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So explain for the non-zako stuff later in the game (stage 5, tate-ana for example) that don't "stop". In zetsushikai those things don't for a bit, but the keep moving zig-zagged.

I didn't mention anything about other non-zako enemies in the game not having frame-based invulnerability. Just those carriers in stage 1, because I had one hell of a time trying to figure out why the same timing wouldn't work on all of them before discovering the trick I mentioned.

I don't recall any other enemies in the game that have the same issue, but I'm not sure. The level 5 tate-ana enemies are completely different, aren't they?

Finally figured out what over does in arcade, looks cool as hell, but is it really that big a difference in points?
Still having a hard time with over in BL, over, switch out, then into z mode, right?

I am still trying to nail down BL, myself, maybe I could ask for help here. From watching some replays, etc. It seems to me the strategy is to get a lot of gems (max?), go into kakusei to make a bunch of suicide bullets, revert to normal, go to Zetsushikai to split those said suicide bullets, then revert to normal and cancel them all? If this is in fact what should be done, I have the problem of always running out of gems when I get to the Zetsushikai phase or I just don't have enough time to do all the form changing before the bullets just go off screen. Any tips on this? Thanks again.

That's the idea, yeah. Not sure why you're running out of gems though. Usually if you have about 200 more you can pop into Kakusei and kill something then switch out and into zetsushikai for a couple seconds of bullet splitting with some gems to spare.

Don't waste gems on popcorn enemies. Figure out which enemies spawn dozens of suicide bullets instead of five or six, kill a few of them, then buzz them before shooting a popcorn when your meter runs out to cancel them all. A lot of these enemies have two forms so you can split the suicide bullets and the stuff the enemy continues to spit out.

I still haven't really figured out if there's any score difference between canceling the bullets in zetsu or popping out and canceling for gold. I suspect that if nothing else you loose bullets while you change out of zetsu, and it's safer to cancel while you still have a little invincibility instead of losing all your protection in the middle of a bullet storm.

can anyone tell me why my guard barrier shoots sometimes when I don't want it to? It doesn't seem like I'm getting hit by bullets or an enemy (playing novice 360). I go into Kakusei mode, and when I hit A to shoot in that mode sometimes I fire off the guard barrier which ruins the setup I'm doing, and I have no idea why.

Sorry if this is a basic question but I just got this and not sure exactly how the scoring works. I get if you kill an enemy in Zesshikai mode it spawns more bullets but how do you score points off of the new bullets? Do I have to keep holding B and just kill something else? Release it? Or go back into normal mode? I've been watching videos and replays but can't figure it out. Also I'm playing on 360 mode.

holding B puts you in Zesshikai? if so once you're in that mode you can let go of the button, then basically kill more enemies in that mode - good look

I got this a few days ago. I feel it's a lot tougher than the first game. A few things...

Is it just me or in Omake mode you're virtually invincible? I'm pretty terrible at the arcade mode (can't get past lvl 3 boss yet) and I 1cced Omake 1st try, with 3 or 4 lives in the bank. What's the point?

Also, when pushing and holding the kakusei button to enter zesshikai, it seems sometimes it works right away, and sometimes I have to kill an enemy before it actually kicks in. Is this normal? It kind of messes up my timing...

i'm no expert but no one else is replying so...if you're talking about the arcade game you need gold and gems to go into zesshikai, so i'd guess you only have gems when you hold the button, then that first enemy you kill gets you some gold which lets you go into zesshikai?

I had the same experience with Omake mode. 1cc on first try (also my first 1cc) but it seems as though you're practically invincible in that mode...

Stupid achievement question approaching fast:

I searched the Galuda threads, and didn't seem to find an answer: I have the early achievements for 360 mode "beat the game with......" Ageha, Tateha and Asagi, but I don't have the one for "clear the game with all characters......"

Is there a hidden 4th in there or something? What am I missing?

I don't have the achievement, but maybe you have to clear Black Label with Seseri, too?

Just beat it with Seseri, and no, it didn't pop.......maybe it's glitched?

Found this on trueachievements.com:

Mixed clear (like clearing Xbox Novice with Asagi and Xbox 360 with Ageha and Tateha) is not allowed, so you have to clear a same mode with all 3 characters.

Maybe I did novice for one of them, it's been a while since I played, have to try it again.........

I really don't understand this at all

If you hold b and kill stuff then they spawn suicide bullets right?
if you press b and kill stuff the bullets cancel to gold.
gems are basically your meter?

if I hold b, kill stuff, get suicide bullets, do I then have to double tap b to go out and back into (slow-mo mode) to cash the bullets into gold? or is there a way to cancel them in (holding b) mode.

what is the point of (red bullet mode)? other than making you auto-bomb it seems completely pointless when you might as well be dealing with slower bullets and collecting gems.

I realise that these modes have names, but they might as well all be the same word so I've gone for the much easier descriptive method.

I don't understand the scoring at all. It seems to crawl no at the same rate no matter what I do (yes I've read the first post)

Think of it like this, you have two modes, one fuelled by gems and the other fuelled by both gems and gold. You get gems by killing enemies normally, this allows you to enter into the mode where you cancel bullets for gold. Once you have some gold, you can enter the second mode, where you get big points just by cancelling bullets.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I don't play for score at all. Fortunately you can get both extends without doing any difficult scoring tricks. Playing for survival can be a lot of fun in this game.

I wish I could find a video of somone playing this with a commentary of what they're doing, because I 've tried several times to understand the scoring mechanics and I just don't get it.

Have you given this a look?

I think I stumbled upon an accurate calculation of the clear bonus. According to sinmoon's Espgaluda II page, the clear bonus is the sum of the following:

• Lives remaining: 20,000,000 each (120,000,000 max.)
• Life frames: 10,000,000 each (60,000,000 max.)
• Barrier remaining: 4,000 for every 1/4000th (16,000,000 max.)
• [Usual stage 6 clear bonus] * 2

I hope this explains why our clear bonuses are higher than what we expected.

I have put some more info about the mysterious Omake! mode on my site: http://www.emphatic.se/?p=665

Yes, it's very easy to play for survival, but scoring well is a whole different ballpark. BPzeBanshee and I have discussed this mode recently and found some cool additions, but we're not 100% clear on how they work yet.

1. When you max out gems and gold you will see four green "corners" around your character and the Zesshikai chime can be heard. If you now enter Kakusei, there's a meter in your barrier that should be red. When you kill a popcorn enemy, all enemy bullets touching the meter (now yellow) should turn into gold. This meter depletes very fast so while the yellow bar will clear enemy bullets in your path, keep the bar yellow by killing tanks or other smaller enemies. This "bar mode" only works when you have more than 300 gems though. I also believe that you must stay in Kakusei (maybe even Overmode) a while to "unlock" the extra gem mode from ESPGALUDA (and AFAIK all other ESPGALUDA II modes) before seeing these four green corners.

I was going to try and write a more thoroughly detailed view of it but yeah that's about right.

The idea seems to be to get Gems, then get Gold. Having a high multiplier helps, which is really the only time the Barrier should ever be used.

You'll notice at all times in Omake! bullets within certain distance to you will turn red. Entering Kakusei will cancel out those bullets. When killing an enemy the Kakusei meter will turn yellow and quickly drain back to red, chiming a sound. It shouldn't matter what kind of enemy it is but it is better to kill off groups of popcorn enemies one-at-a-time for prolonging length of what is essentially the "cancel chain meter". While you have yellow in the Kakusei bar you can run through bullets and cancel them out, but you don't get long to do it so be careful.

When you get 500 Gems and 1000 Gold *AND HAVE A FULL BOMB STOCK* you'll get the four corners as Emphatic mentioned. I like to call them "ribbons" cause they look like ribbons to me but that's beside the point. While you have gems/gold at max killing enemies will result in bullets within a certain radius (that red field) will turn to gold. Going into Kakusei will maintain the 'ribbons' until you have less than 300 gems. During this time you can chain deaths of enemies and run into bullets turning them into gold. Doing this with those flyers in Stage 1 with their front cannons popped off for example, results in gaining a lot of gold.

If you do not have a full bomb stock however, upon reaching 500 gems and 1000 gold your gold will get reset to 0 and half of your bomb stock will be filled up, thus you should always try to keep a full bomb stock unless manipulating the Barrier charge to increase the multiplier dramatically.

A few things I haven't figured out yet are the significance of the green colouring that occaisionally seems to happen while chainkilling to get yellow in the Kakusei meter for bulletcancelling, and the small circles within the meter that change colour. Chances are they might be nothing but aesthetics but the colours do seem to vary at times so it does have me curious. Also, I'm not entirely sure I agree with Emphatic's view of only using Kakusei to avoid letting things get out of hand. I believe if used properly it can be used to gain much more score than in normal mode by manipulating those ribbons at the right times.

In other news, I feel like an idiot because I can't figure out how to play Arrange Mode as Rank 99*99. Can't find the settings for it anywhere. I don't even know any of the achievements I'm getting, or even what rank I'm playing on right now. :S
EDIT: Found the answer, turns out I already did it and it seems to only apply for Arrange anyway (do correct me if I'm wrong though, still trying to get the hang of the rest of the modes, I've only had it a week )

How much should I be using the bomb and slo-mo (B button) with a view to just surviving? I'll score where I can but let's leave that aside for now.

Is this game actually possible because it seems like a joke that only the programmers are in on?

My god, I thought we knocked some sense into you back when you were claiming that Futari was impossible.

Here's a survival-oriented clear. Quite a few mistakes all around, but this is the kind of thing your basic 1cc involves. It is significantly harder than Futari Original, but it's still perfectly possible.

If you want to clear, I think you should aim to no-miss until at least the fourth boss, so plan your resource usage around that accordingly. You'll get a half bomb refill before the stage three boss, but ideally you won't even need it since triggering the 1up involves not bombing for the hard part of the third stage (midboss start until just before the boss). With regards to kakusei... I guess you should just use it as a panic button to start with. You'll get a feel for where to use it after playing around with it for a while, after you discover which spots personally give you the most trouble.

I'll disagree a bit on Kakusei and say you should use it early and often if you're trying to survive, if you have at least 50 gems or so, enough to clear out a couple big enemies. It's pretty much an unlimited resource and it goes down quickly when you start killing enemies, so very short bursts seem to be ideal for me when I'm under heavy pressure. Also note you can use your bombs either for a quick bullet clear that only takes 25% of the gauge or whatever's left, which works quite well on the stage, or hold it for longer on a boss for damage.

Note you do need to use Kakusei for scoring to get to the 15m extend at the very least, and 35m later on, and look up how to get the hidden extend Sapz mentioned (on stage 3) in the first post. If you think it's hard, try scoring with Zetsushikai (hold down the kakusei button when you have a couple hundred gems and some gold), it might be less frustrating!

I just got Black Label and I'm loving it so far. I love how absolutely insane the scoring system is. My only gripe is collecting the gems. In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZGgKwPq_n0, he gathers about 220 gems before first going into kakusei. I only get 160, making me have to skip kakuseing that part. I sort of know that it is a matter of point-blanking but even doing that, I still get medium sized gems compared the big gems he gets.

I get large sized gems from the start though. Does anyone know what the deal is?

It sounds like you're doing the right think if you can get to 160, but you may not be pointblanking close enough yet... the distance is very tight, smaller than Ketsui's 5-chips say, especially since you need to be using shot I thought gem size was just related to how well you're pointblanking with shot though, with laser always giving medium sized gems.

Speaking of which, it'd be very handy if Gwyrgyn's post on Black Label was copy-pasted into the first post, it's a bit buried in the middle of the thread as it stands

I booted this up mode earlier today and experimented a little bit. I did two Asagi runs through Omake: in one I switched to Kakusei whenever "the corners" appeared and blasted away until the gem count dropped below 300, and in the other I only used Kakusei to get out of tight spots, kill bosses quicker, and fill up on gold. I ended up scoring around 50 percent higher on the latter, so it would appear that focusing on keeping the "main counter" high is the sole key to high scores here.

I'd love to get something more "official" written down, though, especially since I need to update the HG101 article soon...there's a page covering Omake mode in the instruction manual, has anyone translated it?