BIL wrote:Natsume love their powerdown-on-damage penalty.
SFC Kiki's a fairly assholic example of it (the reigning champ being FC Kage).
would you say the blue or red are better? was talking w/ palazzo and he reps the max charged blue shot pretty hard.
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also, got a nomiss on
KUJAKU OU 2, today! what a rad game! you know, i remember first playing as mystic defender some time back and absolutely sucked at it, but eventually got good enough to get a 1cc. went back to it for a pretty expedient nomiss (under 20 minutes counting opening scroll and the credits, and i even grab the two 1ups for funsies) and came to like it quite a bit more. i think i was too hard on it, originally, even going as far as to call it "a bit shoddy." i think it's actually really solid, it's just got a bit of that trademark early mega drive pseudo-arcade weirdness.
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tips on weapons -
energy charge - this is largely used in the first stage, when you have nothing else, and during a couple of the hell maze stages when you're trying to hit something from a distance. it's got solid DPS if you can hit something with repeated charge shots, but the flamethrower is so much more reliable and exciting to use that there's really not that much utility for it. this game has a super rollicking pace and trying to use this as a crutch for ranged encounter isn't conducive to its design.
flamethrower - this is probably the most satisfying flamethrower i've ever used in a video game. ahhhh, it feels so wonderful! charge up and let loose, then aim by pressing up or down. you should probably be using this for almost the entire game, and with two red power-ups, it charges so fast that you rarely have to disrupt the pacing to get it back up to full speed, it's almost more like a quick little reload button. remember that you charge while standing still or jumping, not while running, so try do little hops to get it back while also keeping forward momentum.
bouncing ball thingy - this ability really fucking sucks and i only use it during select parts of stage 5.
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stage advice -
st1 - the only part that should give any trouble is the boss. just go to the highest level as soon as you can and fire the flamethrower downward. the boss will repeatedly jump into it like an idiot. piece of cake.
st2 - this level, i think, makes a lot of people bounce off the game. it's really difficult to read what is actually a platform and contains some strange semi-branching paths and big punishment for missed jumps by wasting a lot of time. don't give up, it's actually quite easy to route with just a smidge of practice. don't charge an attack while doing the last hard jumps at the end, it makes it easier to hit the timing on the jumps, which is weirdly tight. for the boss fight, i strongly suggest using the energy charge and climbing up either the left or right stair case and then jumping back down to the center from the top. don't jump from one side of the top to the other because it spawns the enemies in weird locations that aren't conducive to hitting them in time before they disappear.
st3 - yokai giger maze stage 1. just take it nice and slow, get it routed, then get to being a bit more expedient at it. there's a 1up if you take an alternate corridor, you actually pass right underneath it on your normal way through the stage and just need to wrap back around to get it. will have demonstration of all paths techniques in a video i'll hopefully have up soon. neither of these stages have bosses.
st4 - the hardest stage in the game. no joke! always have a flamethrower firing before hopping from pillar to pillar and make sure you clear available nests before pushing forward. what makes this level particularly precarious is a set of two pillars you'll need to jump from before they plunge into the river and cost you a life - let the 2nd one sink a little before jumping to the one after it, you'll need to exercise a bit of patience. this often seems to be where a lot of people just quit the game because lol this shit is mean. i recommend using the energy charge for the boss and just staying on the left side and sniping it. if you made it here with full HP or just a half-hp knocked off, you're gold. otherwise, try hopping to the middle pillar if needed to avoid when necessary - which way the boss faces when it pops out of the acid is random.
st5 - relatively straightforward scrolling. keep your flame charged before moving forward on the first half, then get aggressive with the midboss. if you track its projectiles well, you can stay right in its face and kill it before it begins a really annoying pattern of moving itself to the other side of the screen. for the second half, switch to the bouncing balls when you're pinned by projectile enemies, then repeat a very similar strategy for the boss.
st6 - yokai giger maze stage 2. you're PROBABLY going to die at least once playing this stage on practice attempts because getting it routed requires a little memorization. just be very judicious, play it safe on early attempts. there's a 1up to the upper right in a platforming segment that is kind of hard to miss if you're exploring even a little. if you suck at the wall fights and don't want to flamethrower them, play it safe and use the energy charge from a distance.
st7 - another maze! however, very simple to route. i keep repeating this, but it bears mentioning - always have the flamethrower firing before moving forward for the majority of this stage and you'll get through it without breaking a sweat. you just need some moderate reflexes. the boss may seem tough but you can make him comically impotent and bully the fuck out of him, actually! just fire the flamethrower up in the air and rapidly switch left to right while tracking him. you can actually kill him before he gets off an attack if you don't get unlucky and throw him too far to one side of the screen, but even if he gets one off it's easy to trap him again.
st8 - final boss stage! use the flamethrower and slowly advance while frying the chaff, then switch to energy charge for the boss because flamethrower suddenly doesn't do damage anymore. you want to do a small jump, hit the center, then quickly do it again to shoot the bullets that would otherwise box you in. unless you get an unlucky shot arc from the projectile he lobs, you can really bully the hell out of him with this. in my video, i panic and use my bombs and play like an idiot because he hits me with one or two of those and barely make it out lol. you can also very tediously kill him with the bouncing balls and play it surprisingly safe by cancelling his bullets with those, but it's so fucking slow and boring.
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OTHER TIPS & TRICKS -
1. if you're playing with the jp cart in a us console, try resetting the game. it'll suddenly have the mystic defender opening text scroll and also have the english text for when the castle pops up. wild. ending text is the same no matter what, though. thanks, JoeYamato420 for e-mailing in this tip!
2. tap jumping is extremely useful, don't just hold the button down. this is a game where it's easy to forget there's alternate modes of jumping! it'll jump for roughly as long as you hold it down. i wish it was like jigoku gokuraku maru, where the tap and hold are binary options and the game is very tightly designed around that, but this *feels* very similar despite that not being the reality.
3. acid kills you in one hit! it's very fucking dangerous! god damn DO NOT FALL IN IT
i'd like to thank god for helping me write this guide, and my chemical romance for being there for me while i was writing it. pls add me on AIM and pop me a message if you read this far XD