Kiken wrote:And worst scoring system for me goes to XIIStag. Sorry, I just have qualms with a scoring system who's sole purpose is to destroy controllers/joysticks.
I don't care for the stick wiggling too much either but that game's scoring system did some things right. In fact I think "in theory" I prefer XII Stag's implementation of a chaining multiplier compared to many more popular games. The key being that in XII Stag your score multiplier can be raised up to 12 times through chaining, but then if you miss an enemy in your chain
it doesn't suddenly wipe out your entire multiplier, rather the multiplier steadily increments back downwards from 12 to 11 to 10, etc.
Because of this scoring system in XII Stag there may be some situations where it might possibly work in a player's advantage to allow the multiplier to drop a couple of levels under 12 for a few seconds, for the sake of setting up something better in the chain a few seconds later. This gives the freedom to experiment and try to create custom chaining paths through the levels.
As far as I can see you don't have this kind of freedom to experiment with chaining paths in Ikaruga, DDP, etc - where the paths are more strict and limited in possibilities since your entire scoring run is often wiped out if you break a chain, and I guess this leads to levels in those games which have to be more strictly designed around an ideal chaining path to begin with.