Garegga Problems

[To Far Away Times]

Not a popular opinion here, but I like APB and Battle Bakraid a lot better than Garegga.

I just don't like rank manipulation being such an important part of the game. Atleast you can pretty much ignore rank on the normal courses for APB and Bakraid.

I get why other people like it though.

[jepjepjep]

I like to think that Garegga Normal Course is a run that ends after Stage 5 (Cloud) and Black Heart Mk 1. The first five stages are doable without rank management just like Batrider & Bakraid.

[Special World]

tbh I don't really consciously manage rank and I haven't noticed that garegga is so much harder than any other shooter

I guess I don't score well either though so

[Drachenherz]

I got 99 problems but Garegga ain't one...

because I traded the board for a batsugun pcb with the special roms. I fouldn't be happier.

[Friendly]

Let's get real here for a second: Battle Garegga's counter-intuitive rank-system that virtually needed scientific research to figure out is only there for the purpose of wallet-raping and is really quite devious; that does not a good game make. Of course once you learn the secrets of how the game actually works (=the information that Garegga fails to convey directly), you can greatly enjoy it. However, because of this shortcoming I would have a hard time ranking it among the best shmups of all time.

Good shmups don't secretly penalize you for picking up bonus items or even for simply shooting.

[trap15]

Let's get real here for a second: Battle Garegga's counter-intuitive rank-system that virtually needed scientific research to figure out is only there for the purpose of wallet-raping and is really quite devious;

I'd have to disagree with the wallet raping part. Yes, it's not conveyed very well (if at all). No, I don't think it was there just to wallet-rape. It's just another method of difficulty scaling, and it's one that I think works extremely well.

Of course once you learn the secrets of how the game actually works (=the information that Garegga fails to convey directly), you can greatly enjoy it.

Definitely this. Until you "understand" Garegga, you probably won't like Garegga.

[cools]

It's not a patch on Ibara, I agree.

[gray117]

On the off chance are you actually playing it emulated? - I think there's often a whole bunch of input lag with garegga emulated ... I think it was one of the initial target games for shmupmame... correct/ignore me if wrong

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Good shmups don't secretly penalize you for picking up bonus items or even for simply shooting.

As much as I enjoy Garegga, I tend to agree here. Futari BL makes it obvious at least via the flashing counter that when you max out the stage rank shit gets serious, but Garegga has a lot of non-obvious stuff going on to it. I wonder, did anyone seriously like Garegga this much before it got a port/MAME release so that you didn't need to pump credits into it just to learn all the wacky stuff in it?

It's still a good game, though I wouldn't rate it best ever.

[Hagane]

Good shmups don't secretly penalize you for picking up bonus items or even for simply shooting.

STGs aren't for you then. Most shooters have rank.

Having to find information for yourself happens in most good games. It is a quality, not a defect.

[Jeneki]

It's not a penalty, it's an AWESOME meter. Collect stuff? AWESOME! Shoot bullets? AWESOME! Soon you get so AWESOME that you spontaneously explode.

Now the real question is: How much AWESOME is too much AWESOME? Duuuuuuude, if you have to ask, you'll never know.

[Friendly]

Most shooters have rank.

Rank =/= rank.

[Squire Grooktook]

Good shmups don't secretly penalize you for picking up bonus items or even for simply shooting.

STGs aren't for you then. Most shooters have rank.

Having to find information for yourself happens in most good games. It is a quality, not a defect.

But most shooters it's not to the point that the game becomes unbeatable if you max out. And IMO, in a good shooter, it all balances out so that while rank increases to keep things intense, it's still in your interest to not die and to continue powering up.

For example, in Gradius, getting a force field will increase rank more then most power ups I believe. However, not having a force field at crucial times is a good way to get killed. So all in all, it kinda balances out. If you try to abuse rank, you'll have to play better in other departments to make up for it.

NOTE I haven't played Battle Garegga and have no opinion on the subject at hand. I just wanted to chime in that not liking a game where rank needs to be heavily abused to win does not mean one should quit stg's altogether.

[jepjepjep]

Garegga is a hard game. Playing it to minimize rank for a 1cc is going to be different than playing for score. If you watch some of the top Garegga replays, the players suicide to earn bomb fragments for scoring tricks, shoot all over the place to milk the bosses, and drive up the rank in a lot of places. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq_3J2w8cAg

A lot of people talk about Garegga's system being non-intuitive but one thing it does right over most of the traditional shmups is it encourages bombing. I'd say that most shmups are counter-intuitive because they penalize you for using the most powerful attack given to you, the bomb. The main point of a shmup is to blow things up.


P.S. You don't have to suicide to win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVoDv4phxTs (no miss all clear run)

[Hagane]

To max rank out you must grab everything you see on screen. There are lots of shooters where hoarding stuff raises rank to the point of making things virtually impossible so this shouldn't be new for anyone. Suicides are mostly for score rather than survival (more bombs to spend on scoring targets). Risk and reward and all that stuff.

Then if you want to maximize score you have to learn to exploit the system just like in every other shooter ever.

[DMC]

Good shmups don't secretly penalize you for picking up bonus items or even for simply shooting.

I like the flexibility. i think of it this way:

As a novice the game makes it easier for you if you die a lot, and when you get too cocky and start to 1-life a couple of stages with surplus bombs and power-ups it tells you

"ok, sport, why don't you try hard?! Get rid of all those safe guards you have in the beginning; play on the last life if you dare, drop the power ups and exploit the bomb and I'll make easier at the end, ok? Deal?"

Then as you progress you adjust the rank at the beginning, making it harder early on, because you can now handle it, being compensated at the end as it is easier then.

But the really good part is when you progress to the extent that you start to tell the game:

Fuck it! I had it with your softness.You don't need to make it easier for me anymore, not even at the end. I can own you all the way, y'kno! In fact, I'm gonna collect all the power ups and extends I see and increase fire rate and milk all your bosses to the extreme - just to increase rank and make it more difficult. Yeah, give me more enemies because of rank, just spit them out. Just gimme, I'll milk them too. You don't have control over me anymore, I own you! HAhahaahah!

Rank gives and it takes.
It's beautiful!

[Vyxx]

Rank is a beautiful thing.

[Skykid]

It may be an atypical structure for a shmup (by no means a bad thing) but manipulating Garegga's rank is like training mode compared to Ibara and Pink Sweets.

In-fact, in its Yagawa sub-genre, it's definitely one of the more manageable titles.

[KAI]

Pinksweets' rank isn't as brutal as Garegga's rank.

[Plasmo]

Pink Sweets has by far the worst rank of them all! Garegga itself is a walk in the park compared to PS.

Skykid is completely right. Garegga itself is probably the easiest Yagawa game and a good one for starters to get a basic understanding for rank. It gets significantly harder in Batrider (Advanced), Ibara and PS.

[dinosaurjerk]

i didn't like the game very much either until i tried it with gain, chitta, and miyamoto [not the other mahou daisakusen guy tho] then it was c00l as hell, imho, OP. also the ships that aren't slow ass pieces of crap like golden bat are also cool (i forgot what they are called).

basically the game is a lot better if you can spastically zip around all over the screen and if your guy shouts out "bomber" or "shaq-fu" (i think that's what miyamoto is saying but idk, i like to think he's a big fan of SNES classic Shaq-Fu myself.)

[Jeneki]

For maximum enjoyment, make sure to yell it out yourself as well. Especially when spamming on flamingos.

BOMBA! BOMBA! BOMBA!

[soupbones]

Some things you could be doing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sazhEAV8 ... e=youtu.be

What's he doing with the second boss there? (Besides dying twice to rank down I presume).

Why wait through that whole first attack wave the boss dishes out?

(If you couldn't tell, I'm still learning things about this awesome game).

[jepjepjep]

He's waiting for the middle turrets to activate before attacking the boss. You have to wade through 4 or so attacks before they activate. If you destroy the outside turrets right away, you miss out on those extra points. Then he suicides in order to position himself on the center of the ring to destroy the turrets with bomb and without destroying the core. The second death happens when the invincibilty frames wear off. This game is awesome

[Eaglet]

The second death happens when the invincibilty frames wear off.

The purpose of the second death is to get bombs for the rails at the start of stage 3. As shown on Mad Ball 2 it is possible to suicide-bomb, destroy the turrets and get out of there before the invincibility wears off.
Unfortunately the boss moved upwards instead of further down when i suicided in the video so i lost out on about 300k that i would otherwise have gotten for destroying all of the outer turrets at once.