How long does it take you all to clear a game?

[Bananamatic]

Yeah mang stage 2-5 is REALLY EASY!!

Oh wait...no it's not.

six autobombs, hyper spam, ridiculous shot power
the game plays itself

[Illyrian]

Yeah mang stage 2-5 is REALLY EASY!!

Oh wait...no it's not.

six autobombs, hyper spam, ridiculous shot power
the game plays itself

Man, you are SO RIGHT!!

Edit: You only get 3 autobombs a life by the way. I guess you don't really know what you're talking about after all! WHAT A SURPRISE!!

[Bananamatic]

3 at first, then it goes up all the way to 6 - comparable to a ketsui 1-ALL I'd say

[Illyrian]

3 at first, then it goes up all the way to 6 - comparable to a ketsui 1-ALL I'd say

Ketsui 1-all is easy huh...first I've heard of it.

Yes, DFK is easy to get to the second loop on, I finished the first loop on the first credit I put into it when I got DDP Rez, but that doesn't mean a 2-all is easy.
Quite frankly, there isn't anything in DFK to compare to Ketsui level 1-5 in my opinion, at least in terms of the levels leading up to the boss.

Edit: There is of course nothing to stop you from playing BL and turning autobomb off.

[Bananamatic]

The luxury of not having to care about dying with bombs is a huge factor in difficulty - I found my first ketsui 1-ALL harder than when I got around to looping it(where you basically disregard bombs altogether and try to get through with only 6 mistakes at most)

DFK is basically that, except you lose a bomb on hit at most, you get more bombs than in ketsui+you get hypers to cheese through a lot of the game, including bosses.

All that and a more user friendly fighter with an unlimited range laser.

[Illyrian]

Yep I agree, Ketsui is harder.

Edit: I definitely think DFK's bosses are harder though, their patterns are just more challenging, and if you want to score any points you can't just hyper them all.

I find all 5 of the regular ketsui bosses rather dull, especially Evacaneer, who I find a very lacklustre end to the game.

Stupid metal gorilla thing.

[Deca]

I find all 5 of the regular ketsui bosses rather dull, especially Evacaneer, who I find a very lacklustre end to the game.

Stupid metal gorilla thing.

Really? I thought Ketsui had some pretty interesting patterns, especially with a few of the bosses. There are some cool patterns in DFK but if we're just talking first loop I kind of feel like a fair amount of the boss patterns, especially the final attacks, end up just sort of feeling like watered down touhou patterns.

[Bananamatic]

Ketsui bosses are much easier once you figure out the not-obvious tricks(beating the st3 boss' second form early by removing one shield then directly locking the body from the side before the quad orbs/second blue walls arrive, locking onto the st4 boss first form with some delay so that all your shots hit the core, resulting in the first form dying before it ascends again with the unpredictable blue attack and realizing that evaccaneer's first attack has the red bullets appearing where the red marshmallow bullets land) - those parts tend to feel really random until you realize these tricks to avoid them altogether.

[Illyrian]

DFK is roughly....60% touhou in my opinion anyway, the large amount of slowdown in BL mode etc. and general boss pattern design. Hell, in general the way DFK, especially with red gauge floods the screen with slow bullets is very touhou-ish. 1.5 AND BL are both awesome though in my opinion.

In Ketsui the only bosses I legitimately enjoy are the first one, because tactically destroying the different pieces of it is fun, and the 4th boss for the patterns where you have to go around the boss in a circle. In general the 4th boss is good fun.

Edit: Bananaman, the reason I prefer DFK bosses is because of things like that, I always feel with DFK I'm doing more "flying by the seat of my pants." In Ketsui, much like in Dimahoo, the bosses feel more "breakable."

[blackoak]

I've only cleared Cave and MD stuff so far. The only insight I have to add is that the time its taken me to clear games has decreased as time goes by. So DDP, my first danmaku and 1all, took a few months of really dedicated play, while DOJ and ESPGaluda both only took a couple weeks of disciplined-but-more-relaxed play. I think those are all known as being somewhat easier games to clear though; I'm probably going to try Ketsui next (st4 midboss is as far as I've gotten after a few casual credits), so we'll see...

[Bananamatic]

Dimahoo bosses aren't really breakable - their patterns are launched at random times - and at the end they tend to overlap across the fair line into the bullshit zone. Especially Cypider and Dribling/Dribling-R.

And then you have stuff like Gigafacer that makes you say "who the fuck thought this was a good idea"

[Illyrian]

What I meant about Dimahoo was stuff like learning the tricks behind Cypider's rapid fire (thanks for that by the way), learning where to start and how to move during Infernion when he does his rapid fire, criss-cross attack and stuff like that.

Gigafacer is rather derp, but I actually I quite enjoy that fight, the whole bullets going up then down thing I think is kinda cool. The hands are just ridiculous though.

[powersoul]

Actually another name Data East went by back in the day if you weren't aware.

Erm, both "DECO" and Data East Corp are shown on the menu screen lol. It's one of my favourite childhood games and it still is, but that's all I played, or know, from DECO. Horribly cheap situations that make one frustrated, long gameplay and many other faults, but still addictive.

[Deca]

Erm, both "DECO" and Data East Corp are shown on the menu screen lol.

"Data East Corporation (株式会社データイースト, Dēta Īsuto Kabushikigaisha?) also abbreviated as DECO"

Not sure why they showed both, that is kind of weird. It's sort of like the whole Namco/Namcot thing except I've never found even the vaguest explanation of where the hell the Namcot name comes from, at least DECO makes sense as an abbreviation lol