RQ: Ikaruga is kicking my @$$.

uwfan · Post by **uwfan** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 5:55 pm

Post subject: RQ: Ikaruga is kicking my @$$.
Specineff

Well, not to begin with the whining, but the title says it all.

I don't know how some of you do to amass those large chains, or 1CC or merely make it alive out of there. I can get S+ or S++ in stage one.. but chapter 2, with that... swirly swirl of stupid planes who like ram their noses in your fighter's afterburners... that's where all hell breaks loose. I can't seem to find a logical pattern, and always end up eating a black bullet or ramming against a white enemy.

And in the part with the waves of white and black bullets... there is only one four-letter word that describes it: BOOM!

I have seen the demonstrations, the perfect chaining replays.. why can I even play half as good as that after a year of owning and playing the game? Maybe I should dedicate myself to 1CC Thunder Force V in master difficulty.

Any suggestions appreciated, and thanks for listening.
_________________
"Could you take me to... funky toooowwwwnn? De de doo dee doo, doo doo dee dee doo..."

Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:01 am

Venom

Joined: 12 Nov 2002

Posts: 690

Post subject:

It's kind of a looping figure 8 motion in that part, while killing 3 enemies of a color and leaving 1 alive each time. It's not too hard, but takes some practice.
_________________
If I may speak freely, nasty like the freaky deeky at your local sleazy speak easy.

Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:12 am

Matt
Board Modder

Joined: 12 Nov 2002

Posts: 1976

Post subject:

Off to strategy with ya.
_________________

Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:16 am

AtaruMoroboshi

Joined: 12 Nov 2002

Posts: 608

Post subject:

I've been playing Ikaruga since the DC release and consider myself generally only moderately good at shmups and Ikaruga is the only shmup I've ever come close to one crediting. On easy mode even. (chapter 5 on a credit)

Now, for that swarm, you have two options:

1) fuck your chain and KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES.

this is pretty easy to survive just by killing everything.

2) Carefully chain it.

this is hard, but if I can do it (and I can only Rank:A chapter 1) you can do it. Doing this invovles moving in a figure 8, and not holding down the fire button all the time. The small enemies appear in groups of four, so you have to kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-kill-kill-kill-STOP FIRING-etc etc etc.

I can't do it perfectly with consistency, but I can do it occasionally, and at least I've stopped dying from it. I suggest being white for this pattern because the black/red bullets are easier to see on the blue-ish background, and because just after this section, there are two white cannons that attack you, and once you chain this section, you'll be too happy to remember to switch to white. (this has happened to me, haha)

Watch some replays in slo-mo, that might help.
_________________
Frog Blast The Vent Core!

Wed Mar 03, 2004 4:53 pm

CLASSiC 2D

Joined: 31 Jan 2004

Posts: 26

Post subject:

He's talking about 2-1? Well, here's a beginner's pointer. I can get 35 chains there.

Start as far NW without crashing into any paths of any other ships as u can. Then when the black loop comes, go east shooting. You should get 1 black chain, + 1 white ship. As ur going back to ur original position, the white loop comes, fire 2 shots taking out 2 whites for a CH. Then repeat.
_________________
I <3 Kylie.

Thu Mar 04, 2004 10:12 pm

Super Noodle

Joined: 29 Mar 2003

Posts: 26

Post subject: That dastdardly 2-1 section!

¡Ay de mí!

That's quite the tricky section. Indeed, it's really quite daunting at first glance. Howver, spending some time in the slow-mo Conquest 2-1 runs helped tremendously. Here's my breakdown, as far as what's helped me. Mind you, this only applies to one-player forays.

-- Firstly, the path of the planes aren't set in stone; they're based on your position. They'll fly down (or across the screen, depending on their point of entry) until they pass your position, at which point they loop around you and head off of the screen. Thus, if you're moving around, your position's moving around, and the planes suddenly go crazy-go-nuts.

-- Each shot that the planes fire is targeted EXACTLY at the Ikaruga's current position. By that logic, a simple shift just a skotch off to the left or right will result in fun times, and remaining in place will result in firey death.

-- Two planes of each color (White and Black) come in at a time from each top corner of the screen, alternating position. To better explain it, in the top left corner, you'll see two white planes emerge, then two black planes, then two more white planes.

Let's put all of this information into practice. Since the two planes are not equal to 3 in a chain, what one must do is get the two and wait for the third one to loop around, or actively seek it out. Since the shots are aimed directly at the craft, remaining in place with slight jukes can help establish a pattern, as was so eloquently stated, of KILL-KILL-KILL-OHWAITDON'TKILL. If your reflexes are lightning-fast, you can rack up quite the chain from both black and white, but a nice 20-something chain in 2-1 can still be achieved if you ease up and stick to only one color. With practice, you should be able to loot and pillage in Conquest, and with a skotch more practice, be able to keep the groove from Level 1, and keep the groove goin' all through Level 2, and more practice gets ya through Level 3...

And so on.

Ahh, but wait! There's that dastardly "Alternate criss-cross waves of black and white bullets" section in the middle of 2-2. It, too, however, can be tackled in a similar approach, the approach of "Learn-Apply-Don'tCrashAndBurn". Paying attention to the paths of the spinning bullets shows that they intersect at regular intervals, and that usually the enemies are set up in a odd pattern. Plus, those giant laser platforms are never fun to tangle with.

This section here is the first real test in the game of rapid-fire polarity switching, where you are in the mode of "Switch-fire-switch-fire-switch-fire", in the span of just a couple seconds. By going into the bullet waves and absorbing a nice chunk before you switch, you open up a nice lil' gap to earn some breathing time for the switch to the other color.

Keeping the chain in this section is the tricky part. It's easiest to just not fire a single shot, and thus not risk the chain at all, whilst focusing on dodging. Simple, effective, but not very satisfying in the long run, as you lost a good 5-ish chains. That's over a hundred thousand points! The best way to go, for points and survival, is to find a groove that consists of swapping between chaining and polarity-"chain"ging on the fly. Chain three of a kind, swap polarity, chain again, swap again, and so on. Lighting reflexes are the name of the game, and some time in Conquest'll help tremendously.

God bless Conquest Mode.

That's what Ikaruga's all about -- scoping out the situation, and applying the data you learn. Fun, really. : )

Best of luck, amigo!
_________________
Super Noodle

Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:58 am

uwfan_us

Joined: 13 Nov 2002

Posts: 539

Post subject:

well i guess i post another RQ here, rather than starting an new thread, is that right?

im pretty new to playing ikaruga seriously, although i have owned it for a while now,

Anyway RQ is:

How does the homing laser work? how does it choose whether to hit choose black or white enemies first, etc?

id like a detailed answer please...

i was hoping it would automatically discriminate between black and white enemies, but instead its just seems to hit whatevers closest? [hence sometimes screwing up your chain]

Also does it behave the same in boss fights?

i have the feeling mastering the homing laser is very important in ikaruga.

Sun Mar 21, 2004 1:14 pm

rjpageuk

Joined: 29 Sep 2003

Posts: 31

Post subject:

No one fully understands the AI behind the homing missiles.

It *seems* to target the closest x enemies where x is the amount of homing missiles you have upto 12 (if an enemy takes multiple homings that many will go to the closest enemy first too).

As far as we know there is absolutely no colour discrimination involved.

As for whether it can target enemies which are off screen or about to come on screen is another thing, sometimes there is strange behaviour where a missile will rotate about and then kill something which wasnt on the screen when it was fired.

Another thing worth noting is that the order things die in from your homing is NOT always releated to their distance from you.

You can force 1 enemy to die before the others by positioning yourself very close before releasing but apart from this there seems to be little way to predict the order in which enemies die from the missiles.

It behaves the same in boss fights except ch1 boss in PAL versions of the game. There is a bug where your homing missiles go towards the "satellites" instead of the main boss during the third form.

Mon Mar 22, 2004 2:44 am

Kiken

Joined: 11 Nov 2002

Posts: 405

Post subject:

The wind-lasers are primarily proxemic... the closer Ikaruga or Ginkei is to an enemy, the more likely that the enemy will be targetted. However, it should also be noted that the wind-lasers love to travel in packs, and that they are more accurate at hitting targets when there is a natural arc to their paths.

I have noticed that there is some minimal degree of chain integrity in their trajectories. However, this is greatly affected by the proxemity and the arc degree of the flight path. Please also keep in mind that the wind-lasers are released from the rear of the ship and thusly have a specific active range.
_________________
Abayo
"with new weapons perceived some disquieting movement"
http://www.livejournal.com/~kiken

Mon Mar 22, 2004 2:53 pm

Rastan78

Joined: 11 Jan 2004

Posts: 56

Post subject:

Another random question here:

On the Ikaruga DVD, are these guys using an autofire button for their single stream shot? There's no way I've been able to get that rapid fire narrow shot. Am I missing something?

I assume their scores would still be considered legit even if they use autofire?

Mon Mar 22, 2004 3:32 pm

AtaruMoroboshi

Joined: 12 Nov 2002

Posts: 608

Post subject:

Rastan78 wrote:
Another random question here:

On the Ikaruga DVD, are these guys using an autofire button for their single stream shot? There's no way I've been able to get that rapid fire narrow shot. Am I missing something?

I assume their scores would still be considered legit even if they use autofire?

use an arcade style set up and rapidly tap the fire button with two fingers, you'll get the same stream.
_________________
Frog Blast The Vent Core!

Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:06 pm

uwfan_us

Joined: 13 Nov 2002

Posts: 539

Post subject:

can someone explain the whole "single stream shot" thing?

Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:18 pm

Icarus

Joined: 09 Aug 2003

Posts: 230

Post subject:

when you tap the fire button, your ship fires a single bullet. in Japan, they rigged pads and controls to autofire the shot button, creating an endless stream of single bullets, instead of regular "holding down shot" autofire, which is a stream of doublebullets.
_________________
featheredwings.net - replays etc.
Shikigami 1 Scores / Shikigami Series Mini-Guide

Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:20 pm

Rastan78

Joined: 11 Jan 2004

Posts: 56

Post subject:

I'm tempted to rig my stick with an autofire.
I like the idea of having one button for standard shot and one button for single shot.

There are so many places where that could help you chain more easily.

Mon Mar 22, 2004 10:11 pm

cygnus

Joined: 17 Feb 2004

Posts: 36

Post subject:

1CC'ing ikaruga will take you many months of practice

(i can't do it)

dukeofspace · Post by **dukeofspace** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 8:32 am

for the beginning of level 2 I tend to move in a figure 8 up and down the screen. the ships seem to fly around the outside, time it right and you can breeze through that section.

I havent been playing long, maybe a few weeks. Ive hit a brick wall with the third level boss. VERY annoying

powerfuran · Post by **powerfuran** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:34 am

If the problem is breaking the chain in the messy 2-1 section, the trick is to stick to one color and single shot until you get used to the movements. Then, start watchin replays and stuff, or even better try and figure out your own strategies.

OMG, just noticed it was a question made loooong ago.

kengou · Post by **kengou** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:53 pm

with 2-1 you can stay white the whole time, after killing the easy chains at the beginning, move to the top left of the screen and take out the first swirly ships as they come in. You can get a couple chains right there. Then, the trick is to take out 3 as they intersect in front of you and stop firing before the fourth of the same color passes by. I know there's a method that gets you even more than 38 chains in 2-1 but I'm not good enough to know what it is, so I just go for the 38 chains by staying relatively in the middle and shooting sets of 3 ships (not shooting the 4th one) as they pass by.

Arvandor · Post by **Arvandor** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:14 am

I'd have to play the game to figure it out again, but I had a nice "ghetto chain" strategy that let me keep my chain in 2-1, and also survive. Let's see how badly I can describe it going off very old memories ^_^

You start left and shoot just white. After a bit you'll notice you're about to shoot 4 white and blacks are about to cross your stream as well. At that point, miss one of the whites, and then stay in that general vicinity (left third of the screen) and shoot 3 black, 3 white, 3 black. They line up nicely for you at around spot X, and I make horizontal figure 8 motions around spot N to dodge and direct bullets.

----------------------
[.........................]
[......X.................]
[.........................]
[.........................]
[.......N................]
[.........................]
[.........................]
[.........................]
[.........................]
----------------------

I'd make a vid if I could =/ The ghetto chain is like the ultimate average player 2-1 strategy ^_^ I think I only miss out on like 6 chains using this method.

powerfuran · Post by **powerfuran** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 1:44 pm

Here's my 44 chain pattern. Actually, it has 3 colour switches, but you can switch to black only the first time, after that you can stay white all the time. Just be sure to fill 4 homing slots. Works nice in both easy and normal mode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFVKyXga2cs

BTW there are really easy methods to get 36, then 38, then 41 chains. Just practice and try to add some more enemies.

crithit5000 · Post by **crithit5000** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:23 pm

I like Chapter 2-1, it's one of the first instances a beginning player will probably think is utterly impossible to chain decently yet it's actually pretty easy to get between 36-40 chains. I like my 40 chain approach, it's pretty easy to learn (don't watch after 2-1; there's like 500 fuckups in 2-1 in that video).

powerfuran · Post by **powerfuran** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:03 pm

crithit5000 wrote:I like Chapter 2-1, it's one of the first instances a beginning player will probably think is utterly impossible to chain decently yet it's actually pretty easy to get between 36-40 chains. I like my 40 chain approach, it's pretty easy to learn (don't watch after 2-1; there's like 500 fuckups in 2-1 in that video).

That's a GOOD strat indeed! I had a 40 chain pattern very similar to yours, except for a couple of different movements.

Are you aiming for the 44 chain strat? Otherwise you can learn how to properly ride one of the white lasers, it boosts up your score a lot.

Castor Krieg · Post by **Castor Krieg** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 11:36 pm

Can anyone help me with figuring the chain mechanics in this?

Shoot 3 of the same polarity repeatedly? E.g.:

3 white - 3 white - 3 white

Does my polarity matter? Does that mean I have to ignore the ones with oppostite polarity as this will brak my chain?

Thx a lot for help guys!

WarBovine · Post by **WarBovine** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 3:27 am

Your polarity doesn't matter for chaining. Three consecutive enemies of the same colour form a chain:

3 whites

There should be a chain indicator somewhere on the HUD (at least in the XBLA version) which will tell you what colour of enemy you are on if you forget. Once you have completed a chain, you are free to make a new chain of any colour:

3 whites - 3 blacks

or

3 whites - 3 whites

are both valid. As an example, start chapter one, shoot the six whites in the right corner, then the six black in the left for four chains. Enemies tend to come in multiples of three, so with practice you can continue chaining enemies throughout the level.

Castor Krieg · Post by **Castor Krieg** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 8:44 am

I think I get it now: as long as enemies will come in threes of the same color my chain will increase by 1. So I can go: 3 white 3 white 3 black 3 white 3 black and will be at chain 5, correct?

SimpleNate · Post by **SimpleNate** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:05 pm

Castor Krieg wrote:I think I get it now: as long as enemies will come in threes of the same color my chain will increase by 1. So I can go: 3 white 3 white 3 black 3 white 3 black and will be at chain 5, correct?

That's correct.

antares · Post by **antares** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:27 pm

How many points do I need for an A ranking in stage 5?

On my best attempt I got a x62 chain but that was only enough for B.
Does a lifeloss affect the ranking?

Do you get less points on easy respectively more on hard?

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 7:49 pm

antares wrote:Do you get less points on easy respectively more on hard?

Technically, yes: every enemy releases bullets at you when they are destroyed on Hard, whereas no enemy does this on Easy (and only enemies that share the same color as you when you destroy them release bullets on Normal); you can absorb this bullets for minor point gain.