Is there a point to getting DDP DOJ?

[8 1/2]

The hyper can also be used to fill in some gaps in your chain. For instance: I use it in stage two to bridge the gap between the last enemy and the mid-boss. Igniting one gives you a brief moment in which you can keep a chain going without killing anything. The hyper, and its proper timing, are a major part of the gameplay. It's not just some cheesy empowerment gimmick as it lets you amass a tremendous combo total, which in turn makes your bee multiplier go through the roof, which will then quickly refill your hyper meter. It's really a beautiful system if you pay attention to what's going on.

As for the Psikyo reference, I admit that was a poor example, but for me at least those games are more accessible and that's what I'm trying to get at. DOJ is a game that reveals itself slowly, and you have to be willing to lose a few teeth in the process. I don't guess that any other shmup is really different, but this one is just exceptionally deep. If some shmups are novels then DOJ is the dictionary.

[Nei First]

Incidentally, what are both the "full price", and a "reasonably cheap" price for DOJ?

Is chaining that important in this game, can't I enjoy and play DOJ for the fast action and survival challenge alone?

[chtimi-CLA]

So much so that each stage's enemies and the bullets they fire are all part of a "master plan" of sorts that relates to chaining. In this, when you begin to learn some chains you stop worrying about where the bullets are as they just sort of fold around you as you go through the motions of your combo.

very true, that's also the case for most cave shmups.
if you try to play for pure survival, you're playing against the natural flow of the game, and survival is that much harder. of course doj has a stricter flow than most cave shmups (except maybe galuda).
also doj is worth to get, even if it's sometimes discouraging. many people have a strange relation with this game, sometimes i love it and sometimes i hate it. evil game..

[PsikyoPshumpPshooterP]

There are some games, like most Psikyo games for instance, where you can step up and make it pretty far on your first go just by relying on basic skill. That's not to say that memorization isn't big in those games as well, but you don't have to meticulously map your way through each stage

Huh? Not that I think it's a great thing, but Psikyo's are much harder to get by without memorizing safe spots and plans of attack (like taking out major threats in GB2 and DB with powerful close range attacks). There's very little you have to memorize in DOJ to survive. Super small hitbox + slow bullets, and they expect you to dodge stuff more than prevent stuff from happening like a Psikyo game.

my thoughts exactly

[Marc]

All I know is that DDP DOJ looks fantastic, a and I want it to make me its bitch. Need a modded PS2 urgent.

[Soldato J]

I love/hate it too.

I suck at it.

It routinely kicks my arse.

I accept all of this.

[sffan]

There's no reason not to get it. I've been playing it since it was released - It keeps calling me back, never gathering dust.

The gameplay is harrowing, no matter how good you are.

[TVG]

I couldn't disagree more. DDP is great, but DOJ is the next level. The enjoyment comes from the exhiliration of metriculating through tsunami after tsunami of bullets. Relentless, non-stop action, that's what shooters should be about. DDP doesn't get interesting till stage 5. DOJ gets good in stage 3 and Stage 5 is one of the greatest shmup levels ever.

THE TRUTH!

doj stages makes sense if you chan them, otherwise they are hard, some parts are hella fucked up to chain tho (stage 4 dammit, even the guy in the "super replay" section cant do it) but thats just like 8/1.5 said, you will die until you think of a way, you can enter stage 4 or 5 50 times and die everytime, until you sit back and think of a way to handle the different parts and make progress.

the combo system is strict, and there's lots of bullets, believe me, even with the most memorization, you will be forced to dodge shit all the time.
and thats where it gets interesting, DOJ is like executing a dance perfectly in a random hostile environment, chaining gets beautiful when it doesnt oppose to survival, how well can you execute this chain while dodging and hoarding the bullets at the same time? multitasking shit i tell you, it makes you a better man :p

[snap monkey]

Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces.

[rant] OMG it must be a puzzle shmup then! Not that I've ever actually played the game or know what I'm talking about, but here's the proof! [/rant]

All I know is that DDP DOJ looks fantastic, a and I want it to make me its bitch. Need a modded PS2 urgent.

I know exactly how you feel. I don't care how hard it is. I must have it!

[Nemo]

I'm not a big fan of chaining and you can enjoy DOJ without focusing completely on it. Past level 3 for me, it's basically forget it, so I focused on the 1CC, which I accomplished. When I first played this game over a year and a half ago I thought it was impossible and now I've cleared the 1st round, it's all about love of the game and determination. Oh, and the DOJ package also includes Death Label, so like Galuda, you get two awesome games for the price of one.

[captain ahar]

i love the game to death, it was my first "big" import purchase for the PS2 and it is amazing. it has taught me a new take on pain (i can't 1-life stage one anymore), but i don't play it as much as it deserves. when i can get a dedicated tate tv, i look forward to slogging through the thing in my usual casual fashion... that get's me nowhere.

[Rob]

Is chaining that important in this game, can't I enjoy and play DOJ for the fast action and survival challenge alone?

No, it's not and yes you can. As much as I hate the scoring systems in most Cave games, the beauty is it doesn't really matter. You can hit both extends without much effort and the game is loaded with bullets/challenge no matter how you play (unlike Shikigami, Ikaruga, Psyvariar, Giga Wing, etc.).

[ST Dragon]

More specifically, is there a point to getting this game for someone like me who may never get past level 3 of ESPGaluda on 1cc? That is, does DDP DOJ hold any interest for those of us who are average (or for this forum below average) in shmupping skills?
I've already preordered Mushi and already have Dodonpachi, so I'm seriously wondering whether DDP DOJ has anything different to offer.

I haven't played it but...
If you don't like the rest of the series I don't see any reason why you'll like this.

Also it seems judging by the pics, that the display doesn't fill up the whole screen, instead it covers the black borders on the sides with some annoying & Manga screen shots of JPN Chicks which act like a frame ready to be hung on the wall or something. I find this very disruptive indeed.
Gekioh Shooting Kings (Shienryu)(PSX) has something similar as well.
I prefer the black boarders if full screen isn't viable.

[8 1/2]

Also it seems judging by the pics, that the display doesn't fill up the whole screen, instead it covers the black borders on the sides with some annoying & Manga screen shots of JPN Chicks which act like a frame ready to be hung on the wall or something. I find this very disruptive indeed.
Gekioh Shooting Kings (Shienryu)(PSX) has something similar as well.
I prefer the black boarders if full screen isn't viable.

You can actually choose your wallpaper for the borders if you're not going to be playing it in tate. Plain black is also an option, as well as a little map that shows how much of the stage you've completed so far.

One more thing I wanted to note is how much the different pilots can affect the way you play. For most people going for score, Ship A and Exy as the pilot seem to be prefered, with Ship B and Leinyan being a very close second. But then there's Shotia, who's sort of a beginners pilot. With her you get a bomb load similar to what you get in Dodonpachi, meaning that with each death your stock goes up by one until you have more than five (I forget where it maxes out) so you can escape a lot of madness just by bombing. With Exy however you start with only one and after two deaths it increases to two. Just another example of how this game is actually surprisingly flexible despite its precision, and can accomodate different styles of play.

[TVG]

I'm not a big fan of chaining and you can enjoy DOJ without focusing completely on it. Past level 3 for me, it's basically forget it, so I focused on the 1CC, which I accomplished. When I first played this game over a year and a half ago I thought it was impossible and now I've cleared the 1st round, it's all about love of the game and determination. Oh, and the DOJ package also includes Death Label, so like Galuda, you get two awesome games for the price of one.

but in a way, the chaining route(s) is a good one(s) for survival, the first three stages arent that hard to survive (unless you hyper bosses, but thats just how you are challenged more as you want to score more)
the chaining can pretty much come as you remember ennemy placement, but of course after that you need the timing in order to maintain the chain, that's where practice and repetition comes into play. you can play and learn as you progress, unless you're so panicked about chaining that you forget to survive, that happens to me (albeit less and less) and not only in DOJ, but in simpler scoring systems such as gigawing (i used to be able to reach the 6th boss, but now that i completely revamped my game in order to score more i can hardly go past stage 4, and thats on a good day)

lets take me VS DOJ stage 4: i can chain the first part up to the train section, but after that, not only i have trouble chaining, i have trouble surviving too, so i bomb, do random dumb shit etc.
that's because i dont know the ennemy placement yet, if i knew it and knew a safe route to survive, chaining would probably be not that hard, it would only imply timing stuff and which ennemies i should kill first. well at least until the midboss, i wonder how the fuck the superplay guys can chain that thing...i even wonder if you were supposed to be able to chain there, or if its just something found by some players by exploiting the game system to the maximmum, either way its damn impressive...
in comparason, stage 5 doesnt seem too hard to chain...at least up to the honeycomb section, that is whre the difficulty switches to insane IMO.
also, im quite far from doing the loop yet, stage 5 is a long beast, congrats on looping it.

i lost track of what i was about to say here, i wanted to say that while you dont need to learn chaining to enjoy DOJ, it comes off naturally, moreso than in some games where scoring implies doing some maneuvers that oppose to survival.
some may like it some may not, some may preffer scoring systems that require collecting like gigawing or galuda, i like both personally

[BulletMagnet]

i wanted to say that while you dont need to learn chaining to enjoy DOJ, it comes off naturally, moreso than in some games where scoring implies doing some maneuvers that oppose to survival.

Some might argue that letting certain enemies survive onscreen for a few extra seconds (shooting at you all the while) to "bridge" a chain is contrary to "normal" survival tactics, but, as the experts have shown, if you practice enough you can obviously manage to both chain and survive...I don't know if I'd call that process "natural," but if nothing else it is optional.

[Nemo]

I'm not a big fan of chaining and you can enjoy DOJ without focusing completely on it. Past level 3 for me, it's basically forget it, so I focused on the 1CC, which I accomplished. When I first played this game over a year and a half ago I thought it was impossible and now I've cleared the 1st round, it's all about love of the game and determination. Oh, and the DOJ package also includes Death Label, so like Galuda, you get two awesome games for the price of one.

but in a way, the chaining route(s) is a good one(s) for survival, the first three stages arent that hard to survive (unless you hyper bosses, but thats just how you are challenged more as you want to score more)
the chaining can pretty much come as you remember ennemy placement, but of course after that you need the timing in order to maintain the chain, that's where practice and repetition comes into play.

I agree, but like you said the hardest part is maintaining chains, this is why I tend to not focus on chaining. I'm not going to restart my game on stage 4 or 5 because I broke a chain and had 3 200 chains instead of one 600. That to me would make the game unfun and more tedious than anything else.

[TVG]

but of course o_O

the only thing that makes me restart my game is when i dont get the hyper at the second bee of stage 1 (or like...loosing 2 lives in stage 1...), otherwise, there's no real point in restarting, you can still practice and shit even in a crappy run.

[japtor]

i only have the pcb, so cant comment on any of the extras and stuff of the ps2 version.

anyways, i like doj much better than ddp, but that could change if i ever get the ddp pcb. ddp's cheesy butt rock > doj's music. my favorite older cave game was esprade, i was just never a fan of ddp's chaining. doj seems a bit easier to chain for me, and otherwise chaining with multiple hypers is fun, if only for getting chain numbers id never get close to in ddp. at a certain point i stop giving a damn about chaining and just play for survival, and its perfectly fun for me then too.

difficulty wise, its not as hard as people generally make it out to be. not to say that its easy, its just not impossibly difficult. its like a slightly harder and faster version of ddp (which seemed easy after playing ketsui heavily, then got hard again for me, so my perception is a bit distorted). dont let the difficulty scare you off.

[Dylan1CC]

It sure looks like a masterpiece. I just hope I don't have too hard a time finding a copy after I order my import PS2 next week.

[slateman]

We've got some ppl claiming to be 'average' gamers, but yet they can beat some games on one credit.

Well, I'd *like* to think of myself as average and can't come close to 1cc anything! DEFINITELY not Galuda. OMG, that last stage/boss. Forget about it!

That having been said, DOJ is my favorite shmup ever. To keep this brief, yes, it's difficult. The first time through I thought I was going to have a heart attack. However, it's been about 2 years since it came out on the PS2 and I'm still getting better as I play. After that much time, to still see improvement, that means the game has depth, at least to the average gamer. Apparently it's not for everyone, as you have read, but for an old school R-Type fan, one who loves Ikaruga and DDP, I find DOJ to be an absolute masterpiece and would recommend it to everyone, even with it's steep difficulty level.