broken harbour wrote:Started Mars Matrix for the first time and HOLY BALLS IS THIS HARD! I after using 3 credits and game overing on the first stage I went back and set the difficulty as easy as it would go and made it to stage 3. I thought Giga Wing was a bit rough wow was I wrong. Feels like a heavy memorizer, especially some of those boss patterns Jesus. Is there a way to slow the ship movement down? My copy is japanese so I can't read the manual. I find the denser patterns fought to dodge because the ship is so twitchy.
You could try the red ship, it's slower, and therefore easier to control. The ship also gets a little slower if you can level it up to level 5, though that's probably not something you should be worrying about. Game over on stage 1 seems extreme, though, most people make it to the stage 2 boss or so (which is a lot easier than it at first seems) Perhaps there's something you're not getting...? You do know that slow tap (or L trigger) will give you a short range very powerful attack, right? and holding the A button will activate the shield (like in Giga Wing, though the shield can be used for as short as you want). I also really don't recommend using the normal shot autofire (X), though it's not terrible or anything, just a little slower to activate the shield (same with the piercing cannon autofire, but it does make things a bit easier anyway). The lower difficulties don't actually make it much easier, IMO.
The secret to survival is mastering the tap shield technique (meaning holding down the shield for a split second to get rid of the bullets directly around you. It recharges pretty fast if you keep the duration short).
Also, should be noted that the bullets tend to be way sparser than almost any other bullet hell game. We're talking ship-size or greater gaps most of the time.
If you want, my
1cc video might be helpful, though There are others that are much more survival focused such as
Captain Ransom's, or if you have a niconico account,
this one (neither of these players is using autofire, Ransom's is the CPS2 version in MAME, but the differences are small)
The strategy videos that you can buy in the shop are also pretty useful.