Okay, since there are a lot of "wtf is going on in this mode", a lot having to do with the constantly changing patterns and the cluster of numbers on the screen, I figured I'd pull together everything I know about the mode so far and we could swap strats and info in this forum.
The mode is put together in the form of a score attack. A single stage is selected for play, and scores for each individual stage are tracked. The game saves the highest score you've reached for each stage, rather than just the score for the last playthrough. You get an infinite number of lives to use during the stage.
Your ship automatically fires its rapid shot when no buttons are held. Only 2 buttons are used. One switches between shot and laser, the other activates a bomb when pressed and a hyper when held down.
Ship Customizations
There are 3 customizations for the ship that can be selected before starting:
Bomb Custom - Bomb duration is lengthened, but the bomb/hyper gauge takes longer to refill
Laser Custom - Side lasers are lengthened, but the ship movement speed is reduced
Hyper Custom - Gives a period of invincibility immediately after activating the hyper, but the hyper time is shortened
Area Rank and Enemy Rank
The more a level is played, the stronger the enemy attacks will become and the more points their destruction is worth. The numbers at the bottom indicate the total area rank (from left to right: enemy health, bullet speed, bullet density) and the numbers over the enemies indicate their individual rank. Getting killed slightly reduces the rank of all enemies on screen at the time, and less slightly reduces the rank of the enemy that killed you. Play around with the numbers and build your own danmaku game!
Bees and Background Grids
All of the bees in each stage are already revealed but don't give any points.
Collecting a green bee will change the background to blue and enemies will fire high-speed aimed patterns and the blue number on the side will raise more rapidly.
Collecting an orange bee will change the background to red and enemies will fire slow, dense patterns and the orange number on the side will raise more rapidly.
Collecting a bee as it flashes will normally return the background to normal, however if a flashing bee is collected during a hyper then the background will turn green and all enemies will produce much more difficult patterns and pretty much every number on the screen will grow. Green background mode will also be automatically entered when exceeding the previous high score during the stage.
If you die, you lose a chunk of your score, the background returns to normal, and the blue and orange numbers will decrease by some amount.
Blue and Orange Numbers
The numbers on the right side affect the properties of enemy barrages. Blue affects bullet speed and orange affects pattern density. Killing enemies with laser raises blue more rapidly, killing enemies with shot raises orange more rapidly. While the background is normal (no blue/red/green grid present), using rapid shot will cause enemy patterns to favor speed, and using laser will cause them to favor density.
Onscreen Gauges
There are a couple of gauges on the very sides of the screen that aren't that easy to pay attention to during normal play. The red one is the destroy gauge, destroying enemies in quick succession will fill it up, and when it reaches the red zone all destroyed enemies will produce the steel hexagon "expert items" worth 10pts each. Collecting the expert items will raise the blue gauge, called the expert gauge. Raising the expert gauge adds a multiplier to rank increase, up to 3x growth rate at maximum.
There are a pair of gauges at the top, 1 full gauge = 1 bomb OR hyper. If both gauges are full and a B icon is present, you will autobomb when hit by an enemy bullet at the cost of 1 gauge. Collecting stars and destroying enemies will refill the gauges. Point-blank attacks on enemies will refill the gauges extremely rapidly.
Hypers and Bombs
Hypers raise your attack power and cause your shot to cancel pink bullets into expert items. As well, all expert items currently onscreen + produced when a hyper is invoked will be sucked into the ship. Bombs heavily damage everything in their blast radius, give temporary invincibility to the ship, and cause all expert items and star items onscreen to be sucked into the ship. If you manage to have 2 full gauges during a hyper, your ship will gain a blue aura. During this time you can use a bomb at no gauge cost (Free Bomb).
How2play
Actual strategy for highest scores looks something like this:
Play until rank is high enough to make even popcorn enemies exceptionally durable and worth lots of points, then use hyper invincibility to cancel a bunch of bullets and get right on top of them, then launch a bomb to destroy everything and use the point-blank gauge refill to gain extra bombs and continue your rampage.
Hmm... jack rank way up and bomb everything... no way Yagawa was involved in this mode, right?
... and that's all I've got for now. Any fact-checking and additional observations that you could provide would be appreciated, thanks
At least the first boss.
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