If you're going to be playing for score, your priority should mainly be on speed-killing enemies during the stage no matter what. Grazing is less of a priority but will definitely help your charge shot for taking down the more resilient enemies when you start to learn how to tackle the stages. The only time grazing becomes a priority for score is when you are facing bosses. As I said, the faster you defeat the phases, the better your multiplier. As far as I know, planned bombs can also be useful for taking down enemies quickly without affecting your multiplier but I'm unsure if this also works on bosses.Obscura wrote:There's a bunch of enemy patterns that consist of lines of slow, aimed shots. Obviously, these are meant to be tap-dodged and grazed off of, since if you move around a lot, you'll make a clusterfuck out of the pattern. However, if you're just tap dodging, you're not right up in everything's face, killing it as quickly as possible.
This I can agree with, but in the end it's all down to preference. Even if the bullets are crowded on the screen, some good quick evasion is all you really need to weave through them and it certainly isn't enough to annoy me. Plus, if you're speed-killing things half the time you won't really have to dodge much in the first place.Obscura wrote:Score systems that rely on sitting at the top of the screen to speedkill things do much better with fast bullets, since they get off the screen quickly instead of just sitting in your path while you sprint from one side of the screen to the other. See: Dragon Blaze, Sengoku Blade, Dangun Feveron.
Quite honestly, this is news to me. Where are you reading the manual from? I wouldn't mind reading more about it to see if there are any pointers that can make scoring a bit easier for me.Obscura wrote:According to the manual, the damage your shot does is based on how close you are to the enemy you're firing at. My experience with the dragons in stage 3 seems to match this.
All of these I'm consistent at and that speaks against you quite a bit. There are only a couple of attacks in the game (not including the secret/extra stage) that I'm inconsistent at and they're on Stage 5. I still think you're just inexperienced.Obscura wrote:No, the boss patterns really are bullshit. There's a lot of them that boil down to "get lucky or die" (examples that come to mind instantly: stage 1 last pattern, stage 2 first pattern, the stage 3 pattern that has the semi-aimed shots that contain you), and then there's crap like the stage 3 pattern with bullets that curve all over the place, making them totally impossible to read.
This is a perfectly reasonable complaint, especially since the game is about point-blanking and speed-killing. In your case though, it's just a matter of knowing where the snakes are going to appear and taking them down before they crawl around the entire stage. Once you learn where they appear, all you have to do is destroy them as quickly as possible and the rest of the screen becomes much more manageable, much like Ketsui. Know the big enemy placements, and destroy them as quickly as possible so that they don't flood the screen with shots.Obscura wrote:More than once, against those dragons, I've had it push me into another segment of the dragon, which then pushed me back into the segment where I came from, which pushed me into the other segment, back and forth, with me having literally no control over the character until I died.
I'd say that they're both equal in difficulty, with stage 3 being a large increase because of the snake management.Obscura wrote:I've never seen any other game, aside from Ibara, with a first stage nearly this hard. The difficulty curve here is really messed up; aside from the boss, the second stage really is much easier than the first, and the third is only slightly harder.
Your complaint with collision pushing you around seems to be the only legitimate complaint with this game. As I said, the game may not be for you so go play something else. Something you enjoy. I'd also appreciate it if you would stop posting silly and unreasonable complaints on this thread and start posting on the Shmup Grievances thread instead. I would like to keep this thread more informational on the game rather than having a debate.
