Having played Soldner-X, I can say this: The game is BRUTALLY difficult even on the Very Easy setting. It gives you two credits, and no smartbombs. Sure, you can find smartbomb items by pure chance, but when you use one, it doesn't clear the whole screen. Sure, it's powerful, but that's it. About the difficulty itself, the enemies are everywhere, and most enemies takes several shots before exploding, You start with the aforementioned peashooter + a weak lightning weapon that covers a lot but does pitiful damage. If you manage to find any extra weapons, you can switch between weapons at will. I found a rocket weapon, but unless upgraded, file a single rocket very slowly and when you have this rocket equipped, you can't even use your standard peashooter. The graphics and audio are top-notch, but the difficulty takes a lot of getting used to. Perhaps I'm playing it wrong, who knows.