Armed Seven is in my opinion, one of Astro Port's best games that manages to avoid the issues present in their other titles. This game fixes almost every problem I had with Satazius, Wolflame and Zangeki Warp, and proves itself as one of the most fun shmups I've played so far, despite being very short.
From the very first level, it is apparent that the devs paid more attention to the design of their game. There are no random hazards suddenly moving around or appearing from inside the terrain like Satazius and Zangeki Warp, and there are no fast projectiles hitting you out of nowhere and no one hit deaths like Wolflame. Armed Seven does not look for every unfair opportunity to punish you and artificially increase its difficulty and length. In fact, while the game is challenging enough, it is surprisingly generous towards the player and offers help in the form of weapon and shield powerups when you need them the most, but does not overdo it.
It is also worth mentioning the game's proper usage of audiovisual clues to inform you of stuff that happens behind the carnage, so you can divert all of your attention on the battle. Some of the enemies' attacks have wind up animations, allowing you to get out of the way before it's too late. Or whenever your charge attack is ready, the game plays a unique sound effect in addition to a visible flash on your mech, properly letting you know when to unleash it without the need to constantly look at the bar on the bottom of the screen. There are still times when there's little time to react to a projectile, but those are easily manageable with a bit of memorization as the game is very short (about 20 minutes a run).
The improvements do not end here though, as the game also has some small quality of life features as well. For example, All of the projectiles originating from bosses will immediately purge upon their annihilation, preventing you from accidentally hitting a stray projectile after a victory (an issue present in Wolflame). Or your mech's hitpoint starts to glow with a green color when enemy projectiles get near it, reminding you of where you are vulnerable while also allowing for precise movement.
However, despite all of my praises, I do have some gripes with Armed Seven as well. For starters, I really don't get the point of the targeting system; something that can be considered a nitpick on my part. Your mech's weapon starts to tilt upwards and downwards while moving, and shooting the weapon locks it in its place until you let go of the button. While this allows you to hit targets without being right in front of them, I find it to be mostly useless because of the game's tendency to become a mini bullet hell at times. I personally find it way more comfortable to fire the weapon in a traditional way.
The weapon system has some questionable design choices too. First, some of the weapons such as the Napalm Launcher and Pile Bunker are highly situational and mostly useful against bosses rather than crowd control, effectively making them not a good choice for higher difficulties. Second, some weapon combos don't make much sense. Armed Seven lets you pick your loadout and the better the normal weapons are, the longer it takes for your powerful charge weapon to get ready for usage. That is why I fail to understand how the hell the beam cannon charges much faster while using the spread shot in comparison to the normal shot. Spread shot is much superior to normal shot because of higher crowd control ability and should be considered more powerful!
My next critique of the game is also a bit nitpick-y, but the game's visual clarity takes a nosedive when there's a lot of stuff happening on the screen and it becomes kinda hard to see some of the projectiles and react to them. The penultimate level is a good example for this, as the amount of enemies, projectiles and explosions are significantly higher than the rest of the game.
Overall, I highly recommend playing Armed Seven to any shmup fan out there as long as they can deal with some of its technical shortcomings (lack of a pause button, Esc closing the game, etc.) and put in multiple runs to compensate for its short length.
