YMMV / Alien Soldier

• Anticlimax Boss: Once you find out how to damage Z-Leo, you'll find him much easier than some bosses you've already defeated. His moves are telegraphed and predictable, and his laser barrage will likely see few uses before his death.
• Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack; of worthy note is "Runner AD2025", the first stage theme.
• Best Boss Ever: Seven Force is just as cool, varied, and difficult as it was in Gunstar Heroes, putting up a greater fight than even the final boss. Wolfgunblood/Garopa are also quite notorious by this point.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A blue teddy bear, menaced by kissing mutants, proceeds to operate a speedboat and is unceremoniously thrown overboard by a giant lobster.
• Breather Boss: Melon Bread, a.k.a. "Jampan", is just as easy as he was in Gunstar Heroes, and you can, as before, kill him before he can even attack. Right after him is Seven Force.
• Funny Moments: Melon Bread appears as the boss of Stage 19 and looks just as goofy as he did in Gunstar Heroes. When defeated, his head disappears, but his face continues to float around harmlessly with the same silly smile until Epsilon-2 goes to the next stage. It's a brief respite before the player has to tackle Seven Force.
• Goddamned Bats: Those bee-like enemies that you fight between boss battles. Better have Homing Force ready, as they come in swarms, shoot at you, then fly erratically and kamikaze you. The bomb-dropping mutant birds also get really annoying.
• Goddamned Boss: Artemis Force. It only attacks by jumping forward and firing explosive shots, which can be dashed past easily, but it has massive resistance everywhere except for its tail tip. You could counter it with Lancer Force, but every other weapon will prove ineffective to various degrees. There's an alternate strategy in parrying the explosive shots to gain health and using Phoenix Force, but parrying the shots is difficult to do and Artemis Force likes to stall its movements. The fight was seemingly designed to waste time.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Epsilon's rather unique selection of abilities means that anyone coming in for a traditional Run-and-Gun experience is likely to be unaware of Zero Teleport, resulting in them getting rammed a few times by the "inescapable" first boss and dying. Similar experiences await you further down the line.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • More than a few of the enemies encountered are grotesque. Highlights go to Sniper Honeyviper and Back Stringer, which also gores a mechanical fly rather messily.
  • Xi-Tiger's boss fight begins with a jarring transformation cutscene that features a sudden perspective shift to a close up of his face as he screams and shakes in an animation style rife with all the Uncanny Valley eeriness one would expect from attempting to render a realistic face with 16-bit graphics. He then lunges forward into a literal Jump Scare before the screen is dominated by a dark silhouette of his new, werewolf-like monstrous form as ominous music plays in the background.
• Polished Port: The Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack version, ported by M2 (along with the rest of the games in the Genesis / Mega Drive collection on NSO), plays smooth as silk and features savestates and rewinds (which you will quite likely need).
• Scrappy Mechanic: The weapon change mechanic has caused a fair number of players to get hurt or die outright, as rather than just pressing the weapon change button to cycle weapons, it opens up a Ring Menu and then the player must press left or right to change weapons and then press a button again to confirm weapon change. This does not pause the game or make the player invincible at any point in the process.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: During the initial weapon selection and configuration, the player has the option to make all information about his health, ammunition and boss health into "???", essentially preventing the player from tracking how much damage was taken or dealt or how much ammo they have left.
• Tear Jerker: That cute blue bear that drives the boat for you? He gets thrown into the river by the Lobster boss, helplessly calling for help.
  "HELP!"
• That One Attack: Epsilon-1's bombing wave, where it flies upwards, comes down in a random spot and fires straight down, and fires bullets from all of its wing segments while flying back offscreen. Epsilon-Eagle's dash won't help you dodge the initial fire since he'll just get caught in the wing bullets; you just have to quickly move out of the way and stay in the safe spots next to Epsilon-1's head.
• That One Boss:
  • Deep Strider isn't difficult to beat if you know what to do, but its patterns are extremely fast and extremely annoying, and may present a barrier for newer players.
  • Seven Force. You have to deal with five forms, each requiring its own strategy to beat. You are on a time limit. The last three forms all have their gimmicks, from blocking your shots, to wasting time and demanding a specific loadout or Phoenix Force use, to straight-up removing your non-energy weapons. The last phase offers a constantly-moving vortex of mines and bladed arms for you to dodge, if having to make potshots with your lasers wasn't hard enough.
  • Epsilon-1, your character's evil side. It only takes damage if you hit its head. The head is protected by two invulnerable talons. You can't heal during this fight, so you won't get to use Phoenix Force. Epsilon-1's attacks directly counter Zero Teleport, and can still be unpredictable, even if memorized. Finally, it deals enough damage to kill you in a few hits. That you enter the fight weary after a Boss Rush does not help.