Just me or is Daifukkatsu poorly balanced for survival?

[cave hermit]

With most Cave games I get killed off pretty quickly, but in Daifukkatsu it just seems like all the ship styles make it incredibly easy to survive to stage 4: with bomb style you essentially have 12 lives with 1ups at the end of most stages, with power style you get near constant hypers that prevent anything from getting near you (assuming you can react to lasers), and strong style seems deliberately broken. I get that it's supposed to be a little more accessible to new players, and that things get harder near the end, but it seems counter intuitive for an arcade game to let players survive so long on average. Am I the only one who feels this way, or...

[mastermx]

You aren't the only one. That is my gripe with dfk too. I prefer DOJ tbh. It was just much more hard core I feel.

[nasty_wolverine]

though i do agree that DFK strong seems a bit broken and the fact that DOJ is godly, you are playing it wrong.
be a man and play DFK BL. and for fuck sake, raise the rank high.

[CStarFlare]

Power Style is the only decent way to play Daifukkatsu.

[cave hermit]

I'd love to play Black label given the good things I hear about it, but I'm not going through the trouble of opening up a European Xbox live account just for this one mode.

[nasty_wolverine]

I'd love to play Black label given the good things I hear about it, but I'm not going through the trouble of opening up a European Xbox live account just for this one mode.

Well bad for u...

[PurpleTheGuy]

Yeah, I was kind of actually thinking about that, when I got my first 1cc in DoDonPachi DFK on the same day I received the game in the mail back last wednesday. I was quite surprised that I actually did that in about an hour or so. Before I got this game, I was getting ready to be prepared for anything in this one, since this would be my 1st lick at the DoDonPachi series. I didn't think I would get it, just like that, at least for the 1cc. Maybe because I was playing as strong mode, I don't know, though I took real note of the auto-bombing in this game, I didn't expect I'd have auto-bombing in this one... Anyhow, I can't fairly say anything for sure, until I get the real gists of the game and get quite a bit of playing hours for this one, which includes trying to play for score, which will be sometime soon.

Yeah, sure wish I could get the Black Label version of this, if I only had a Japanese Xbox 360. Oh well, I'll get it someday, no doubt. Dang.

[mastermx]

Yeah, I was kind of actually thinking about that, when I got my first 1cc in DoDonPachi DFK on the same day I received the game in the mail back last wednesday. I was quite surprised that I actually did that in about an hour or so. Before I got this game, I was getting ready to be prepared for anything in this one, since this would be my 1st lick at the DoDonPachi series. I didn't think I would get it, just like that, at least for the 1cc. Maybe because I was playing as strong mode, I don't know...

Wow dude, you 1cced the game on the first day! Can't believe they'd make the game like that. I don't have the game tbh, I tried it before buying it and didn't like the difficulty. So I put it off until I get a hang of DOJ. But hearing this seriously surprises me. I always pictured cave to pride themselves on arcade games and challenge. But auto bomb completely kills it for me.

What changes does BL make to the game? Does it alter the difficulty?

[PurpleTheGuy]

Yeah, I was kind of actually thinking about that, when I got my first 1cc in DoDonPachi DFK on the same day I received the game in the mail back last wednesday. I was quite surprised that I actually did that in about an hour or so. Before I got this game, I was getting ready to be prepared for anything in this one, since this would be my 1st lick at the DoDonPachi series. I didn't think I would get it, just like that, at least for the 1cc. Maybe because I was playing as strong mode, I don't know...

Wow dude, you 1cced the game on the first day! Can't believe they'd make the game like that. I don't have the game tbh, I tried it before buying it and didn't like the difficulty. So I put it off until I get a hang of DOJ. But hearing this seriously surprises me. I always pictured cave to pride themselves on arcade games and challenge. But auto bomb completely kills it for me.

What changes does BL make to the game? Does it alter the difficulty?

Well, I mean, I only played the game on the novice difficulty so far, so that's pretty much why I said I don't know and don't want to really say for sure, but even then, at that moment, it did surprise me a lot, since I kinda expected something quite like, woah, kind of deal, being my very first time playing the DoDonPachi series. I did prepare myself for anything up to that point. Yeah, I've played what could be considered a pretty good amount of shmups, although they were mostly doujin games, online shmups, and not long ago, Deathsmiles (That game was my first lick at Cave's games in-general, and that was a lot of fun, that one), and even then, I just didn't know what to expect, since I made the decision a few months ago, that I will dedicate part of myself to getting good at shmups in-general, and not just be playing mostly Touhou all the time. When I play the game a bit more, and get a feel around, then I'll come back, and say something more for sure.

Yeah, I do like to wonder about the BL version. I know it's pretty nice, and I sure wish I could have it on me physically, but alas... One day, though.

[mastermx]

So it was on novice difficulty. I thought you played it on the default arcade difficulty. That makes more sense now. I thought you were a sight reading/pattern recognising deity for a second there. To clear a shmup without hours of familiarisation is a feat very few people can do. I guess playing on novice is a good way to get acquainted to a shmup.

[PurpleTheGuy]

So it was on novice difficulty. I thought you played it on the default arcade difficulty. That makes more sense now. I thought you were a sight reading/pattern recognising deity for a second there. To clear a shmup without hours of familiarisation is a feat very few people can do. I guess playing on novice is a good way to get acquainted to a shmup.

Yeah, I did that on Novice difficulty, so yeah, lol. Well, don't I just sure wish I were, that would be quite the natural talent indeed, ahaha. Yeah, I played that to get acquainted with the game, so it's really not much. I'll see, when I do get further along after I clear up some stuff on my end and me getting to play more often afterward, but yeah, just seeing this title made me think a little about what I think so far, at the moment.

[NTSC-J]

So it was on novice difficulty. I thought you played it on the default arcade difficulty. That makes more sense now. I thought you were a sight reading/pattern recognising deity for a second there. To clear a shmup without hours of familiarisation is a feat very few people can do. I guess playing on novice is a good way to get acquainted to a shmup.

A lot of people beat the default arcade DFK on their first try. For me, it was my second (try as I might, I can't beat any easy STG on my first try...I still need that warm-up credit to learn the controls). It's one of the easiest STGs purely playing for survival, which is a shame because people tend to overlook how brutal it is playing for score.

The auto-bomb was a big mistake for this game in the arcades because it meant that when someone made a mistake and stopped playing, the next player would have to wait a while for the credit to run itself out.

[mastermx]

I wonder if the game centers liked that... I thought arcade games were made so that the players' runs were short yet addictive. Moe runs, moe money.

[Skykid]

You must play power style. Even then, yes, it's lopsided for survival, and gets boring to continually waltz your way to stage 5 to suddenly be tested.

Playing for score makes it much more interesting IMO, although it's certainly a scoring system that could have used a few tweaks.

[trap15]

I'M FEELING THE DAIFUKKATSU MEH

[nasty_wolverine]

What changes does BL make to the game? Does it alter the difficulty?

It makes the game awesome.

joking aside:
- adds a choice of autobomb or not. you cant stack hypers in autobomb mode, which is bad for scoring.
- you can hold shot and laser together for maximum damage. fires normal shots and laser together. its how you raise rank.
- adds reddo gauge. its shows current rank, you cant gain hits or hyper unless the bar is red, for max points you gotta keep the bar full.
- strong mode is actually a challenge in this version. has ura loop pattern for lulz.
- adds awesome music.
- although, black label makes certain parts milkable, its not that terribly bad.
- TLB difficulty increased

edit:
- only one loop, no crazy two loop shenanigans

[kathy]

If cave removed the laser wheels from stage 5, DFK would be a cool relaxing game... I wonder how many times people have thrown 360 controllers or bitch slapped cabinets as a result of getting screwed by them..

[Illyrian]

If cave removed the laser wheels from stage 5, DFK would be a cool relaxing game... I wonder how many times people have thrown 360 controllers or bitch slapped cabinets as a result of getting screwed by them..

Here we gooooooooo.......

[Bananamatic]

daifukkatsu has two loops
you beat only the first

[Erppo]

- TLB difficulty increased

Uhh what?

You forgot to say that every single enemy that's not popcorn cancels their bullets when killed making sure you never have to dodge much, even if you're not sitting in a corner with a hyper (which often happens to be the optimal way to play the game).

[Chaos Phoenixma]

get Black Label for the awesome sound track since you can use it in 1.5, then play 1.5 instead because it's a much better playing game even with the autobomb. You'll be thankful for the autobomb once you get to the second loop with some of the ridiculous patterns there since if you don't have hypers at a lot of them, you can expect to get hit because they're extremely fast and dense so good luck dodging it without slowing them down with hyper. Black Label still has the flaws of 1.5 and adds more stupid broken stuff to the game, and it doesn't even play like a DoDonPachi game.

Both 1.5 and Black Label have boss milking stuff, but you'd have to ask someone familiar with the milks how different they are in that regard.

You do realize that to get into the harder second loop, you have a limit of 2 bombs, 1 death(Power style only), and must get all 45 bees. My best loop 1 runs on 1.5 were 3 bomb runs that still had max resources at the end of the loop. Getting denied Ura on that just sucked. But I only ever got Ura on Novice.

As for how to properly play 1.5. Well, you're supposed to try to chain, but if you don't care for that, you should still try to minimize your hyper use unless you need it to carry a chain, at the start of levels to build up hit, or if you really need it because bullets get harder to cancel. Also in loop 2, bullets canceled with the hyper at high Hyper ranks will often turn into another bullet that is aimed at your ship, and if you're spamming hypers, it's harder to cancel them so it becomes quite deadly.

I don't really like the importance of not using the Hypers later on in 1.5 since you get multipliers based on your hit count when hyper bar is full, but the way Black Label handles it is still wrong. 1.51 rewards you for Hypering a lot, but that version is also pretty broken. Even though I tried, I just couldn't get into any version of DFK as they all have some serious issues to me, but I spent most of my time with 1.5 as I found it the most balanced one.

[endoKarb]

It's one of the easiest STGs purely playing for survival

I feel that's a misconception.

Playing for survival is not the same as playing for the 1CC.

Abusing DFK autobomb system to earn cheap 1CCs is (really) boring, and easy.
Playing DFK for actual survival, with a no miss no bomb attitude/mentality, is fun, fair and challenging.

Can't say the same thing about DFK Black. That really feels only fun to play for score.

[nasty_wolverine]

- TLB difficulty increased

Uhh what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoDonPachi ... lack_Label on changes from DFK 1.5 to DFK BL

Can't say the same thing about DFK Black. That really feels only fun to play for score.

cancelling bullets to large stars feels so satisfying.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

You mean the same canceling people complain about 1.5 having and being more overpowered since hyper rank isn't as big a deal in Black Label unless you're on Strong style because only that mode uses the second loop patterns.

Which brings a question. Why didn't they let you choose Bomb/Power/Strong style first loop patterns and Bomb/Power/Strong style second loop patterns as difficulty modes?

[Erppo]

- TLB difficulty increased

Uhh what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoDonPachi ... lack_Label on changes from DFK 1.5 to DFK BL

Haha, wow. I'm going assume the person who wrote that hasn't actually played either TLB. Taisa is utterly trivial in BL thanks to the bomb recharge and they actually added safespots into Hibachi. The final is also really easy with the bomb ships as you can abuse the hyper cancel.

Ps. Accroding to Wikipedia, in the Omote loop of Ketsui "the scrolling direction is inverted".

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Zatsuza? Or is the only hard thing about that getting to it? I know the requirement means you'll always have the resources needed to beat it, but is it still a difficult fight?

I suck at both versions of Hibachi, but i'd say 1.5's a little harder because Black Label has the silly Hyper Cancel trick. Maybe it's harder with Power Style, but I wouldn't seriously go for a hibachi clear with that style on any version or at all really.

[Erppo]

Zatsuza? Or is the only hard thing about that getting to it? I know the requirement means you'll always have the resources needed to beat it, but is it still a difficult fight?

I have no first hand experience on this one, but all the replays I've seen seem to indicate that all the same tricks you use at Hibachi work there too. It probably takes more resources but you're going to have a lot of them. It's also not possible to get the fight with a Power ship, which is normally the only way to make Hibachi difficult to beat.

[nasty_wolverine]

Haha, wow. I'm going assume the person who wrote that hasn't actually played either TLB. Taisa is utterly trivial in BL thanks to the bomb recharge and they actually added safespots into Hibachi. The final is also really easy with the bomb ships as you can abuse the hyper cancel.

Ps. Accroding to Wikipedia, in the Omote loop of Ketsui "the scrolling direction is inverted".

did not know it was bullshit.

[trap15]

Never trust Wikipoo Especially for niche things.

[ACSeraph]

I've never put much effort into either version of DFK, but be it 1.5 or BL I always end up dying at stage 5 either way. It definitely does feel unbalanced for survival though, since it's pretty easy all the way to the last stage and then becomes way more difficult very suddenly. I don't mind stage 5 being really hard, but the game needs to get work it's way into that difficulty progressively to stay interesting. Deathsmiles suffers from the same issues in a survival run actually.

It's one of the easiest STGs purely playing for survival, which is a shame because people tend to overlook how brutal it is playing for score.

Definitely. I saw Adversity1 playing this for score at the arcade a few weeks back, and it's like he was playing a completely different game from what I had played.