Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

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Shepardus
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Shepardus »

Squire Grooktook wrote:I hear a lot of love for Cambria Sword. I honestly just cannot help but balk at the length, but I feel like I should give it a try none the less.
Much of that love is probably from me, so take that for what you will. There's a two-stage demo available on DLsite if you want to give it a try. Do note that not all the weapons are available in it, and stage 1 is relatively slow and uninteresting in my opinion. It picks up a lot more in stage 2, though it's still relatively easy (as you'd expect from a stage 2 out of 10). In the full game you can start from any of the first three stages after you've reached stage 3 for the first time, and there are various other level skips available. I encourage you to give it a try - just don't go in expecting something really tight and refined, or even something really innovative but unpolished, because it's not that sort of game. It's just so cool in every area.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:How does Cambria Sword work, anyways? I've watched video, and I can't figure out what the blue bar is for, or how the weapon system works at all. The number on the top row bar appears to be bombs but otherwise I'm not sure, it looks like you can fire a main weapon and sub gunpods separately?
Yes, the number on the top-row bar is the bomb count. The icons next to it indicate which type of bomb you have, which depends on the subweapon you have. You have a main weapon and a subweapon which can be fired independently, and each main weapon has a regular shot and a charged shot that you use by not firing until the red bar fills up. A couple of the main weapons also have extra firing modes activated by, for example, holding a certain movement direction when firing the charged shot (these are detailed in the "extra disc" materials that come with the game). The blue weapon is the "luck bar" - it fills up over time or by grabbing the little blue/red items that first appear near the start of stage 2. When it fills up, it gives you one of several effects chosen at random. Usually it gives you an extra bomb or some weapon drops, but sometimes it gives you one of the special tokens you usually get from defeating a boss, which alternates between life, bomb, and points (the points is one reason why I don't think anyone in their right mind would seriously optimize the scoring in this - optimal score would rely on random chance to get more point items). It can also give you negative effects such as spawning a ton of extra enemies or spawning a life hunter or SP hunter that attempts to steal your lives or bombs. The systems are mostly quite conventional, if you don't understand something it's probably because it's random. The weapon drops at least are all random, including the very rare "rare weapons" - every weapon has a "rare" variant that in some cases is just a more overpowered version of the normal weapon, in other cases is a very different weapon. Unfortunately you don't see those much unless you play "Easy mode," which is actually the same as the normal game except with a much higher spawn rate of rare weapons. It's ironically quite difficult to unlock easy mode but I hex-edited my score file to unlock it.
LordHypnos wrote:@Shepardus: I thought the run down was pretty interesting, actually. Do you think you could direct me to where on the page the actual download link for Minishooter RS is?
You can find it in the list (along with some other interesting-looking freeware games that I haven't tried) if you click on "Games" in the sidebar. Here's a direct link to the download.
LordHypnos wrote:Also which weapon do you play Ringˉ²⁷ with? It actually seemed like a really interesting game to me, but I eventually gave up on it because even on easy it got way too hard, and there were no replays I could look at using anchor shot.
It does get pretty difficult, I've only cleared the game on Anchor Easy, though I haven't even been doing that lately since the scoring techniques you can do on the stages 2 and 3 bosses (anchor on to something at the beginning and never release that anchor to raise the multiplier a lot) drive up rank a ton. I think this is the best video I've seen of Anchor mode.

I've mostly been playing Anchor mode on Easy and Bomb mode on various difficulty levels. Bomb mode gets silly pretty quickly, but silly in a fun way. I'm not seriously trying to clear it but rather just seeing how many points I can rack up while I last. Note that you can choose your starting weapon (the weapon you have when you're not anchored to anything) by pressing left/right at the mode selection screen. Some of those could make your life easier, such as "Mirror," which has a very weak shot but reflects any bullets you come into contact with while you're holding the shot button (this isn't completely foolproof though, since it doesn't protect you from enemy collisions and enemies take up a lot of space in this game, and using Mirror all the time means not anchoring which is bad for score).

I haven't played the other modes as much, there's way too much for me to try in this game. In addition to the four difficulty levels (which I think are unlocked by credit-feeding through each difficulty) and the five modes (which I think are unlocked by credit-feeding through each mode), there are five more modes which can be unlocked by clearing the "Another" stage (accessible through the practice mode menu, I'm not sure if you have to do anything to unlock it). "Another" is an omnidirectional stage that can be kind of hard to wrap your head around, but I cheesed through it by choosing a homing weapon and bumping my lives up to the maximum. The five more modes are mostly variants of the existing five, but one or two of them are actually pretty different. Would be a lot of work for Despatche to maintain the high score thread if people actually posted any scores for it. :D
Last edited by Shepardus on Mon May 21, 2018 7:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

^Thanks for the info. Amusingly, I downloaded Minishooter RS and it looks like I already downloaded it at some earlier time. I wonder where I even saw it before. Clearly I've downloaded far too many freeware games that I never actually got around to playing.
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

need a "disable checkpoints" cheat for truxton 2 -_-

recovery is ruining the game for me
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

like the game disables checkpoints when there's a second player so it shouldn't even be that hard to figure out...
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Square_Air »

mycophobia wrote:truxton 2 -_-

recovery is ruining the game for me
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Shepardus »

mycophobia wrote:need a "disable checkpoints" cheat for truxton 2 -_-

recovery is ruining the game for me
Make that "don't lose all your powerups on death" - even if it didn't have checkpoints you'd still be screwed by the lack of power :P
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

Did some more Mars Matrix practice trying mostly to get more consistency on stages 4 and 5, but I also tried to see if I could get higher numbers on stage 3 a little more consistently. At first I thought I might have been, but I came back to it a bit later and it seems like whatever I was doing differently I wasn't doing anymore, but couldn't figure out exactly what that was. On the plus side, I think I did get a little better at the post-waterfall section of the chain so that could potentially be huge for getting consistently higher chains. Haven't actually tried to incorporate any new route elements yet, though. I think I should at least try to do that.
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

So, i decided to make a whole new set of save states in Mars Matrix because i think I'll need them to improve my chaining beyond where it is now, and decided to see whether i can theoretically counter stop the arcade game, and it turns out that I'm not yet even with 4.4 million experience (or thereabouts). Note that there are CS scores in the range of 3.5 million experience. This is not entirely surprising as both SFKhoa and Rob found that they couldn't CS until they got quite a bit higher than that. There are clearly some scoring tricks that exist that I'm not doing. If nothing else, there's at least the pot trick in stage 3 that I'm not doing.
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Stevens »

First session since the weekend. After a few false starts I made 2-4..After dying on 1-4 and 1-5.

Was on pace to start 2-5 with five mil again.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Kiken »

Been playing Super Star Soldier, aiming for the No Miss. However, that regenerating brain final boss is total bullshit. And it doesn't help that it comes right after the 3rd form of the giant Star Soldier ship with the stupidly random lightning blasts.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by OmKol »

DOJ WL. Now I hate 2-4 railguns too
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Bananamatic »

OmKol wrote:DOJ WL. Now I hate 2-4 railguns too
the reason why I stick to DDP
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Shepardus »

Updates on my last post:
  • Cambria Sword - still having a lot of fun with this. Haven't gotten around to creating a thread for it because I'm too busy playing it. I managed to get up to stage 5 in a run yesterday (not skipping any stages). Got a bit lucky with a rare weapon spawn, which helped for stage 2 and part of stage 3 until I died and lost the weapon. I recorded a video of the replay and may post it on YouTube, but gotta see how the quality holds up first (I use MAME's -aviwrite for most of my videos, and my OBS settings are geared towards saving bandwidth, not high quality).
  • MinishoterRS ⊿ - played this a bit, I've gotten up to the TLB but the TLB is absurdly long. Not all that hard, but need to get to it with a bit more life in stock (aka not get blown up on the high speed section in stage 9). Scoring is unfortunately kind of screwy in this game. I'm not sure if bosses time out, but if they do they take far too long to do so, and milking them is very tedious compared to the brisk pace of the rest of the game. Also the boss in stage 8-A is worth an absurd amount of points for some reason, increases my score practically tenfold by itself. Kind of a pity because I could imagine this being fun to score otherwise.
  • Stellavanity - been mostly playing Type-C on Hard difficulty (the third-hardest out of the six difficulties). Keep getting punished for my greed with cancels, not that I actually know what I'm doing with those cancels (I always end up getting around the same score anyway). For some reason I'm not able to use practice mode beyond stage 4, nor can I find any option to unlock it in the shop like I could for Easy and Normal (and Arcade too, but only for stage 5). Also gave Easy another run and got rank 4 and one of the extra bosses at the end, which I promptly died to because I'm pretty sure those bosses are the same on every difficulty level, from Easy to Pandemonium. This game really highlights my inadequacy at dodging danmaku.
  • ring^-27 - been improving my scores and attempting various silly things trying to exploit the scoring system. Somehow I keep getting killed by random things in this game such as stray bullets and enemy collisions, especially enemy collisions - moreso than with other games, I feel. Getting cancels and high anchor multipliers is satisfying, though, especially when understanding how it affects score. Feel like I could have some fun working on my scores in some modes (Bomb Easy and Fixed Easy come to mind), but I have very little reference on what a good score actually is. There's only a handful of videos, and most mode/difficulty combinations don't even have any videos. Same goes for the high score thread here, only a few modes have any submissions and I have the top score on all of them already.
  • Battlantis - making progress! Made it to stage 14 (out of 16 per loop) in a run. Need to get more consistent at some stages and come up with strategies that don't involve dying several times, but a 1-ALL seems within reach.
  • Tatsujin Ou - not making progress!
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by mycophobia »

Shepardus wrote:Tatsujin Ou - not making progress!
same. think I'm gonna give up on it in favor of Batsugun (normal), which I'm pretty close to clearing. Then I might go back to Truxton and get better at it.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by EmperorIng »

Good write-ups, Shep! Those Cambria Sword posts are inching me closer and closer into getting the game.

I've been pushing myself to get better at R-Type Delta, with occasional bouts of Final thrown in. Raiden V is my side-gal when I want to live a little bit more quick n' fast. 8)

I keep on making personal bests in terms of 1 credit progress in Delta, but I doubt I am anywhere near a 1CC. The section of stage 5 with all the flying pipes makes me despair, and a safe strategy for the ring-o-death eludes me. I guess I could watch a replay, but where's the fun in that?
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Shepardus »

I posted a video of the Cambria Sword run I mentioned. There are better videos of the game out there (better quality run and better quality video), but I figured it wouldn't hurt.
mycophobia wrote:
Shepardus wrote:Tatsujin Ou - not making progress!
same. think I'm gonna give up on it in favor of Batsugun (normal), which I'm pretty close to clearing. Then I might go back to Truxton and get better at it.
Ironically I got a PB the very next run after that...
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Marc »

Managed an hour or so on Raiden V last night. I know it has its critics on here, but I kind of like it. Not as demanding (and for me, occasionally frustrating) as the Cave/Psikyo stuff I have on the other machines.

Some of the visuals are a bit off though - the first stage (and I realise this may just be me), I tend to loose track of bullets when the backdrop starts moving at speed, and the second stage is just plain bad choice of colours. Considering that an energy bar is normally viewed as a 'Euroshmup' thing, I think it's done really well here - I always know when I've been hit, and it gives the game a nice, uninterrupted flow. Managed the 4th boss last night, so going to make this my go-to for the next week or two and see how I do.

Realised that this is a series I'd like to spend more time with really. This is where the PS4 not being back compat in the same manner as the Xbox becomes a bit of a bummer.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

So, unfortunately, it looks like my Hori gem pad might be busted, so I won't be able to do any save state practice or PC / emulated games for a bit, unless it turns out to be something simple to fix (though I kinda doubt it). Also, if I want to play Xbox games I'll only be able to do so with a wireless controller. Hopefully the lag isn't unbearable. The twisty style dpad does seem adequate though, if not quite as good as the gem dpad.

I tried improving my stage 2 chain a bit, but it wasn't working very well (though I have improved it since I started back on MM). I forgot the second battleship alterations that I did on stage 4 (though I think they'll be pretty easy to figure out again). I did, however decide to try to improve the stage 3 chain, and I would say I was pretty successful, though it'll take a lot of practice to get consistent. I managed to improve my stage 3 score attack PB, and get 2.3 million experience a couple times. I think that was from a +2200 chain. I got a few more +2100 chains which I had been struggling to reach before changing the route. I'm still lagging quite a bit behind the Rob route that I'm trying to copy though. It ain't easy to imitate. I think stage 3 is the lowest hanging fruit, right now, though.

EDIT: weird. gem pad seems to be working again, WTF? I'm glad though. Lets hope it stays that way.
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by OmKol »

DOJ WL, 2-5 routing. 22 days already. Even thinking about all those brutal stages in one sitting is scary but at least every new day gives me more knowledge and consistency.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by durias »

Nintendo > Switch > IKARUGA!!!
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by DanielDuffy »

Hey everybody! :D My first post - happy I found my way here. Have played a few of the older ones, but currently playing Earth Atlantis on XONE (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/earth ... c4g73r9k4h). Is kind of a mixtur of shumps and Monster Hunter in a open world. The sketchy style is cool, but a few more colour would have been great. :)
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Jonst »

Some lazy under defeat.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

Continuing to progress in Mars Matrix. Been getting 2.2 mill in stage 3 and 1.3 mil in stage 5 more consistently. I actually managed to get over 900k in stage 4 a few times (one time was almost 1 mil, I think). One problem though, is that I haven't been paying much attention to parts of stages not important for chaining, so I've been dying a lot. I'm gonna need to clean that shit up if I want to get far enough to score big puntos.
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by LordHypnos »

Finally managed to get 1.6 million experience in stage 5!

I was looking at my +2200 chain video and comparing it to my recent stuff, and it's weird. Now I've figured out how to usually get to +1000 before the gold cube waterfall, but I usually don't exceed +2200, still. In that video I get only around +875 before the gold cube waterfall, and manage to get up to +2200, anyway. To top it off, while it's a pretty good run for chaining after the four turrets, I'm not taking it all the way to the end of the stage, and I usually can only get +2300ish now when I do that, sometimes not even that, so there's clearly something to learn from how I'm tackling the waterfall in stage 3 in that video. On the other hand, Rob gets +1200ish before the waterfall, and +2500 by the end of the chain without making it even as far as I did in the +2200 video. Actually, just looking where he dies, he gets around 1300 cubes in that time frame, in the +2200 video I get 1275 cubes, and in a more recent video (from a failed run), I get 1150. What do I need to do differently?
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Solunas wrote:How to Takumi your scoring system
1) Create Scoring System
2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Marc »

Bit of Muchi Muchi Pork last night, it's been a while. Love the medal chaining on this. For some reason I tend to find that I don't click with a lot of Cave's scoring systems - they feel like they've been overlaid on top of a complete game afterwards, rather than integrated properly - but this works really well, gives the game a lovely rhythm. 360 is set up in a back room at my Ma's - need to get it picked up then I can get some proper practice on this.

In comparison, I also played a bit of SDOJ and... nah, it's just not my bag. Everything about it pretty much leaves me cold.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Was messing around with Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object.

I actually don't think I enjoy any of the "standard" shmups made in the series after Imperishable Night. You've got Mountain of Faith which has the weird power = bombs system, and both bombs are more or less functionally the same, with it being very easy to get stuck in boss fights at fairly low power. Subterranean Animism's grazing mechanic's fun, but it has probably the weirdest, and weakest bombs and shot types in general in the entire series, with all of them feeling more experimental and impractical than anything.

Undefined Fantastic Object marks the return of really solid shot types and bombs, but it gets bogged down in the UFO system which, quite frankly, is garbage. It's unbelievably unenjoyable to play. Instead of being able to focus on learning stages and dodging patterns, you have to chase down erratic, bouncing UFOs to get resources, which often will change colour to something you don't want as you collect it, or will lead you into bullets as you try to grab them. Then the question is, do you throw bombs to collect them safely, or just ignore them altogether? Or, as a boss fight pops up, the UFOs immediately stop bouncing around, or as the character dialogue appears, your portrait covers the screen and the UFOs, causing you to accidentally pick up one you don't want. I can't be the only one here who has this complain about Undefined Fantastic Object, as I've seen other people review the game and comment on how distracting having to focus on the bouncing UFOs is.

It's a shame because MoF, SA, and UFO all have fun patterns to dodge, but their gameplay systems are lackluster or too damn finicky to deal with and don't feel as natural as the earlier ones. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is pretty plain as far as scoring goes, but that's actually okay, it's a simple but elegant game. Perfect Cherry Blossom's border system fits naturally into the gameplay without requiring anything as distracting and absurd as UFO's item collection management, and Imperishable Night's time system (where you use rapid shot or focus graze to earn time items) is a little weirder, but not to an extent that it hinders the gameplay.

I suppose it makes sense I enjoy the older Windows games. My faves in the series were the PC98 era Lotus Land Story as well as Mystic Square and still probably are, behind Perfect Cherry Blossom.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

MoF is my favorite of the windows era (or, the non TSS styled games) because:

1: Coolest patterns imo.
2: Ditches grazing. Fuck grazing

I never found that the reduce in power from bombing was particularly significant, and bombs do significant damage anyway.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by Shepardus »

The power loss can become an issue on bosses if you bomb multiple times, but during stages the bombs are practically free. I do like the concept but in practice it can get pretty weird.

PCB and IN feel nice to play and are pretty "balanced" as far as I can tell, but my eyes glaze over at all the individually tweaked numbers in their scoring systems (especially IN's). I also never liked the focused/unfocused distinction in PCB's cherry system (where cherry builds up faster if you're unfocused). I like that the later games keep things simpler, even if hasn't always worked out perfectly.
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by OmKol »

DOJ WL, day 27. Super hard to make 2-5 consistent. I'm trying as hard as I can
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Re: Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Post by M.Knight »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Undefined Fantastic Object marks the return of really solid shot types and bombs, but it gets bogged down in the UFO system which, quite frankly, is garbage. It's unbelievably unenjoyable to play.
UFO's system is like the annoying, color changing, floating powerups from the 90s but made even worse. I always end up doing supid risky shit just to get those shiny UFOs so I don't play the game that much.
Shepardus wrote:I also never liked the focused/unfocused distinction in PCB's cherry system (where cherry builds up faster if you're unfocused).
I played a bit of PCB back in the days and got half-decent scores but never really clicked with the system. I also dislike the importance of onfocused movement because it doesn't seem like it fits the game. You have all these dense patterns with slow bullets and you are supposed to move all over the place at full speed, which seems more like a self-imposed challenge than a well-integrated scoring system. I usually like fast movement but here it makes as much sense as having to play Dangun Feveron with the slowest speed.
Besides, the "hyper" having a mind of its own and being triggered automatically feels way too restrictive, and forces you to have a very specific timing on cherry item collection.

I can see how impressive it is to watch when you put everything together and play an ideal run, but getting to that point is not fun for me.
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