Progear = easy?

[Belmont]

Ok so i have been spending most of my time lately playing esprade getting nowhere near a 1cc. SO last night i figured i could take a break from it and decided to play a game of progear. First playthrough i made it to lvl 4 without dying....is it just me or is this game considerably esier then other cave shmups. It might have something to do with the blue bullets being easy on my eyes, and there only being 1 color of bullets to focus on. I find myself dying a lot on esprade in particular when blue and purple and red bullets are starting to fill the screen and i cant focus on all of them.

[Frederik]

ESPRade has a pretty frustrating gameplay to me, I find the relation of player speed and bullet speed irritating (very often I just crash into slow moving bullets). Weird players sprites with hard to determine hitboxes do the rest for me.

However, I die much more often in Progear, since I am used to vertical gameplay so much; and it may just be the emulation of it, but somehow the the bullets seem so odd to me. I find the hitbox even weirder in this game ( I GUESS it´s what appears to be the pilots head). Survival is dependent of how used you are to the bullet cancelling/jewel technique, anyways - in the replays it looks incredibly hard later on (not even mentioning the insane second loop), but with the right timing it must get easier (similar to Gigawing or Mars Matrix).

I never played those games too often, to be honest, but overall I prefer DDP over those games anytime: Bigger, easier to see bullets, pretty obvious hitbox placement and everything in perfect pace. I appreciate the innovation in those games, but they don´t seem as perfectly polished as DDP to me.

I´ve been thinking about whether or not bullets in different colours make the dodging harder or easier - and I still have no idea. Sometimes it seems that different colours make the distinction of different bullets patterns easier, on other occasions it seems that everything in one colour makes the overall movement of all bullets onscreen easier.

[Belmont]

i have ddp on saturn, might be the reason why i find it very difficult. The muddy sprites and multi colored bullet hells that they throw at me are just to much to concentrate on for more then a few minutes.

[Kaede]

Ok so i have been spending most of my time lately playing esprade getting nowhere near a 1cc. SO last night i figured i could take a break from it and decided to play a game of progear. First playthrough i made it to lvl 4 without dying....is it just me or is this game considerably esier then other cave shmups. It might have something to do with the blue bullets being easy on my eyes, and there only being 1 color of bullets to focus on. I find myself dying a lot on esprade in particular when blue and purple and red bullets are starting to fill the screen and i cant focus on all of them.

Like most cave games playing for survival is not that hard. I got to stage 4 of DDP:DOJ on my first day of owning it but I had no idea what I was doing. When you start to understand the scoring system and introduce the risk and reward element the game starts to become a lot tougher. Sooner or later you will hit a wall with Progear and need to trigger the extends to get further and the only way to do that is the riskier way of playing for score.

I would say though that Progear is easier than most Cave titles, but not by much.

[Damocles]

Yeah, Progear isn't the hardest if you don't play for score.

[Ganelon]

Sooner or later you will hit a wall with Progear and need to trigger the extends to get further and the only way to do that is the riskier way of playing for score.

I totally agree with that. Has anybody been able to clear DOJ without playing for score? It just seems impossible to me, but it could just be because I suck at the game.

[Damocles]

Sooner or later you will hit a wall with Progear and need to trigger the extends to get further and the only way to do that is the riskier way of playing for score.

I totally agree with that. Has anybody been able to clear DOJ without playing for score? It just seems impossible to me, but it could just be because I suck at the game.

When playing for survival, it's relatively easy to reach the end with only one extend. Stage 4 has maybe three tricky spots, whereas 5 has quite a few. However, it's not too terribly difficult to learn and avoid them.

[landshark]

Those walls with moving turrets get me everytime in DDPDOJ.

[EOJ]

Has anybody been able to clear DOJ without playing for score? It just seems impossible to me, but it could just be because I suck at the game.

CVM did it (just the first loop) after about 3 weeks with the game. His final score was 56 mil. He's better known as one of the top Ikaruga players in the world (Normal mode score of 34+mil, no miss). He used to post here a few years ago, you can find him at www.super-play.co.uk once in awhile.

[iatneH]

I own PCBs for both ESP RaDe and Progear. I am horrible at Progear, slightly better at ESP RaDe. But I've also put a lot more time into RaDe.

ESP RaDe should be relatively easier if you use JB 5th and don't play for score. But I use Yusuke and *try* to play for score, so... it gets really tough if you can't get those extends though.

[BulletMagnet]

I personally have about the same amount of luck with most Cave games...4th or 5th stage is about as far as I can get, while "sort of" playing for score (though mostly focused on survival). Progear's no exception.

[GaijinPunch]

I found JB useless... but that's just me. I actually cleared ESPRade w/o too much practice. Don't be afraid to use your barrier when it starts to ramp up (from stage 4 on, mainly) and don't risk your lives for unneeded points (milking). I played w/ Yusuke, and somewhat "for scorish". I needed both point-based extends and the extend item on stage 4. Some parts of the game are easier if you get 16x blocks, as they cancel bullets.

I found Progear way harder. Maybe b/c it's hori, or maybe b/c since there's an "every" feature, I'm always wanting more & more points. My best is the start of stage 5. Maybe I should crank it back up.

[Belmont]

there are times in progear where i swear the hitbox doesnt exist....i have so many moments in that game where i feel invincable, where in esprade i constatly twitch into bullets for some reason. Im thinkin the reason i find it esier has to be the bullet color. I should get mushi for the purple blobs...they seem easy to concentrate on.

I do know what you mean about playing for score making it much harder though, after readin the stratagy section for the game i started to suck much harder at progear, only using gunner when you have dimond and a ton of bullets deffinatly changes the feel of the game. Even though i can hit exstends every once in a while it doesnt make up for the fact that i get myself killed trying for uber leet scores.

[Arvandor]

I personally have about the same amount of luck with most Cave games...4th or 5th stage is about as far as I can get, while "sort of" playing for score (though mostly focused on survival). Progear's no exception.

I'm not the only one! Yay! Though, if we count Batsugun (same team later became Cave, right?), I think Batsugun is easier than all of 'em, even ESPgaluda.

[Pirate1019]

You're all better then me.

I can get to level 3 every once and a while in RaDe. and to the middle/end of level 2 in Progear. I always get stuck in that horrible place between playing for survival and playing for score. I can never choose which and I always die because of it.

Pretty much the only Cave game I'm any good at is Donpachi. I can get to level 4 regularly if I'm not stricken with restart syndrome.

[grahf]

I find the hitbox even weirder in this game ( I GUESS it´s what appears to be the pilots head).

At the ship select screen, it shows you the hit box in the picture.

As far as difficulty, I cant really comment since ive only played a few cave games. It seems much easier to me than Ibara. Im more of an oldskool gamer. Ive been playing this on my GP2x though, and working on a 1cc.

[NTSC-J]

I personally find Progear to be brutal. When I first got the game it took me a few days to clear it on one coin, but the loop is just too much for me. Cave decided to go the traditional route and make you restart a level when you die...not very nice at all. I also think the scoring system is the hardest to grasp of any game of theirs; after a year with it I still couldn't figure it out.

[RotateMe]

Playing Progear for score is incredibly hard for me. I can get pretty far w/o playing for score but when I play for score it means that I sometimes have to watch my current ring status which requires looking away from your ship a short moment (if you didn't saw if you caught one of those biggest rings). Furthermore you need to let the bullets come close to you in hordes and then you need something near to destroy them. If there is nothing you have to reconsider and dodge. BAMM!

[zakk]

Having just come off quite a bit of ESPrade playing...

There's something about ESPrade that makes me have more 'wtf' deaths than any other game. I have NO IDEA what it is. I just go blind to bullets sometimes. Or I dodge them and move back into them.

[GaijinPunch]

There's something about ESPrade that makes me have more 'wtf' deaths than any other game. I have NO IDEA what it is. I just go blind to bullets sometimes. Or I dodge them and move back into them.

It is in there. I'm convinced it's either shoddy controls, or they purposely magnitized some of the bullets. Whatever it is, it sucks.

[Belmont]

i feel the same way about esp rade....so many times i get smacked with a bullet out of nowhere that wasnt really invisable but i didnt see it at all. I always blame it on the colors (i tend to focus on blue then get smacked by a big gleaming red bullet that slowly creeps up to me ) I did notice that the controlls have a problem with diagonal movements but i always just figured that was my controller and the emulation.

[Nemo]

Sooner or later you will hit a wall with Progear and need to trigger the extends to get further and the only way to do that is the riskier way of playing for score.

I totally agree with that. Has anybody been able to clear DOJ without playing for score? It just seems impossible to me, but it could just be because I suck at the game.

I did. I mean I was playing for score, just not well, so I ended with something in the 40 mils.

[Dennis]

1-all is easy, but 2-all and scoring is very hard... Western players don't even come close to the Japanese scores (270 mil)

[Kaede]

1-all is easy, but 2-all and scoring is very hard... Western players don't even come close to the Japanese scores (270 mil)

Indeed, has anyone on here even worked out how to get that 'constant jewelling' effect shown in the super-play replays? Looks incredible.

[Dennis]

I can do it in stage 2 with the train (if I'm lucky).

[mulletgeezer]

1-all is easy, but 2-all and scoring is very hard... Western players don't even come close to the Japanese scores (270 mil)

Indeed, has anyone on here even worked out how to get that 'constant jewelling' effect shown in the super-play replays? Looks incredible.

It's not all that hard - during last years's STGT Namakoteam practised this for a bit and got good results very quickly, also some of the AEX team can do it perfectly I believe. You just need to learn how to score well to get rank as high as possible, then position your ship so the enemy bullet streams cross as you convert them to diamonds, then lead the bullets correctly. A MAME save state, a good replay and a bit of determination will help you learn it fairly quickly.

[Jck]

[...] also some of the AEX team can do it perfectly I believe.

Yes, we can. It's not so hard when you figure out how it works (at least in the first stage)

[sikraiken]

I only played the game for a short time about two years ago, but the second loop was insane (atleast 2-4, anyway). I forget how many lives I went into that level with so many times - I only know that they all disappeared in a short amount of time. I think the first loop isn't that difficult compared to ESP.Ra.De or other Cave games to just clear, but the game as a whole is pretty difficult.

[GaijinPunch]

My 5-day old son can jewel better than me.

[nZero]

Congratulations GP