I've always loved shmups...in theory, right? But I usually don't finish them unless it's either an arcade port with unlimited credits, or I have a bucketful of quarters and nothing else to do at the arcade other than brute-force Darius Burst (true story), because I don't have the part of my brain that makes me good at them.
But I like them all the same! I've frequently found myself returning to things like Trouble Shooter/Battle Mania, Cotton, or Darius and having a wonderful time just flying around destroying things, even if its never anything I'd, er, want to share with Youtube.
So I was wondering if anyone had some other suggestions to try for someone like me who's never really gonna be GOOD at shmups, but finds them satisfying all the same? I've recently tried the first couple levels of Harmful Park and it's been right up my alley, and I'd very much like to find out about other ones that perhaps won't stress me out as much.
There's a couple other choices but one thing to keep in mind are console ports. Do you have an Arcade SHMUP in mind that you think looks interesting? Look to see if it was ported to a console. This is important because (most) shmups/bullet hell console ports will have extra content and unlimited play via the ability to press a button to insert (non existent) coins. If you want to play Dodonpachi for example (referring to the original game here), you can, all of it's console ports allow that.
Console original/exclusive shmups likely don't have this feature. Thunder Force 4 is a good example, though it gives you a lot of continues by default. Though sometimes you'll have Ikaruga, a game that rewards you with more and more lives the more you game over until you get free play as an option.
Or of course, you can just use MAME to insert non existent coins for free play
Now as for a couple other examples:
-Blue Revolver: this indie game encourages improvement and there's a free play option in the game itself as an item that isn't too hard to get.
-Bullet Hell Monday: a mobile game made to teach you the basics of bullet hell, as a result it's not too complicated. This only applies to the original game. BHM Black is completely paywalled and Finale is probably not a good starter pick
-Graze Counter GM: A SHMUP that focuses on a pretty big reoccurring part of shmups: grazing. Grazing is when you get extra points from just barely getting nailed by a stray bullet. It's a mechanic used in various games, most popular being Touhou
speaking of
-Touhou: as long as you aren't starting with Subterranean Animism, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, or Unidentified Fantastic Object, they aren't too hard to get into. They don't have any free play so do keep that in mind. I don't recommend playing the Phantasmagoria games first either because those are Vs SHMUPs, which look more like Twinkle Star Sprites. Other than those there's also a few spinoffs (Great Fairy Wars, Violet Detector, Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler, the fighting games, Immemorial Black Market, etc) which as you can imagine are similar or completely different to mainline games. Also worth noting that fan games often eclipse the original games on Steam, the wiki has direct links to them. Touhous 1-8, 7.5, 10.5, 12.3, 13.5, and 14.5 are not available on Steam, but most of those exceptions are spinoffs and most usually only play EoSD, PCB, or IN (which are 6-8).
-Rabi Ribi: this one might be cheating a bit as it's not a shmup. However it DOES feature a lot of bullet hell patterns referencing other shmups and it's just a really fun game.
-Undertale: Technically not cheating to bring this one up as shmup gameplay makes up a huge part of the Pacifist route, making it a solid choice for practice.
