You're supposed to use bombs, the game gives you a billion of them. Use autofire if it makes the game more fun (I do).M.Knight wrote: -Right after that, you've got two mid-boss looking enemies with a billion HP. If you don't have a powerful autofire, the fight lasts forever. I was so fed up with them that I ended up bombing them just to make them leave my sight but even that wasn't enough.
It makes perfect sense. The difficulty comes in waves. there's the chill parts and then there's the stressful parts. It's classic Toaplan-style pacing, a style that was in effect in all their games from Tiger-Heli onward. You may not like it, which is fine, but it's not nonsensical.-Actually, the entire first stage (and maybe the whole game?)'s level design is like that : tons of piss-easy enemies that are sent in extremely repetitive and boring waves and all of a sudden you've got one enemy that is much beefier, can move pretty low on the screen to point blank you, and who spawns with a few pals of his to make you panic and mess up. And then back to boring enemy waves. There is zero logical progression with increasing difficulty like in a well designed shmup. Nothing here makes sense. Besides, some of the midbosses have attacks with two long shots that look like you can get between them but it's impossible given your gigantic hitbox.
also the enemy patterns get way hairier in later stages, don't judge the difficulty by the first stage alone.