GD: Eden's Aegis

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blossom
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GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by blossom »

Eden's Aegis is a combination of ESP Ra.De.'s constantly recharging special attack, Espgaluda's bullet cancelling, and Mushihimesama's rapidly decreasing multiplier. It's a simple experience and that's why I love it.
There's not a lot to say about it that you can't find within the manual. In this thread I'll list a few things which might help you when deciding to pick up the game.
  • Honesty upfront - the worst part about this game is pausing during a run will invalidate a replay. This is something I've learned to tolerate, to the point that sometimes I forget it's a thing.
  • My opinion on characters, roughly applies both for survival and score: Nanathy is "easy to learn, hard to master" - Maple is "hard to learn, hard to master" - Eve is "easy to learn, easy to master" - Ridmie is "stay the fuck away unless you want a challenge"
  • As far as we can tell, wait on/off and autoguard on/off do not affect the score.
  • Early stage chain is crucial. If you get a high chain going in the first 30-ish seconds of a stage, this will snowball into a better score than if you instead focused on perfecting the last half of a stage.
  • Speaking of ways to optimize score, that popcorn rush at the end of stage 5 comprises 25% of the score in the WR. Don't take a hit during this part if you're playing for score. For that matter, just don't take a hit during stage 5 at all.
  • Bombs turn every bullet on-screen into gems, meaning you are ENCOURAGED to use bombs in this game. The most obvious way to use a bomb is to speedkill the stage 4 and 5 midbosses to prevent the multiplier from suffering too much. Ideally, you shouldn't use a bomb on a boss if you can help it, because as implied in another bullet point, a bomb could instead be used to crank up your multiplier earlier in the stage.
  • Bombs and the collectible extend in stage 4 are rather annoyingly "buried" in the ground. You won't be able to loosen them up without firing your special attack. The problem here is using your special attack at the wrong angle will have these items act as a barricade which absorbs your special attack, thus protecting enemies. You'll need to get used to the angle where you'll both loosen the item AND turn on-screen enemies blue.
  • TLB is exclusive to hell mode. In addition to the obvious prerequisite of 1cc until the TLB, there is one more condition for the TLB to appear: you must have at least one bomb in stock when the stage 5 boss is defeated. If playing for score and lacking confidence and/or skill, using all available bombs on the final phase of the stage 5 boss is an easy way to keep up to 15 million points (each of the 5 lives is worth 3 million points at the end of the game) instead of feeding them away to the TLB.
  • You can create an empty .txt file named "yutori" to unlock the two hidden characters (Eve and Ridmie) immediately, as well as give yourself access to stage practice for all difficulty modes.
Last edited by blossom on Wed Sep 11, 2019 7:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
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blossom
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by blossom »

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Last edited by blossom on Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CyberAngel
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by CyberAngel »

Eve and Ridmie are kinda notable for having unusual special attack recharge speeds. Ridmie's is so fast she can keep canceling bullets almost non-stop. The narrow range of her attacks does place a high importance on positioning (and therefore memorization) for her, but she seems to be the high-risk-high-reward knd of character. Eve is a complete opposite - wide special attack that takes about twice as much as normal to recharge. Bullet canceling is kinda important even for survival, and I've noticed how painful not being able to do it as frequently as usual can be even when playing casually. She always struck me as a newbie-friendly character for those who prefer to hug the bottom that kinda drops in usefulness once you start learning the canceling routes. Then again, she seems to be a popular scoring character, so maybe that wide attack is good for making bigger cancels that you have to cook for longer.

But what do I know, I can't even beat the Original mode, so...
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blossom
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by blossom »

For some reason I neglected to review the four characters' special attacks in my OP. I guess because it feels a bit too opinionated and also because I'm trash with Maple and Ridmie. However, part of the reason I'm trash with these two is I'm compelled to score in this game. It's too fun not to make the attempt. Maple and Ridmie are the destroyer of worlds, which is just the antithesis to this game's scoring system. You want enemies to stay alive as long as possible to cancel as many bullets as possible, and unless you are extremely careful these two aren't going to allow for that. Nanathy's weaker fire power organically creates more bullets to cancel simply because enemies take a bit longer to kill. I don't think they're ever alive long enough to give you real concern for your life in comparison to Eve, but it's definitely noticeable in the multiplier.

Another thing that Nanathy and Maple can do is cancel their special midway into it, which I feel makes them closer to ESP Ra.De. than Eve and Ridmie. I feel it can be tricky to manage when to use only half of your special, which is why I think Eve is more popular: all you really need to do is hold down the special button and you'll fire every time it's ready.

I used to think Maple was secretly the best scoring character in the game. Now, honestly she confuses me. Someone much more clever than me will eventually find a way to use her effectively. Although her bombs are so destructive that she will kill enemies you want to remain alive.... yeah, like I said she's in an odd place.
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wht11
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by wht11 »

I'd like to add something not mentioned here (or elsewhere but excuse me if it was). I find it somewhat useful to at least partly offset the drawback of not having a separate slow+no shot movement.

Going from no-shooting (or from special shot) into held shot has quite a huge delay before the hitbox appears and movement slows. This does not happen when pressing both auto-shot and slow-shot at the same time: then movement slow + hitbox are immediate. This helps significantly with movement control in some situations.

So it can end up used similar to a standard separate slow key because knowing the above this is exactly how I'm using it (often unnecessarily having both shot keys pressed in slow, oh well).
eadmaster
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by eadmaster »

I've found a way to play the game in tate mode by starting in Window mode + using this tool to scale and center the window (works with other stg as well).

Btw, do you know if there is a patch/update to allow saving the replay and hiscore after pausing?
Malice
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by Malice »

Can someone please help me? I can't post.
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Despatche
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Re: GD: Eden's Aegis

Post by Despatche »

The "no saving after pausing" thing seems to be a deliberate choice on the part of the developer. It's in nearly all of his games except the very earliest ones (which have score saving but no replays), and it's mentioned in the documentation of said games.
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