Ikaruga is actually a really good game

[Strikers1945guy]

How many people here that absolutely love this game play it for score? Usually this game kills most people's enjoyment once they go for score. Survival is just dot eater. Uh oh white bullets coming switch to white ship. Sit there absorb bullets. Uh oh black bullets coming switch to black ship. Sit there absorb bullets.

Also I don't mind the brown and grey or lack of color at all that's never been off putting to me.

[Blinge]

Dot Eater huh? how far can you get in the game without firing a single shot?
I loved the game when I played for survival only, and that was while shooting stuff. Now I'm trying to improve score and still love it.

Not really sure what your point is mate. Squire's stressed this already but people should stop considering score play on absolute terms. You can be playing for a better score, not always trying to learn 100% optimal best score for 30mil every time.

And only 4 people on our scoreboard have reached 30 mil anyway.

I mostly hate it because a bunch of people I know got it for either Gamecube or XBLA, played it enough to learn how to full chain the entire first stage, and then never played another shmup again.

Haha, I still fail ST1 half the time and i'm sitting on 25mil.

[Giest118]

I think this game would be better if it was more honest about what it is: DDR with three extra inputs.

But, not being the world record holder on Ikaruga, my opinion is just useless horseshit for idiots.

[qmish]

Dance Dance Ikaruga?

And which stg is Pop'n'Music then?

[Giest118]

Dance Dance Ikaruga?

And which stg is Pop'n'Music then?

DoDonPachi Die Fuck Cats

[Blinge]

But, not being the world record holder on Ikaruga, my opinion is just useless horseshit for idiots.

True, but that's nothing to do with your score.

[Giest118]

Hey man, there's nothing wrong with liking DDR.

[xxx1993]

I prefer Radiant Silvergun. Despite its nutty scoring, methodical pace and epic length, it's so grandiose, beautiful looking/sounding, and wonderfully creative at every turn, it's like ten glorious shmups rolled into one.

I think it's kind of obvious Ikaruga is a good game. "Really good" depends how you take to it, it's definitely got some unique elements you can either get into or find grating. For me it's sort of 50/50. Every time I pick it up again I feel myself drawn to its alternative elements, and then it starts to irritate me all over again.

But Radiant Silvergun has a bleak ending compared to Ikaruga... Also, Radiant Silvergun isn't really that long of a shmup. Now that I'm all powered up and maxed out all my lives, I play the game on the hardest difficulty and it takes me an hour to beat it if I watch all the cutscenes.

[Shepardus]

An hour is still pretty long for a shmup (which mostly range from 20-35 minutes excluding multiple loops and/or milking), not to mention that if you're starting the game with full power you're not playing the same game (it's like credit feeding through a game and saying it's easy). And I don't understand why you're so fixated on the ending being bleak, as if that makes the game worse somehow.

[ciox]

I was waiting for something like this, here's my take on reasons for all the misinformation, and I'm talking about the bulk of it and not simple discussions of taste or the opinions of superplayers which I will not dispute:

1. a torrent of bad memes about the game originating from people taking Xoxak's review at face value. people pass it around like gospel on some forums. it's a sad and probably unintended consequence but hey, people want their memes. you can tell the meme load of this game is heavy because the same criticisms are never raised against other games that deserve them because there's no meme connecting criticism x to game y in a brief and funny way.

2. average players posturing as superplayers, superplayers who might have authentic complaints about how unfun it is to optimize the game from 30 million to the maximum of 36 million when there's no new strategies and it's all execution, and who can also reach that 30 million stage much faster than normal players (my experience: I've played the game intensively for over a year and am at 21 million and I'm still finding new strats that dare me to engage them everywhere in the stages, my playstyle looks very different from superplays and I'll include some footage towards the bottom of this post)

3. bias emerging from rudimentary stabs at understanding game design philosophy, if you fail miserably at Garegga (you can barely unlock any of its potential) it's because the game is so good since you've read all about rank and how crazy is the system that pulled a fast one on you, if you fail miserably at Ikaruga (again, you can barely unlock any of its potential) it's because the game is so bad since you've already heard how you can't score or survive in this game unless you play it like it's one long Street Fighter combo, so why try at all.
this is what enables even entry-level players to write entire essays that praise Garegga or some Cave game and then badmouth Ikaruga without seeming to have experienced any aspect of it, I won't link to them but they're out there and pretty much a tornado of rehashed memes and barely-informed "muh garegga".
--

Now let me address the rigidity issues.
Check it out, this is stage 2 played by me on the left and by a japanese superplayer on the right (you can click on each video to see it more clearly) anyway apart from some spots where I stay away from extra chains purely because I'm not ready for them yet, you can tell that we both chain as hard but in pretty different ways, this should be impossible since the game is basically DDR right? Here's what I'm doing as opposed to the "accepted" way:

Spoiler

- at the beginning I prefer to stay safe around the bottom of the screen, then dart around and snipe enemies one by one as I see them, a simpler strategy that puts more pressure on you to dodge the incoming popcorn enemies since you are killing them more slowly, especially towards the end, still the playstyle does not break down in any way just because it's not by the book and I can imagine it being even more efficient with a little more concentration, some chains are missed just because I play it safe

- when the large formation of enemies comes up I prefer to just impatiently blast them all away instead of waiting to take it apart piece by piece, the game doesn't mind this and I can speedkill the remaining enemies with ease instead of having to cherrypick them from the middle of the big formation

- after descending and being surrounded by the two wheels of popcorn, here I still haven't nailed down the real strategy where you shoot through both and kill them so fast that you get 5 additional wheels, instead I have my own strategy based on darting around and sniping enemies that the game again allows and it gives me 3 wheels which is not bad

- when going through the area with boxes and spawning descending popcorns, the common superplayer strat is to just sit on one side and blast the enemies on the other side with homing shots, I don't do that since it's simple enough to polarity shift through the barriers and shoot them manually, using the homing shots does make things easier on Hard however

- for the rest of the stage there are many instances where I stick to just polarity-ing around like crazy and shooting enemies manually instead of using memorized spots for launching your homing shots, this doesn't affect my chaining or survival, I don't engage a few chains like the destructible popcorn launchers but that's an explicit choice and not some weakness of the strategy I employ, only at the very end does not using homing cost me since the faster you kill the big enemies the more rows of popcorn enemies will spawn right before the boss

- in the end I get 77% of the superplay score, with many off-beat tactics and totally skipped chains and situations as I make up my own route around the stage, it's easy to imagine this percentage being higher too while still playing in an original way

I can post more videos to demonstrate just how far you can diverge from the superplayer path while still maintaining good scoring at the 60-70% world record level (and hopefully higher as I have a lot of improvement to do that does not center around copying superplayer routes), 60-70% is the level that your average player is likely to reach and hover at, not the 95-99% of the world record level where you have super player problems like excessive rigidity and pressure on picture perfect execution.

[juonryu2nd]

I haven't played it, but I don't like it because it's popular.

[Giest118]

DDR also allows you to deviate from "the path" with the exact same consequence: you get less points.



I wasn't expecting such an essay of analysis in response to a shitpost which called its own thesis useless horseshit, though. In response and out of respect I'll give more complete thoughts as to my experience with Ikaruga.

I liked it for a little while; I had a fun time making stuff explode with the game's nice sound effects and graphics and whatnot, and the polarity switching mechanic, while it took a bit to wrap my head around, was fun and nifty once I got the hang of it.

Where it started to rub me the wrong way was in the way extends work, which is to say, their inclusion almost makes no sense. You get extends by scoring high, and you score high by playing like a badass, and if you're playing like a badass, you don't need extends in the first place because you're playing like a badass. I wouldn't give a shit about this, except that I like to play for survival first when I play shmups, and to that end, I like to learn how to score well enough to get some extends. After all, extends are handy when trying to 1cc a game, since, you know, they let you die more and still get a 1cc. So I had this game where it felt like survival was linked to scoring well, but when one analyzes it properly, the relationship between survival and score is much harder to define.

But I would've been fine with that if I gelled better with the scoring system. Someone in this thread compared DoDonPachi chaining with Ikaruga chaining and made the claim that Ikaruga's less strict because it's not based on a timer. I would dispute this notion; while DoDonPachi chaining is "strict", it's strict in a way that's more intuitive. Conceptually, it's just making sure you're always blowing something up. It's easy to understand, and the game teaches it to you within about five seconds of stage 1 starting up.

Compare with Ikaruga chaining. In one way, it's the same; a mistake breaks your chain and you lose a bunch of score because of it. But how you break your chain is very different: in DoDonPachi, breaking your chain means you spent too long without blowing something up. In Ikaruga, you break your chain by blowing up the wrong thing. This is where Ikaruga really started to bug me on a very basic level; its chaining system isn't just strict, it's restrictive. Where DoDonPachi punishes you for not doing things, Ikaruga punishes you for doing the wrong thing or, more generally, for doing too many things. I play shooting games to shoot and dodge stuff, but Ikaruga interrupts the "shooting" part of that by punishing you for shooting.

This is part of why it runs counter to the inclusion of extends; in order to get extends, you need to score well, and in order to score well, you need to hold off on shooting in very specific ways, and while you're simultaneously not shooting and figuring out what to do with your shots, a combination of sensory overload and more enemies surviving for longer means that you're probably going to die. This occurs because you're trying to play for score, which you might be doing to get more extends, which is pointless because playing for score kills you. And if playing for score doesn't kill you, then you never needed the extends in the first place.

I guess the solution to my infinite feedback loop of hating the extends system would be to just not care and try to beat the game on only the starting resources, but that would mean missing out on all the much-touted depth of Ikaruga's level design. But since playing for score in the later stages feels like playing while having my cerebral cortex reached into and shaken by hands made entirely out of black and white shades, I found myself confused as to what the appeal was in the first place. It really did feel like I was trying to play Guitar Hero, but instead of the notes approaching on a linear path down the screen, they spin around and come from all sides and are sometimes invisible.

So, how far did I get with learning this game, after dealing with all of that? I remember getting an S rank on stage 1 at one point, and an A rank on stage 2, and from there I stopped caring because trying to score in the later stages felt like I was trying to play with my cerebral cortex chained to a wall. I almost got a 1cc once, but I choked on Tageri's last phase like an asshole.

Is this a useful analysis of Ikaruga's game design? Probably not. Like I said, my opinion on this game is useless horseshit for idiots. I guess my point is that when I first played this game, I really wanted to like it, but too many things about it annoyed me because it felt like playing DDR with none of the notes visible.

tl;dr this game's gay lol

[Shepardus]

Improve your scoring in earlier stages to get more extends, so you have more leeway on the later stages that you're not so good at. That's pretty much how any life system that lets you stock up a bunch of lives operates, from Ikaruga to Battle Garegga to Touhou, even if it's not necessarily score that gives you extends. Just because you're good at scoring in the first two stages and never die in those stages doesn't mean you're that confident on the rest of the stages, too. When getting my Easy 1cc I saved up my lives through the first four stages so I could die a bunch on the stage 5 boss and still clear. When you get to the point where you're good at all the stages then it doesn't matter how extends are given out, and you want them primarily for points anyway.

This gives you multiple ways to improve on your way to a clear - get better at the earlier stages, or get better at the parts in the later stages you're having most trouble with. The same thing applies to something like Battle Garegga rank management, where you can either get really good at Glow Squid, or forego resources in the earlier stages to manage your rank better.

In Dodonpachi, you often have to limit the amount of enemies you kill in order to keep your chain going. Your score suffers if you kill enemies too quickly, which "interrupts the shooting."

[Squire Grooktook]

Survival is just dot eater.

Have you cleared it? This has been said twice now, and I'm pretty sure it's just a result of Xoxaks old review. Refraining from shooting enemies is probably the worst thing you can do for survival past the early game.

How the hell do you survive anything in stage 4 without shooting? The only section I can think of in stage 3 that won't result in a clusterfuck if you don't shoot is when the checkerboard of ships come at you from top and bottom, but that's it. Even stage 1 and 2 are probably harder to play without shooting. If you want to survive in Ikaruga, you don't "not shoot". You shoot everything and say the hell with chains.

As score, Blinge has 25 mil and it's still one of his favorite games.

Uh oh white bullets coming switch to white ship. Sit there absorb bullets. Uh oh black bullets coming switch to black ship. Sit there absorb bullets.

This sounds like something someone would say who's only watched Xoxak's review (it's almost a direct quote) and hasn't played past stage 2.

And really, this exaggeration isn't much different from how other stg playstyles could be explained.

"uh oh, aimed spread coming, tap dodge right. Uh oh, big enemy coming, sit here and point blank. uh oh, stream coming, continuously tap left..."

I could see these complaints if everyone's favorite games were super rng heavy reaction games like Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Cho Ren Sha 68k hard, Rayforce, etc. but Ika is not significantly more static or sterile than many other popular shmups.

I think this game would be better if it was more honest about what it is: DDR with three extra inputs.

If this is true, many Pysikyo games are DDR with 2 extra inputs.

There are unavoidable rng sections in the game though, and several places where you'll have to sight read till you perfect your route. So DDR? Nah.

Compare with Ikaruga chaining. In one way, it's the same; a mistake breaks your chain and you lose a bunch of score because of it. But how you break your chain is very different: in DoDonPachi, breaking your chain means you spent too long without blowing something up. In Ikaruga, you break your chain by blowing up the wrong thing. This is where Ikaruga really started to bug me on a very basic level; its chaining system isn't just strict, it's restrictive. Where DoDonPachi punishes you for not doing things, Ikaruga punishes you for doing the wrong thing or, more generally, for doing too many things. I play shooting games to shoot and dodge stuff, but Ikaruga interrupts the "shooting" part of that by punishing you for shooting.

To me, there's a sense of freedom in this system. When you're starting out, any mistake can be recovered from with proper skill and creativity.

Also as Shepardus pointed out, DDP punishes you for doing too much too. To me, the most "intuitive" thing would be to speed kill everything as fast as possible, with any means necessary (see: Dangun Feveron). That doesn't sound like DDP chaining to me.

[Brochacho]

Ikaruga's a fine game. It has tight gameplay wrapped up in a stylistically bold presentation. It doesn't look, sound, or play quite like any other shmup.

...and I think that's the problem. If I had to pick one game to serve as The Shmup™ for mainstream audiences, the one game that most captures the essence of what shooters are and what makes them fun to play, I would never think to choose Ikaruga. Not because it's a bad game, but because it's simply too unique and focused to serve as a mascot for the entire genre. Unfortunately, that's what it has become. However, that's not a criticism of Ikaruga. Far from it.

[Blinge]

Cheers for elaborating, Geist.

Shepardus pretty much said all that needs to be said in response to you, but i'll add a little.

This is part of why it runs counter to the inclusion of extends; in order to get extends, you need to score well, and in order to score well, you need to hold off on shooting in very specific ways, and while you're simultaneously not shooting and figuring out what to do with your shots, a combination of sensory overload and more enemies surviving for longer means that you're probably going to die. This occurs because you're trying to play for score, which you might be doing to get more extends, which is pointless because playing for score kills you. And if playing for score doesn't kill you, then you never needed the extends in the first place.

This is why you just play survival but throw in a few chains here and there to begin with. In your run you may notice particular sections you can say "oh, that doesn't look too tough, I can chain these guys." So a score begins to be built. There's no need to view playing for score/survival as so black and white

I believe my first few clears happened when I'd only got 2/3 extends. 13mil doesn't require much hardcore chaining.
Also I still need all my extends most of the time, despite playing 'like a badass'

[Skykid]

I prefer Radiant Silvergun. Despite its nutty scoring, methodical pace and epic length, it's so grandiose, beautiful looking/sounding, and wonderfully creative at every turn, it's like ten glorious shmups rolled into one.

I think it's kind of obvious Ikaruga is a good game. "Really good" depends how you take to it, it's definitely got some unique elements you can either get into or find grating. For me it's sort of 50/50. Every time I pick it up again I feel myself drawn to its alternative elements, and then it starts to irritate me all over again.

But Radiant Silvergun has a bleak ending compared to Ikaruga...

Who gives a shit about the ending?

Also, Radiant Silvergun isn't really that long of a shmup.

What the fuck?

[Stevens]

Had I been in possession of the information in this thread when I first played Ikaruga I would most likely not burnt myself out on in.

That said I now have this information and would consider returning to it one day with a fresh mind set (and the three years leveling up won't hurt either). The truth is that it is a fantastic game, I just wasn't ready for it.

[Lobinden]

Interesting points made in this thread. I've always felt like the "it's a puzzle game not a shmup" criticism has been highly memetic in nature and the people who say it say it without really thinking about how exactly it could be a "puzzle game" and of course many other popular shmups could also be denounced as puzzle games using the same logic.

I have always "respected" ikaruga, I think it is a competently-made STG with a unique mechanic and great soundtrack (I wouldn't say it's as revolutionary to the genre as mainstream reviewers make it out to be, but the polarity mechanic is a unique twist on manic shooter gameplay) and frankly I've felt like anyone who's just saying that it's flat out shit is just hating on it because it's popular, but I personally just can't get into it. I don't think the game feels fast enough, but I also suck at Ikaruga so feel free to dismiss everything I'm saying. In the early stages of the game when you are first playing, you will probably be able to play better if you are bad at shmups, because you will use the polarity switches more, whereas people more familiar to the genre will instinctively want to dodge everything which obviously doesn't work, I think this is a major reason why lots of outsiders to the genre like Ikaruga and a lot of people like me can't get "into" it.

Although this thread is convincing me to give it another try.

[Cagar]

Compare with Ikaruga chaining. In one way, it's the same; a mistake breaks your chain and you lose a bunch of score because of it. But how you break your chain is very different: in DoDonPachi, breaking your chain means you spent too long without blowing something up. In Ikaruga, you break your chain by blowing up the wrong thing. This is where Ikaruga really started to bug me on a very basic level; its chaining system isn't just strict, it's restrictive. Where DoDonPachi punishes you for not doing things, Ikaruga punishes you for doing the wrong thing or, more generally, for doing too many things. I play shooting games to shoot and dodge stuff, but Ikaruga interrupts the "shooting" part of that by punishing you for shooting.

You make it sound like DDP chaining system isn't restrictive.
In Ikaruga I can purposefully skip some enemies that I know I'm not able to chain, and I know that these spots are where I could improve in my next run.
You don't break your chain in Ikaruga by not playing by the system for a moment, but in DDP you do. You can sort of set your own tempo this way in Ikaruga and in that sense the game is flexible as hell. (where in DDP you're always going or not going at all)

Many people in this thread (and in this forum in general) are wayyy too stuck to their shmup norms and haven't even properly tried to enjoy Ikaruga scoring because of the pre-determined negative mindset towards the game because it doesn't follow the unspoken shmup rulebook too closely. This is almost shamefully easy to read between the lines of some posts.

but Giest118, I have to admit that TW3R is how a chaining system should be balanced. Seriously people, go play TW3R Cagar Label, it has the best DDP-style chaining system.

[Giest118]

in DDP you're always going or not going at all

That's sort of where Ikaruga feels strangling to me, though; when I stop, it fucks up my rhythm. I hate having my rhythm fucked up. Because it's my rhythm, and it's getting fucked up. It's like I'm in the middle of giving a speech, and then I stop for ten seconds to be like "UUUHHHHHHHHH" because I forgot what the next line is. Except this is a very particular kind of speech where if you say anything other than "UHHHHH" or the exact defined words at the prescribed times, you get shot in the face.

I mean, yes. You have the freedom to stop and say "UUUHHHHH." But the thing is, it just feels awkward. It makes me feel like a bit of a tool.

Matter of taste, I suppose. I like having a rhythm, and Ikaruga makes it incredibly difficult to find and maintain that rhythm. In DoDonPachi, even if your chain breaks, you can just go right back to shooting things. There's no eight-hour long interruption where you're waiting for the next wave that your mind can actually process the colors of. Even laying off the shot button briefly to keep some enemies alive to chain off of feels more like a constant string of actions than stopping for ten seconds to say "UUUHHHHHH."

I mean, yes, I get that it's more complex than standing there and saying "UUUHHHHH." But that just happens to be how Ikaruga's "freedom" feels to me.

And TW3R is garbage, what is wrong with you.

[xxx1993]

I prefer Radiant Silvergun. Despite its nutty scoring, methodical pace and epic length, it's so grandiose, beautiful looking/sounding, and wonderfully creative at every turn, it's like ten glorious shmups rolled into one.

I think it's kind of obvious Ikaruga is a good game. "Really good" depends how you take to it, it's definitely got some unique elements you can either get into or find grating. For me it's sort of 50/50. Every time I pick it up again I feel myself drawn to its alternative elements, and then it starts to irritate me all over again.

But Radiant Silvergun has a bleak ending compared to Ikaruga...

Who gives a shit about the ending?

Also, Radiant Silvergun isn't really that long of a shmup.

What the fuck?

People have said Radiant Silvergun is one of the longest shmups ever created. But I digress, there are longer games out there. As I said, now that I'm fully powered up, it takes an hour to beat. And I care about the ending. I'd rather have an ending where the world is saved rather than one where everyone is doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over again.

[Blinge]

When I'm playing along to a song and I miss a beat, or hit a wrong note causing me to go out of time, I pause briefely and the song keeps going without me. Then I join back in right on time. The same goes for 'ruga chaining =]

[hail good sir]

When I'm playing along to a song and I miss a beat, or hit a wrong note causing me to go out of time, I pause briefely and the song keeps going without me. Then I join back in right on time. The same goes for 'ruga chaining =]

This is why it appealed to me, since a broken chain is only like 150k points unless it's in a messy area. A dropped chain in DDP ruins the stage, and in the case of something silly like DFK stage 5, the entire run. So it ends up feeling like a more realistic score progression, with the exception of stage 5 being the quickest to learn. Also every stage is valuable, which to me is good design.

The real beauty of Ikaruga to me is stuff like the shield attack on the first boss. At first you're bad and you know it so you shoot it as black and slowly kill it. Then you get confident and dodge everything and kill it twice as fast as white. You think you're a badass until you see someone do it the REAL way and it starts to change the way you think about the game. It's all the crazy execution hiding behind what you think is obvious.

[SuperSoaker360]

Ikaruga is my favourite piano piece.




In all seriousness, I've attempted to get into Ikaruga too many times and every time I try, I get bored and thinking of ways to chain feels too much of a chore. It's odd because I love Radiant Silvergun to bits and it's honestly not that different in that regard. Maybe it might be the extra weapons in RSG and the fact that overall it feels much more slow-paced for you to dissect.

[ciox]

I was going to write a big reply but looks like the ongoing discussion made most of it obsolete so I'll just address the main stuff real quick

DDR also allows you to deviate from "the path" with the exact same consequence: you get less points.

I'm not a 95% world record player that's ruining their score by deviating from the path though, what you see in my video is what routes naturally evolved from me and they're close to the top scorewise apart from the skipped chains that I can't handle yet.
I'm trying to demonstrate how a player at the 77% level of proficiency has the freedom to play in their own style, this level or lower is where the vast majority who would be criticizing this game can perform, so unless you're suggesting that superplayers at the 99% level should dictate their opinions to the rest then it works as a counter-argument to the mass insistence that the game is DDR/piano, that's the idea.

If I re-record this video with the same deviations and 90% of the score-gain (and I probably will, even though chapter 2 isn't my priority now), are we all going to envision ourselves as 90% level superplayers this time who find the loss of the last 10% unacceptable? That's not who most players are, most players aren't at the 77% level even, or anywhere near.

other stuff

- extends feel right to me, hunting for extends is always supposed to hurt you in the short term and help you in the long term, that's how it works in all games. in Ikaruga if you play at a 60-70% level you'll get almost one extend every stage. I get 4 extends (at 18 million points) by playing with routes that would make elite players leave the arcade in disgust. and you do need those extends for the difficulty spikes in stage 4 and the TLB that can't be practiced. by the time you hit those difficulty spikes you should have plenty of comfort zones in the first 3 stages where you can practice your chaining for some extends.
compare to CAVE where you get cut off after 2 score extends because otherwise you'd receive dozens of them at even a basic 60-70% level of performance. better hope you get the hidden extends and don't die with bombs in stock.
- DDP has the same issue with getting screwed over by shooting what you shouldn't, just watch this high level run and see how stop-and-go the firing is, obviously because destroying a formation or even a single enemy too quickly can guarantee a chain drop, the main game is hardly like the shooting gallery at the end of stage 2 where you can indeed "just blow shit up" to score https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFSjmpYBEQ
- I did the math for how many points you lose for dropping a chain and it's 179,300, that's about 3-3.5% of your stage score in the average Ikaruga stage, I don't think we need to compare that to how much you lose from a chain drop in DDP or general big scoring setups in other games, even if dropping the chain in Ikaruga makes you stumble for a bit

[CWM]

This is kind of a tangent, but what are some other games which allow you to take survival risks (which scoring in Ikaruga is) to get more resources? Giest seems to think this is bad design in general, of which I'm not convinced, but it's something I haven't seen a lot of in shmups in general. Best example I can think of is UFO, where the tradeoff can be very explicit when playing for survival. Yagawa games might qualify, I guess, but I don't have enough experience with them to know for sure.

At the very least, this seems like a more interesting paradigm than "do a little bit of scoring to get all the extends" Cave stuck to for the majority of their games. If you're going to do that, you may as well award them for reaching specific milestone sections of the game like Eschatos does, similar result in the end.

[Giest118]

This is kind of a tangent, but what are some other games which allow you to take survival risks (which scoring in Ikaruga is) to get more resources? Giest seems to think this is bad design in general

I'd just like to clarify that I find risk/reward to be fine and dandy, but there's degrees to it. Ikaruga feels to me like the degree of risk outweighs the degree of reward. Of course, this is incredibly subjective; I might just be too much of a pussy to appreciate it in this case.

[Squire Grooktook]

in DDP you're always going or not going at all

That's sort of where Ikaruga feels strangling to me, though; when I stop, it fucks up my rhythm. I hate having my rhythm fucked up. Because it's my rhythm, and it's getting fucked up. It's like I'm in the middle of giving a speech, and then I stop for ten seconds to be like "UUUHHHHHHHHH" because I forgot what the next line is. Except this is a very particular kind of speech where if you say anything other than "UHHHHH" or the exact defined words at the prescribed times, you get shot in the face.

To me the difference is that you're not saying "UHHHHH" but doing something badass to improvise (dodging additional stuff due to letting enemies pass by, etc.)

I really, really like improvisation. But that's me.

[Skykid]

People have said Radiant Silvergun is one of the longest shmups ever created. But I digress, there are longer games out there. As I said, now that I'm fully powered up, it takes an hour to beat. And I care about the ending. I'd rather have an ending where the world is saved rather than one where everyone is doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over again.

I don't think Saturn mode can be beaten in under an hour unless you're madly skilled. RSG is one of the longest shmups ever, the average is about 25 minutes.

No-one gives a shit about the ending, it has absolutely no impact on the game whatsoever (and personally I prefer a bleak alternative to the same old fanfare standards.)