and yea, dragonblaze and gunbirdII especially are not very pussy-friendly, and they can be pretty irritating at times (instant kill lazers, safespot oriented patterns, lots of deaths with a full bomb stock, etc), but on the flipside they open up for more consistency (when a solution is formulated it can be repeated easily, if you have a halfway working brain, anyway). also, cave score sytems are either flatout boring, or they have a tendency to become a bit tiresome after a while, but maybe thats just me. psykio shumps (sic), have no elaborated score engines, but they get a lot of replay value through the many different ships/characters. you know, DJ Takumi style.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
as for the precognition factor, ketsui is considered cave's most "random" piece of software (suicide bullets, etc), and still, even the experts have no problems admitting the game is "only" 10% adlib dodging and 90% pattern learning. and someone whos better at daioujou than you, me, your mom, and the rest of the forums' members together, described it as a "game of memorization".
bottom line- if you want to perform well in a nakamura shooter, foreknowledge is neccessary, but not sufficient (i know this is obvoius, but i like to state the obvious).
BTW, arcadia's reader top20 of 2006 had no espgaludaII -- cave sucks!
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
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"veni, vidi, punchi (and a little bit of shooti)" -tavia