Great game, Great music, Great Graphics (well not really ^-^)
The story is set in the European industrial revolution, in a fictional nation known as Edelweiss. The main character who is a RSF (Royal Special Forces) pilot, is thrown into the midst of the ongoing battle in a new experimental fighter plane, to atempt to stop Dr. Teresa Rose, who has sent her five daughters to distroy the whole nation (for what puropse Im not really sure of).
As Far as graphics go in this game, they are very outdated 2D, much like many other 2D plane shooters. The game runs plenty smooth for with absolutely no slowdowns whatso ever, but sometimes its makes you think that with all the time they spent putting extra content into the port, you wish that they had increased the framerate, which would of made the game look much better, and much smoother. That being the games first out of three shortcommings, the detail that is put into this game, is very impressive, at least at the time it was. Unlike many shooter games, there is a fair amount of effort that was put into making this game look as good as it can be. With debris flying off of every building that you blow up, or every plane that you shoot down it makes the game look somewhat pretty, however with the explosions, bebris, and and endless barage of enimies, it sometimes makes the enemy fire a little to hard to tell apart sometimes.
Almost every level in the game plays a pretty ubeat epic rock/ techno tune, which Guilty Gear fans wil be quite fond of. But, after the first few levels some of the songs start to seem nostalgic. Making you sometimes feel that you have heard that song before in a previous level.
For the third of the 3 shortcommings (The second being that sometimes its too hard to see) is that the plain is just too damn sensitive. Chances are you will not survive the first level without dying at some point, out of all the times I played I could swear that I had dodged a bullet when it had actually skimmed my plane's wing and killed me. The plane also seems too slow sometimes, making it hard to dodge, when your TV screen is full of enemy gunfire. Next to the faifhful "Arcade mode" there is a practice mode, where novice players can either select a whole level to play, or just the levels boss to help them hone their skills. And made especially for the ps2 port there is an "Arrange mode" which allows you to play through the game when a whole bunch of new enhanced gameplay features.
Ibara is fun enough even with the games few shortcommings to keep novice and advanced players entertained for hours, with all new gameplay features and a true to arcade port of the original, Ibara is a true classic.
(I will re-write this later, halfway through I got a massive migrane and i really wanted to just get it done so its not too detailed, and please disregard any spelling and/or grammar errors)