I tried Gaiares for the nth time, this time it worked better. Still a bit boring, very, eh, anti-arcadey with its stretched, platformer-like structured levels and somewhat intrusive visual diversity: guillotines, plasma globes, O'Neill cylinders and an aurora borealis... there's a lot of Gradius (the ice-stage, vertically scrolling areas) and some Darius (the first level cave, some fish shaped enemies) and of course the R-Type Force: a paella of innovative leftovers.
The idea of the thief-satellite is neat and clever, but also annoying. Clever, because of the variety of implemented weapons, a pain in the ass, because you are forced by the gameplay to fully commit to this concept and constantly change your shooter. Like early on, when you get this slick weapon from the Darius-like eel with a dragon shaped head -- puh, paella again. This arched laser shots you steal from him are great, but you won't crack the shell of the mechanical mermaid boss with it. So you have to abandon it. Abandon a very good weapon. The developers successfully undermined the idiom never change a winning team.
The music is very catchy, but the loops very short, which turns catchy into boring very fast. The game is very varying, yet very long, which turns varying into tiresome... and so on. Each of Gaiares' stellar qualities seems to leave you with an itch you can never scratch. Hot coffee and the sexy japanese cover will keep you motivated to reach the end, but you won't shake the feeling, that that's not the way it should be.