YMMV / Xeno Fighters

• Bizarro Episode: Stage EX-4, '98 D R E A M S, is hands down the most bizarre bonus stage, what with its mix of vaporwave backdrops, computer windows and paraphernalia, flying toaster, living sculpture and dancing hamster enemies, and Windows office assistants as boss fights.
• Game-Breaker: In Xeno Fighters R, Winbee, before she was removed, was by far the most powerful ship with a wide spread, heavy firepower, and killed most anything before it even fired. Some of her arsenal was added to Twinbee as alternate weaponry when she got removed. Twinbee ended up getting removed later on as well. Of the three cut Gradius ships, the Jade Knight was extremely overpowered when fully powered up. Its source behavior was copied into the game, but unbalanced to the point that its firepower increased multiplicatively.
  • In XFR, Gengar, also scrapped, was broken on all levels, having powerful fullscreen attacks and a Kamehameha-like Bomber that killed anything in one use.
• Nintendo Hard: Being a game inspired by Raiden Fighters, even the easier difficulties can be overwhelming to newbies.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Micluses are disliked in Raiden Fighters and in earlier versions of this game because of the obtuse ways to make them appear and their importance in getting good scores. One of the updates to Xeno Fighters R now makes Micluses blink when shooting over their locations, so that you no longer need to learn and memorize all their arbitrary locations.
• That One Boss: Being a Nintendo Hard shmup, there are some bosses that are more difficult than others.
  • Stage 6-A's endboss, Bronze Harpy, has massive health and fast bullet attacks in its second attack phase. If you're in the wrong spot during certain points of its second attack phase, you will get hit.
  • Stage EX-2's boss, Blue Optomon has three phases of attack, all of which involve the seaweed attacks from its source game. Combine the area of denial properties of the seaweed (some of which shoot bullets) with bullet attacks that have no pattern and you have a boss that can easily end your run in Story Mode or any Path Mode path that includes Stage EX-2.
  • The ballerina panda, Ziyudee in Stage EX-3 has Psikyo-style bullet patterns mixed with some Cave Bullet Hell. Good thing she's optional.
  • Vahrstor, the boss of Stage EX-5. To proceed, you have to have a destruction rate of 100%, in other words, destroy every part of the boss. If you miss a single part of the boss, you will not get the Tritium Plasma required to reach Stage EX-6, which will also lead to Stage F-C.
• Unexpected Character: Out of all the guest ships, Infernal Iris is the most surprising. It hails from Psyche Metal: The Bleeding, an organic-themed freeware shoot 'em up that no one considered as a possibility for choosing a guest from.
  • On the enemy side, the Stage EX-4 midboss and endboss are Clippy and BonziBUDDY respectively.