, with some exceptions), boss fights being filler(hell the first game always used the same extremely boring boss enemy) and glaring blindspots. I thought Gaiden was neat tho.