Yeah it helps to have a route for External, and obviously you'll need one for scoring. Personally I sat in score attack routing it until I had it down before making any real attempts at clearing. The most difficult section is probably the end with the worms and small ships, but actually the shots are all aimed so you can just slowly tap dodge around the edges of the screen and change directions between waves. The real difficulty comes from taking advantage of scoring.
Mero wrote:
I haven't really been using the evolution burst at all, one time I tried to use it a bit on the first stage and by the end of the stage my score was about 3 million less than normal, due to it draining your e-shots. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it doesn't seem much use for scoring, do you use it much yourself (apart from bosses)?
I would say the primary use is speed killing boss phases and getting red gems from the shame breaks. But to be honest the actual score value of red gems compared to gold seems a bit negligible outside of really really high tier scoring. Standard multiplier building is far more important. But even in a survival run those speed kills are really helpful on certain boss phases, like 4-3 or 5-3.
As for the main game there are definitely uses for it, but you have to be really careful with the timing so that the burst startup doesnt kill anything and the bust ends right before a Sol tower for an instant recharge. It's actually extremely difficult to do, and the scoring difference might not be worth it. Even myself, I'm aware that the opportunity is there, but I tend not to risk it.
That said there
is one situation where you will want to utilize it a lot. Specifically,
after you max out the multiplier (20.00). At that point you no longer have any reason to conserve magic (assuming you are good enough to survive without your S3), so you should be bursting before every large wave in order to get red gems. Remember when you do it that you get red gems even with your main shot as long as you are evolved, so don't just plow through your magic thoughtlessly.
With Lilith there are only two points where I reach 20.00 and start going crazy with evolution, the last section of stage 3, and from the beginning of the stage 5 castle all the way to the end. Other characters/setups though can max out more quickly and evolve more often than I can.