This review will be primarily aimed at the uninitiated person who randomly comes across this and wonders if this collection is worth 50 USD if you want a summary read the tl;dr, if you want a deeper analysis read below tl;dr
tl;dr it's a high quality port worth 50 dollars, pick it up whether on a sale or not just get this amazing collection
This part right here is for the more in depth analysis
For Starters this was made by M2 currently the best team who make Remasters at the moment so the quality is through the roof
So you get 5 games technically, you get Rayforce, Raystorm, Raycrisis, and HD remasters of Raystorm and Raycrisis, and you also get Arranged soundtracks of both Raystrom and Raycrisis and Layer Sections Soundtrack as well which what Rayforce was called for the Sega Saturn version
You get a whole lot of quality of life features which by far and away makes this collection the definitive way of playing these games without question with some extras like having background noise recorded from the Hey Arcade in Akihabara which is owned by Taito who owns the 3 games so you get a little taste of a Japanese Arcade if you can't visit one for whatever reason, online leaderboards, along with many accessibility options such as training modes, replays, and save states along with a huge range of aspect ratios so all of the most important things
You also get access to gadgets which gives you info about the game you play so the games mechanics are much easier understood to you which is par for the M2 Shotriggers releases
On top of that there's little input lag so M2 really goes above and beyond for most of their releases and it's much appreciated especially when a lot of developers try to do the bare minimum for their ports and remasters
The biggest flaws this collection has and I don't think it's DRM free which is a fairly big flaw and some minor nitpicks is it would have been nice to have a gadget for the boss's HP so I know how my progress is going against the bosses and I wish the collection came with the demo for the scrapped sequel of Rayforce that would have released before Raystorm but I mean they are just tiny little nitpicks and don't really detract from the sheer quality of the port.
So the big question here is that is this port worth 50 dollars, now I had done a review of M2's Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade and while that port was high quality as well, what held it back was for 45 USD you get 1 fantastic game and 2 games that don't hold up quite as well which is why I don't think the value propostition was there for 45 dollars but thought it was worth it at 30 USD
My opinion is different here, Rayforce and Raystorm are both above average titles and Raycrisis is a solid shooter, so while I do think this is worth 50 dollars at the end of the day 50 dollars is 50 dollars so pick it up on a sale if you can't afford 50 USD but no matter whether it's on a sale or not, save up allowances, donate plasma, mow some lawns, whatever it is but find a way to scrounge up the 50 USD to pick this collection up it is worth every penny you nailed it out of the park again M2 I really hope you can release the other Shottriggers games onto Steam someday and hopefully DRM free as well
Oh there's a collection called Raystorm X Raycrisis, don't pick that one up, it only comes with Raystorm and Raycrisis and no Rayforce for some baffling reason unless you don't like Rayforce for some reason, pick up this one from M2 published by Taito not ININ, that and that one is 40 USD while the Ray Z Chronology Arcade Collection is 50 USD