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Certain scenery bits can be destroyed. For example the candles scattered across stage 1, these release extra enemies when you break them (other summons hit them so no idea why Sonay passes over).

Gold chests on hard difficulty, these let you farm tons of extra coins.

Sometimes you'll notice bosses release these spheres that can be destroyed (or ghosts in the Lale fight) and give extra coins for doing so. If you keep Sonay locked onto the boss these sometimes get missed. Like the multiplier fairies, you kinda have to know when these are coming to take advantage of them.

Edit for new discoveries:

Turns out you can trigger extra enemy waves after a midboss. Using Lale's reflect summon to quick kill them (turning it on point-blank, and then one full volley will kill an entire bar), I was able to get additional enemies to attack. You have to be extremely aggressive to pull it off so I don't think I'll incorporate it into my regular play. The opposite is also true, if you let the midboss escape or kill just as it's leaving, the usual first enemy wave after it may fail to show up.

I've been trying out milking the boss patterns that have bonus spheres (not sure what to call them). So far it seems like you can get more points from the extra coins than you would get from more time bonus. Also seeing nice bumps in my score if I don't suicide, as the coin base value drops quite a bit. For a while I would get hit just before the next extend to get more bombs, but as far as score goes this is probably a mistake.

Maybe Sonay's familiar prioritizes active enemies at all times? Is there any part where there aren't any enemies but destroyable ground objects are still there? If so, you could test that theory and check if said famliliar would attack the candles if that's all there is on the screen at the moment.

Those insights about milking and speedkilling are pretty interesting. Previous Shiki games rewarded you in certain stage sections for speedkilling enemy waves, but midbosses were mostly self-contained (and some could be milked like the Shiki 3 stage 3 midboss). Here I imagine that the ground scrolling and the walls make it harder to have freely dynamic wave spawning, but the midboss can now be part of the stage itself so it's easier to have spots in the level design for bonus enemies.

Are the bombs useful for scoring in this game? It looks like it is back to the Shiki 2 formula where dying to get more bombs should mostly be avoided if you are going for score since said bombs are mostly useful for survival. In Shiki 3 you could lose lives against (mid)bosses to replenish your bombs and then use them as hypers to get big score boosts for the next section, but that wouldn't work here since the hidden fairies replace said hypers.

There's some down time after the midboss, with a candle on the left side of the screen. You can even turn on the summon right on top of it, and it'll just hang out over the candle but nothing happens. These objects also don't build the Tension multiplier like bullets/enemies do, so perhaps that's why they get ignored. As always, normal shot will let you get the enemies out of it.

Anyway, normal mode clear. Once I stopped trying to 8x every damn thing in stage 5 it went smoother. The second life bar in the Seytan fight is a great example of milking bonus coins, as it just vomits out orbs to the left/right for most of the pattern. To hit them with Sonay I had to switch to normal shot, as it seems intentionally designed to avoid the area where her familiar hangs out.

I got my physical copy for PS4 and was able to finally do some comparisons to the Switch version. Sadly, it's basically identical and doesn't fix the dithered, slightly wavy background issue. I *think* it looks slightly better, but without two TVs running side-by-side I can't say with enough certainty. Unless you're a physical media psycho like me, you're probably fine with any version of this.

The game also came with a loose artbook and a CD soundtrack, but they weren't listed in the product description as far as I know. The book is actually quite nice for what it's worth, and shows full breakdowns of all the characters and enemies, as well as some unused concepts. The back pages have a few pages of comics for anyone that wants to extend the "story" which I assume is very few players.

IIRC they were a first-press bonus rather than a permanent part of the package, but it looks like some stores still have stock. Given how fast Coffee Talk from the same publisher went, I was expecting the first-press bonuses to be pretty much gone by now.

I managed to make it to the 2nd form of the final boss with 5 bombs and 1 life, only to die in the first section because I forgot how the bullet patterns were, lol. They were those yo-yo circular bullets that he throws at you and they come back to him. I treated them like normal bullets and went right into them. I'll get it someday.

Which character are you using primarily? If you want a quick and dirty 1CC I'd recommend Ode (DLC). Her bomb attack deals serious damage to bosses and allows you to drop at least one on the boss per section of life bar throughout the battles. I wait for the boss to recover, drop one, and then try to queue up another before they start shooting. The cubic mid-bosses stand NO chance, and I can sometimes take them out before they can even get a shot off. At any rate, keep at it! Seems like "the game" is there for the taking if you're getting to the second form of Demon Dude.

For the yoyo pattern, as long as Ihave a way to hit the boss from anywhere on the screen, Ican go middle (easiest to dodge them straight on), then right side of the screen (the yoyos won't reach), then left side of the screen (again yoyos won't reach), repeat. This way I only need to pay attention to a few bullets.