GD: Dimahoo Play mechanics

For posting and requesting strategic gameplay tips on shmups!
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Pointman
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GD: Dimahoo Play mechanics

Post by Pointman »

Actually spent some time with this one and came away surprisingly taken with it. However I was wondering, as it's a game from the mischievers at Raizing, is there any hidden ranking system that I should be aware of? The collecting items part seems very deep, but I hope it's just a case of getting as powered up as I can and then getting medieval on the item collecting. As much as I like Garegga the ranking system in that just mystifies me.



<changed RQ to GD -inc.>
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

If I remember correctly, the ranking system is tied to how many of the 108 individual items you have collected. The more sets you complete (or are close to completing), the more difficult it gets.

The times when I've managed to complete the Shoes and the Food sets on stage 1, as well as picking up the Pinwheel, the Fairy (from Busturtle's tail) and the Jewel (from Busturtle's head), have seen the following stage kicking it up a gear. However, if you just play blindly and disregard the completion of items sets, you shouldn't really encounter any kind of dangerous rank system.
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Pointman
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Post by Pointman »

Ah right, that kinda makes sense. At least it's not some super annoying suicide mission like Garegga hence making it more accessible to me :) I'm surprised no company has gone back to this kind of scoring system, probably one of the deepest I've encountered. Cheers for the assist.
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landshark
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Post by landshark »

The really good players constantly complete the exact same sets every time they run through. I'm not sure exactly how they do this.

When I play, completing sets is pretty much a crap shoot. I don't know why they made it so difficult to view the items list (c'mon, using the START button!?).

That would have been useful to have tied to a button by itself.

I find it difficult to scroll through the lists while trying to time a charge shot.

I usually complete 2 sets on the first level, but after that it's dumb luck as I have no idea what spits out what. Oh, except for 1 enemy in level 3 (the miniboss turret thing) ... I know that one.

I love this game though. Great music, EXCELLENT bosses... so many parts you can optionally blow up for special items if you have the patience and skill.

Like level 2's boss. Destroy the sides to reveal dragon heads. Destroy the dragon heads to get at the propellers. Destroying each propeller with a level 8 charge gives a special item (100k x Multiplier).
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

landshark wrote:The really good players constantly complete the exact same sets every time they run through. I'm not sure exactly how they do this.
Great Mahou is all about charge shot timing. The top level players know when to use a charge shot, how powerful it should be, and where, in order to generate the items that they require. During the early stages, top level players play with the charge attack only, to leave as many enemies on screen as possible to get items from.

In stage 1, for example, you can complete both Food and Shoes just by:
  • using a level 3 charge on the first group of tanks (before the six tanks and the first red dragon)
  • then a level 5 or 6 charge on the drill turrets and tanks that appear after the red dragon (along with the large tank on the right side)
  • then a level 7 charge on the tanks that appear soon after (along with the flying goblin gunner)
  • then finally a level 8 charge on the blue and green dragons before the boss.
Remember that Shot will also generate items while a Charge is active, and even when your charge shot has finished and the gauge is depleting, you can still get items using Shot while the gauge is emptying.

Every stage can be planned in this manner. Of course you can blast through, getting level 8 items all the time, and maybe you'll get lucky with the set collecting (or you can just concentrate on collecting all the Items of Legend), but if you are serious about scoring high, then you'll need to think about charge shot strategy.

I still have the complete list of Items of Legend and their requirements somewhere. I also know of a trick to generate all the missing Items of Legend from the two sets of monster chests on stage 4. If I can dig up my old notes, I'll post an ST guide here (after I finish with the other four guides ;)).
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Rastan78
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Post by Rastan78 »

Secret items list here.

Level four treasure chest discussion here.

High rank can bring out more enemies and also more chances to charge shot for complete sets. An example is the stage 2 flying tank carriers. Isn't it funny how this cloud level with large flying ships staggered to the left and right appears in Garegga, Bakraid and Dimahoo? I'd be willing to bet we'll see something similar in Ibara too.
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

Rastan78 wrote:Isn't it funny how this cloud level with large flying ships staggered to the left and right appears in Garegga, Bakraid and Dimahoo? I'd be willing to bet we'll see something similar in Ibara too.
After Garegga, they kind of liked using a Cloud style stage. Soukyugurentai had a sort of Cloud stage (stage 3, no platforms though), while Batrider had something similar with the Sky High stage (again, minus the platforms). I definitely know that Ibara has a Sky High stage (featuring Shasta as the boss, see Arcadia 60 scans on my site), dunno if it'll have floating platforms though ;)

Guess we'll find out in June, when the game is released.

Thanks for the links to the items list and chests info. All we need to do now is try and salvage the preliminary items-from-enemies data that was on the old forum :(
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landshark
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Post by landshark »

Well, I played about 5 games of Dimahoo today. Every one I completed shoes and food in the first level. (One of them I had to use the boss to finish my food). Level 1 isn't an issue.

It's the rest of them. I don't know what to go for or what to aim for. I'm starting to be able to get the propellers of the level 2 boss as well for special items.

But completing sets is still ridiculously hard for me.
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Rastan78
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Post by Rastan78 »

Yeah, I've studied the Clover-TAC and YMN replays pretty carefully and it's still a mystery as to how these guys are completing the sets so quickly. It doesn't help that the quality of the replays is low so it's difficult to see the details.

They must be destroying more stuff while the charge shot is already winding down through the levels to get a better variety of items per charge shot. I've actually (through luck really) completed an entire set in one level 8 charge shot towards the beginning of level one so I'm thinking that's a big part of it.

Does anyone feel like the bosses in this game are almost disproportionately challenging as far as survival? Going through the stages on 1 life without bombing doesn't really get tough for me until level four and five, but by level 2 the bosses are already getting tough. Level 4 boss and on from there? WOW! Tough to believe the score on this game has actually been counter stopped.
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

Rastan78 wrote:They must be destroying more stuff while the charge shot is already winding down through the levels to get a better variety of items per charge shot. I've actually (through luck really) completed an entire set in one level 8 charge shot towards the beginning of level one so I'm thinking that's a big part of it.
That's exactly the strategy I've been trying to describe.
Icarus wrote:Remember that Shot will also generate items while a Charge is active, and even when your charge shot has finished and the gauge is depleting, you can still get items using Shot while the gauge is emptying.
If you watch the replays carefully, you'll see both players "throwing" the charge shot in a direction that won't affect too many enemies, and while the charge is active and then winding down, they use Shot to destroy enemies.

By learning how strong your charge shot should be when you release it, and where to release it, you can build up about 80-100% of the main sets (not the Legend Items) by around stage 3. From there, it's a case of using the monster chests to complete the normal sets, or to complete the Items of Legend.
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Post by landshark »

Rastan78 wrote:Yeah, I've studied the Clover-TAC and YMN replays pretty carefully and it's still a mystery as to how these guys are completing the sets so quickly. It doesn't help that the quality of the replays is low so it's difficult to see the details.
It's just downright amazing how quick they rack up the sets. I don't even realize it's happened until they get to the treasure boxes and all these legends pop out.

I've tried playing several times with Solobang and I just die too easily. I play best with Kar-something.

[url]
Does anyone feel like the bosses in this game are almost disproportionately challenging as far as survival? Going through the stages on 1 life without bombing doesn't really get tough for me until level four and five, but by level 2 the bosses are already getting tough. Level 4 boss and on from there? WOW! Tough to believe the score on this game has actually been counter stopped.[/quote]

The bosses in this game are pretty tough. I'm yet to actually make it to level 5's boss on 1 credit. I often get up to the blue miniboss and die because I'm out of bombs and have issues weaving through the slivers.

I popped another credit yesterday and beat level 5's boss using only 1 bomb for the first time... now if I could just get down to no bombs. It's that damned right side that screws me up and makes me panic bomb.

I think I'll go play.
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matt
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Post by matt »

Rastan78 wrote:They must be destroying more stuff while the charge shot is already winding down through the levels to get a better variety of items per charge shot. I've actually (through luck really) completed an entire set in one level 8 charge shot towards the beginning of level one so I'm thinking that's a big part of it.
I don't think so. While winding down the charge shot can help fill up some random slots in the beginning, it's not predictable enough to be consistent. While you can get lucky and complete most of a set with one or two shots this way, it's also easy to screw up and wind up with crap that you don't need. There are a couple of spots in levels 1 and 2 where it's good to do this, since by this point you'll still be mising a lot of stuff, but most of the time it's not very productive.

There's no trick to it - to get high multiplier, you just have to memorize what enemies will give you what items, and work out a plan to kill them in the proper order. In general, it's best to put most of your energy into collecting the rarer items as opposed to the common ones. For example, it's really easy to collect food and shoes in level 1. But, if you just focus on them, you'll miss out on a lot of axes, staffs, and necklaces. Shoes and food are everywhere in the game, so if you miss some you can easily get more later. I usually concentrate on getting axes and staffs in level 1; usually I can complete them near the beginning of level 2 and move on to other stuff like swords, armour, etc. The shoes/food typically come by accident.

And, of course, it's needs to be said that regular items are absolutely the "bread and butter" of Dimahoo scoring! Getting the flashy items is great for showing off, but it doesn't make a huge score difference until later on when you've got a gigantic multiplier. Unless you are a shooter god, avoid the hard-to-get items and wait until the turtles start showing up in levels 4 and 5. Remember that two treasure chests or ten swords are worth the same as a secret item, and they're much easier to grab.
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

Been so long since I last played this, that I've forgotten how to access the in-game Items List. Can someone remind me? Something to do with the START button, right? Help me, please -_-;;;
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Post by landshark »

Hold start for a sec or two and hit the fire button. After activating it, you can cycle through it with start. (played it today)
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Post by Icarus »

Okay, thanks ^_^ (What a really fiddly method...)
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Post by landshark »

That's my biggest complaint about the game. I wish there was a display on the screen that was always there. Kind of like an overlay similar to the end-of-level graph.

The whole fiddling with the start button is aweful. I'm not sure how the control panel was setup in the arcades, but on my mame machine I have a regular button mapped to start so I can easily hit it.
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Post by Icarus »

The closest you have to an actual display is the items popup next to the bomb meter. The only problem being that its all the way down there, away from the action, and isn't really that informative to begin with. The Items List that you can call up is better, but slightly intrusive.

It is handy for seeing what you have to get though, especially if you know what you can get on each stage.

I'm using MAME at the mo' (since I just sold my CPS2 set) and it's a bit easier to bring up the list now, as I map Start to the left shoulder trigger on the Saturn USB pad ^_-

Gonna pop off and give the game a go ^_-
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Post by landshark »

I play through mame too (on a cab), and I have it mapped to a button near my thumb (think Ultimate MK button layout).
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Post by zinger »

I'm trying to figure out how to play this game ATM, how does the multiplier system work?
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Post by shoe-sama »

The charge gauge is built up naturally by destroying enemies or manually by charging (some delay before it starts filling). Rate varies between characters. More charge = higher multiplier and stronger charge shot.
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Post by zinger »

Hmm, okay. I'm still confused though, I've managed to activate the multiplier three or four times only (2 x item), and I use full charge as much as possible. :?
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Post by Macaw »

Your multiplyer increases everytime you collect an entire item set. Completing shoes and food for example means you will have a x3 multiplyer.

The level of your charge shot merely affects the level of items destroyed enemies drop.
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landshark
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Post by landshark »

If you charge your shot up to level 3, and then kill an enemy that releases say Shoes, a level-3 shoe item will show up. Get it. You now need to get level 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 shoes to complete the Shoe Set.

Do that for all items.
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Post by guigui »

Once I get a full set, my multiplier increases by one. What happens to this multiplier if I die ?
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Post by Ruldra »

Nothing :P The multiplier stays there for the rest of the run.
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Post by guigui »

Ruldra wrote:Nothing :P The multiplier stays there for the rest of the run.
Cool. Now I just gotta try it.
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Re:

Post by plasticxo »

landshark wrote:Hold start for a sec or two and hit the fire button. After activating it, you can cycle through it with start. (played it today)
I'm now focusing on this amazing game, but I can't manage to activate the ingame item list.

Is it just by holding start and then pressing the A button anytime during the game ? I tried several time (Start+A or Start then A), but nothing happens :?:
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Re: RQ: Dimahoo Play mechanics

Post by plasticxo »

I finally managed to make it work. It seems you need to have collected at least 1 item to display the list.
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Re: GD: Dimahoo Play mechanics

Post by AKRATEN »

Anyone know how to bring up the item screen in game?
:?
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Ruldra
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Re: GD: Dimahoo Play mechanics

Post by Ruldra »

Hold start for a second, then press shot. Keep pressing start to cycle the list and hold start again to close it.
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