moozooh wrote:A Simple Guide to 1.5 Original Larsa, by me.
1st phase/1st attack (1/1 for short): While Larsa is busy talking, move to the bottom-left corner and position yourself above the second bomb slot, not higher than a full character sprite's length away from it. Hold laser, and keep track of the darker bullets that are aimed at you. Slowly tap-dodge them towards the right side of the screen. If you're doing everything right, you should end up around the middle of the screen without ever having to switch directions or dodging the pea-shaped lighter-tone bullets. This works at any rank.
1/2: How much distance to cut back here is entirely up to your taste, but the pattern is solved in three steps: cut back the main stream, position yourself in front of an opening in the sweeping waves, and dodge the heavy streams while still moving away from the main stream. The key here is never to mix these steps together and leaving yourself at least half the screen distance for each cycle. Attempting to cutback the main stream when dodging the sweeps or the heavy streams will most likely get you killed. Otherwise the attack is very easy, but you do need a controller that doesn't confuse pure directions with diagonals to avoid stupid deaths here.
1/3: The background (darker tone) spread pattern is aimed at you and has a center bullet (i. e., mindless tap-dodging required). The foreground (lighter tone) pattern is also aimed at you but alternates between having a center bullet and not having it, and does so at irregular intervals (seems to always start with 2 with/1 without though). The main problem with this attack is that the foreground pattern is too dense to tap-dodge, so every once in a while you will have to move far enough to make dodging the background a concern. Thus, just bomb it.
2/1: Take note of the width of the "corridor" and start on the side. Now, you can either try moving back and forth around the center or gradually sweeping from one side to the other. Just try leaving as much breathing room as possible, and keep in mind that the corridor walls move away from you if you get too close. Your main concern here is cutting back the aimed stream (small bullets) so that it doesn't interfere with dodging the spreads, which are by themselves not hard (Battletoads was much, much worse). Fun pattern, requires practice.
2/2: Dodge the first two spreads (the less you move around, the wider its openings), then, to make things easier, dodge through one of the fan streams and bomb right before the second one corners you. While bomb is in effect, move in front of Larsa — if you've done the timing right, the "back side" of the fan streams will already be behind your back so you won't have to dodge them for another few seconds. Back off a bit. Now, Larsa will shoot a number of high-speed spreads at you. What makes it easy is that all of them have a center bullet, so as long as you gently tap to the side as you see a new wave of bullets appear, you're absolutely safe. It should be over by the time the fan streams reach you the third time.
3/1: The hardest pattern, hands down. I suggest concentrating on one side at a time (the left, since it has a wider range) and stream the other, but if you have bombs, spend two without a doubt.
3/2: Very easy with a bit of practice, but can be prone to stupid deaths if you're spacing out or using an imprecise controller. The pattern intersects with the bottom of the screen a number of times, so your best bet is mimicking the horizontal position of the tail in order to dodge it effectively. 1st time: there's a center bullet, tap to the side. 2nd time: two bullets in the center with no dead space between; tap twice. 3rd time: two bullets with an opening, dodge there if you feel precise (it pretty much always works if you just keep yourself in line with the tail, but YMMV). 4th time: the same with a larger opening, only dodge there. 5th time: even larger opening. 6th time: a center bullet with very small openings on the side. This is tricky because you either have to tap (if you've lined yourself up properly), or move around the clump of three bullets. Pick whichever you feel more confident with. After that Larsa will finish with a screen-covering spread attack followed up by an even faster spread, but they're both dodged by a single tap.
3/3: This attack is broken into two cycles, the first half of which is rather nasty, while the other is either piss-easy (if you stream it) or deadly (if it corners you somehow). Start in the center and dodge the random spread spam while gradually moving to the side, and immediately start moving to the other side when it changes. Bomb if not confident. There, Larsa dead.
I know this is an old thread only kept alive by DrTrouserPlank but I would appreciate it if you/someone do something like this for
1.5 Maniac Larsa (doesn't need to be as long). I'm picking this game back up again and want to finally get my first shmup 1cc I would consider worthy, but Larsa is being very bitchy. (As are the giant moths in stage 4)
Also, I've been wondering this for a while but could never really tell: Do bombs do different damage to bosses depending on how high you are up the screen? If so, where's the best place to let one off?
(she is one tough cookie even for a "novice" mode)
