Caladrius & Caladrius Blaze

[ACSeraph]

Hey man, glad to have someone else to post with. Don't worry about matching my scores at the moment, we all had to start somewhere with it, and you can see my early scores are about the same as yours.

As for your question, yes stage 4 boss is a bitch (hardest in the game to no-miss imo and responsible for 90% of my ruined runs), and yes there is a way to practice them (sort of). If you clear Evolution Mode with any character (continues OK) you will unlock Boss Rush. Now the Boss Rush in Blaze is based on Evolution mode so there is a difference in that you have access to evolution, but if you just refrain from using it it basically plays exactly like the Original Mode boss fights pattern/health-wise. The rush allows you to start at any boss just like the main game does, so go ahead and credit feel through once to open it up for practice.

If there are any specific attacks you would like advice on let me know and I can (probably) give you a solution to them.

[Mero]

Yeah the stage 4 boss, out of all the high level video's I've seen I've never seen anybody not bomb that pattern where it summons two tornadoes at either side of the screen.

[ACSeraph]

Yeah the stage 4 boss, out of all the high level video's I've seen I've never seen anybody not bomb that pattern where it summons two tornadoes at either side of the screen.

In vanilla I never once cleared that pattern, but in Blaze they changed the hitboxes on the wind shots to be a lot smaller, so it's totally dodge-able now. That said I still always bomb it, because you will already be maxed out on bombs by then anyhow.

Just got a new update to my score. Very very close to a no-miss this time, just got killed by a fluke on the EX boss' last pattern. Once I finally get all my no-miss runs done I think I'll start learning clears with the other default characters.



Caladrius Blaze: Evolution Mode

ACSeraph - 119,119,920 - ALL - Lilith - Default

PS: ST is seriously close to release, I just about finished it up today, just a few things to add and clean up and it's done

[Mero]

S: ST is seriously close to release, I just about finished it up today, just a few things to add and clean up and it's done

Nice, hopefully people will find it useful, I think this game has a reputation for being pretty hard (which it is, to be fair).

[ryu]

Just got past stage 2 for the first time. Next I'm going to look into the positions of the crystals, because I constantly ran out of ammunition from the second half of stage 2 onwards.

Blaze Evolution mode

MAR - 23,252,610 - 3 - Alex - Fire1/Water2/Wind3

[ACSeraph]

Welcome to the party

As far as I know there are only 3 mana crystals in stage 2. The first is on the right among the tanks after you fight the first two medium sized enemies in the stage. The second is right before the waterfall on the cliff on the left side (opposite the big ground turret-thing) and the third is on the left side of the island with the massive turret right before the boss. That one isn't helpful since it's already the end of the stage, but you can use it to evolve and get a few red gems from the big turret.

I tend to have less MP than I would like in my runs of stage 2 too, it's just a really difficult stage to score-maximize. I usually end up with something like 9.5 multiplier by the time I get to the boss, but some characters/setups can do a lot better than that.

[ACSeraph]

Caladrius Blaze: Evolution Mode

ACSeraph - 123,745,900 - ALL - Lilith - Default

This is pretty close to the maximum my route will allow. There were a few minor scoring mistakes here and there, and it technically wasn't a no-miss because one of the bits in stage 6 spawned right on top of me at the beginning of the stage (just bad luck), but that death had very little impact on the final score. I'll be impressed to see anyone surpass it with Lilith Default. Still holding on to the top default overall score too, which is nice.

[DBreakfast]

As for your question, yes stage 4 boss is a bitch (hardest in the game to no-miss imo and responsible for 90% of my ruined runs), and yes there is a way to practice them (sort of). If you clear Evolution Mode with any character (continues OK) you will unlock Boss Rush. Now the Boss Rush in Blaze is based on Evolution mode so there is a difference in that you have access to evolution, but if you just refrain from using it it basically plays exactly like the Original Mode boss fights pattern/health-wise. The rush allows you to start at any boss just like the main game does, so go ahead and credit feel through once to open it up for practice.

Thanks for this. It's been a big help. I haven't had much time to play the last few weeks, but I did manage to up my score a bit.

Caladrius Blaze Original Mode
DBreakfast - 27,721,790 - 5 - Noah - Default

Was able to no-miss all the way to stage 4 that run. Looks like I need to start practicing stage 5 now.

[ACSeraph]

Nicely done, not too much more to go, though stage 6 might be pretty rough for you at first. 5 is actually easier than 4, aside from the opening segment of the stage. The boss is rough I guess, but with Noah you are able to cancel a lot of his more problematic stuff that other characters cant, making it a lot more manageable. I'll look forward to your clear

[Mero]

Nice work. I should have a copy of this game in my possession pretty soon now.

[Mero]

First day score EDIT: Evolution mode

Mero - 50,782,480 - 4 - Sophia - Default



I actually had a copy of this game in my hands about 10 minutes after I wrote the above post but I didn't play it until yesterday (was playing Duck Tales Remasterd instead). Didn't take me too long to remember what I was doing, chose Sophia as she seems to be pretty decent (the 2 brand new ones seemed pretty crap at first glance). Need to familiarise myself more with the EX stage.

[ACSeraph]

Glad to see you finally have it. I'll look forward to your first all score. Sophia is pretty great as a default character yeah, she has two good scoring weapons and the totally OP shield. But actually I think Noah is also a pretty ridiculously good character, especially for survival purposes. Layis is shit though, can't argue that. She is unusually good for boss rush though, even if she sucks for the main game. Kei is still king of default characters imo, though no one has yet posted a score to prove it. I'm waiting for Kollision to come in here and change that

Don't forget to take advantage of Evolution burst during boss battles, it makes previously difficult sections much easier to deal with.

[Mero]

Yeah hopefully I can do something decent, I'm still a bit rusty, played some credits yesterday and still didn't beat stage 4 yet (keep making a mess of the EX stage).

Don't forget to take advantage of Evolution burst during boss battles, it makes previously difficult sections much easier to deal with.

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 wasw 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)?

[ACSeraph]

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.

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.

[Mero]

Arcade mode

Mero - 65,187,480 - ALL - Sophia - Default



Decided to switch to AC, it's a bit easier because you don't have to face the Ex stage.

1 miss on the stage 4 boss (as usual), 1 miss on the stage 5 boss (as usual), 1 miss during stage 6 and then 2 miss on the final boss to scrape the clear on my last life. Sophia's E3 makes it much easier to grab all the extra life shards so in this run I was able to trigger 3 extends whereas on the 360 original I could only ever trigger 2.

The 2 deaths on the stage 4 and 5 bosses knocked millions off my score but I'll take it.

[ACSeraph]

Congrats on the clear

Yeah, AC is probably a good starting point for a first clear. Not sure if you tried it out, but fusion is especially useful since it makes your MP unlimited for it's duration and you can keep it going by hitting up mana towers. It appears to be the final key to the scoring that I had failed to fully grasp while playing at the arcade. Up until now I've approached AC as though it were Original with a multiplier cap, but I'm considering going back to it and creating a new route in the hopes I can push my score past the 90 million mark.

So was that actually your first clear of Caladrius? Did you ever manage it in Vanilla? Hope to see you stick with the game for a bit, your performance on the Vanilla custom board was really impressive.

[Mero]

So was that actually your first clear of Caladrius? Did you ever manage it in Vanilla? Hope to see you stick with the game for a bit, your performance on the Vanilla custom board was really impressive.

Yeah this is the first time on any version, I think I gave up after I did the 47 million on 360 Caladrius, I don't think I could bear to carry on any more .

I'll be back on evolution mode soon, I was actually playing this and Ar nosurge at the same time so once I'm done with Ar I'll be back on Blaze for a while. Clearing it might be tough but I want to break 100 million at least.

EDIT: Regarding fusion I only really used it during the final boss, mostly I'd forget to use it.

[spadgy]

With my 1CC of Espgaluda coming last night, I just got my Caladrius Blaze through the post. Until I realised I got confused and have another vanilla Caladrius LE! (My fault - not the sellers!). So I'm gonna have to wait a little while longer!

[ACSeraph]

Ugh that really sucks, I hope you are at least able to return it. I'll look forward to your future participation then, dunno if you saw but the full ST is up, so the info there should give you a bit of an edge in the new modes.

[Aquas]

Who's capable to get some footage and cover the shit out of this game on STG Weekly? AC Seraph?? Anyone?

[ACSeraph]

I would definitely be down for covering the shit out of it (I really want to see more people playing) but I don't actually have any capture equipment or knowledge of how to do it. I could be really ghetto and record the TV screen or something if you want, or if you could give me some info on how I could capture video cheaply I can look into it.

[Mero]

There's quite few runs of vanilla and AC on Youtube already if you fancy using those. I haven't checked Nico for ages but there might be some decent Evolution mode runs on there (nothing on YT as of yet).

[Mero]

Evolution mode

Mero - 91,101,640 - 6 - Sophia - Default

[Seraphis Cain]

My new (and first!) high score (Blaze)!

Noah - 30,034,410 - 4 - Arcade - Default

38th overall on the leaderboard. Not too bad for my second day with the game.

[Mero]

^^^^ This score is for Evolution mode yeah?

[Seraphis Cain]

^^^^ This score is for Evolution mode yeah?

Oh, oops, I forgot to put the mode. It's AC mode. I'll edit it in. Sorry!

[ACSeraph]

Thinking about starting this again so I dug up this depressingly cobweb covered topic.

There has to be more than like 5 people on this forum who bought Blaze... Where are everyone's scores at?

[Mero]

Well there's still a better Evolution score to come from me at some point in the future, but I think it's just the nature of the Hi Score forum that most HS threads only get a few submissions a year (if that). I've generally only heard postive talk about Caladrius so it's not that people think the game is shit, just that few people post scores (generally, not just for this game).

I admit I haven't played Blaze very much myself, I do like Caladrius but it's also a game that's driven me completely round the bend at times, especially back in 2013 when we were all playing vanilla, and it's memories of this that stopped me devoting much time to Blaze thus far. Also I've devoted about 2 months of my life (and counting) to playing a Nippon Ichi roguelike on PS3 which has stopped me from devoting much time to STG. Posting a new Evolution score can be my "shmup goal of 2015".

Anyway, where's Spadgy and Kollision at?

[Aquas]

First clear.

Caladrius Blaze, Arcade Normal
Aquas - 68,202,440 - ALL - Noah - Default

Screenshot: http://t.co/gH9T2Yde8z

I think I'll work on 1cc'ing with all the default characters on Normal for Arcade mode :3

[ACSeraph]

Nicely done Aquas, you made quick work of it. I'm not a big fan of arcade mode myself, the scoring and mechanics are a lot more interesting and rewarding in Evolution. Make sure to give it a shot too.