What sorts of goals should I be setting as a beginner?

[A Skeleton]

I recommend not getting caught up in scoring mechanics. Like using the gather line in touhou to collect everything on the screen. That'll get you killed when you should really just be focusing on getting through the game.

Familiarization comes first. Mastery comes second.

[copy-paster]

0. Make sure you pick a game you legit enjoy with a theme you can see yourself staring at for dozens of hours, not what the internet says is cool.

This tbh. I liked Battle Garegga with it's aesthetic, atmosphere and gameplay but it's not something I would put my time seriously cause of the rank system (until I get Rev 2016 I guess).

[Rastan78]

100 percent agree about finding games you really love. If a game is not fun to play then what's the point? Also understand that you will have a different relationship to a game as your skill level grows and you've spent more time with it.

Shmups are deceptively deep games. In most cases you will gain appreciation as you learn more and get better. In some cases you may reach your goal of a 1cc or a given high score and realize that while that much was fun so far, going further just isn't for you.

A game that is simple fun to play for survival might become a real bastard when you start adding in the scoring layer. Now you're forced to take into account risk/reward, and survival suddenly also becomes 10 times harder. Maybe long sections of milking bosses or suiciding your lives to repeat checkpoints in a high scoring section will inevitably become needed if you want to reach a higher score.

On the other hand a shmup that seemed brutal when first playing for survival might become borderline relaxing when you've got it all memorized. Now you can fall back on muscle memory, listen to the music and feel like a badass. You realize the extra depth that comes from pushing high scores and optimizing every route is just what you needed to keep the game fun as you keep going.

As a beginner I wouldn't worry too much about picking your game based on what some potential high level strategies might be. Outside of OK I'm not going to pick a chaining game if I don't like chaining. Or I'm not going to pick a game that takes 90 minutes to 1cc if I never get that much time to play. Just be prepared for your idea of what the game is to shift radically as you discover more.

[floralcateyes]

Just be prepared for your idea of what the game is to shift radically as you discover more.

That's actually a real good description of the genre when you're just getting used to it. Amazing how many twists devs can and have produced while sticking fairly close to the basic "shoot and dodge" formula. Always nice to find a shmup that makes those two core actions feel great while incorporating other mechanics and systems that make the game a joy to play. Relatedly:

I recommend not getting caught up in scoring mechanics.

A beginner probably shouldn't worry too much about score, yeah. As enlightening as superplays are for players at all skill levels, someone new to genre probably won't be able to copy those input for input. But some games have scoring systems that are just too fun to ignore. And if it's fun, then why not? A few games are pretty boring just playing for survival but really shine when you play them for score, even minimally. Some games are tremendous fun to play for survival but somehow get even more enjoyable when you start playing with the scoring mechanics in mind. Occasionally helps survival play too: scoring just enough to earn an extend or two has gotten me the 1cc in a couple of games.

[Lethe]

Also nice to do warm up runs with games way above your skill level that you actually enjoy.

Love doing this. I find a lot of failed runs are down to complacency so playing something that tests me throughout is really good for putting things into perspective. There's a big difference between the creeping pressure of putting what you've practiced into a full run (which you theoretically can do but might fail at), and the momentary pressure of facing something technically more challenging that you have less attachment towards. Detaching yourself from your specific goal can highlight what's really bottlenecking your gameplay as opposed to what you think the easy or hard parts are.

This tbh. I liked Battle Garegga with it's aesthetic, atmosphere and gameplay but it's not something I would put my time seriously cause of the rank system (until I get Rev 2016 I guess).

You've probably heard this before but a Garegga 1CC with only basic rank control is very possible. I've seen a few low-scoring clears that suicide before birds and then just roll with it for the rest of the game. A ~7mil clear with a 7 or 8 miss margin is pretty forgiving.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I recommend not getting caught up in scoring mechanics. Like using the gather line in touhou to collect everything on the screen. That'll get you killed when you should really just be focusing on getting through the game.

There's two common schools of thought on what the best approach to learning a new game is. The first, and probably the most popular, is that it's best to learn to play a new game for survival first. Focus on becoming familiar with where the enemies appear, how the game works, and so on. Incorporate scoring strategies where safe, especially as needed to trigger any score extends, but without overextending yourself and putting yourself at risk.

The second, is that you should focus on scoring strategies in a game right from the get-go, and work on them in tandem. The reason given is so that you don't have to "relearn" the game twice to score it. It's harder to get the clear when you're also executing riskier scoring techniques during your runs, but your clear will obtain a much higher score than if you were disregarding scoring altogether.

Personally, I'm in favour of the former. I feel more comfortable focusing on learning the survival play in a game, and then being aware of what strategies are considered safe vs risky but high scoring. And if it's a game you really enjoy and will eventually want to put in a good score, I don't see why having an excuse to play it even more is a bad thing. There's also some games out there where the survival play is fun, but the mechanics involved in score play are not so much fun, so you may prefer to play for one but not the other. Focusing first on survival at least helps you learn what games you enjoy and what ones you, especially since if the game isn't fun for survival play it's probably also not fun for score play (I honestly can't think of a game where playing for the clear is a chore but the scoring is extremely fun and worthwhile).

As a beginner, certainly play whatever way you feel is most fun for you, but I'd say you don't have to focus too much on score when you're still getting the hang of shmup fundamentals like tap dodging, learning to adjust your eyes to seeing and reading bullet patterns, and so on.

[Rastan78]

I think the whole rank control aspect of Garegga is sort of overrepresented in the way people talk about the game. The internal rank system in Darius Gaiden is strikingly similar to the one in Garegga and it came out earlier, but it never became known as that one game that's all about rank like Garegga has.

Both games have rank systems that really come into play with higher scoring attempts. It was put there to add longevity to the game for players as well as arcade operators. Or maybe the other way around. I wouldn't say its unbalanced in Garegga. It's just a tough game overall for a 1 looper. I would just say it's balance is unique bc it has a punishing rank system and an extremely prolific extend setting that play off of eachother.

In other words don't let the idea of rank stop you from playing some Garrega. At least avoiding powerups is pretty easy. In Gaiden the red power ups that you want to avoid become your mortal enemy.

[MathU]

I'm sure that a major factor in how underappreciated Darius Gaiden's adaptive difficulty system is is because so many people play it with rapidfire cheats that make a total joke out of broad swaths of the adaptive difficulty system. A simple example to illustrate this is that the octopus miniboss in certain final zones is all but impossible to capture on built-in shot rate at the highest difficulty levels because the control orb is given too much health. Even with the tightest, most elegant point blanking of the control orb, you simply can't do enough damage to it before accidentally destroying the miniboss's body. With 30 Hz rapidfire, however, this is always doable. This normally creates an interesting tradeoff when trying to optimize score on certain routes: Do you blow up every boss body part for points and grab all the power-ups you can for their point bonuses while accepting that you won't be able to capture that final miniboss, or do you attempt to manage the adaptive difficulty system by avoiding certain boss body part destruction and max power-up medal bonuses? The capture bonus is so large that sometimes the highest score comes from the latter. Adaptive difficulty management is a pretty important mechanic of the game when you're playing with the built-in autofire rate, but you can really just ignore it for the most part with rapidfire cheats that obliterate every enemy wave and melt every boss like butter before they have the chance to do anything threatening.

Edit: been doing some stage 7 miniboss testing again lately, it really depends on the zone and enemy behavior luck whether or not you'll be able to capture it when the control orb's health is maxed out

[Rastan78]

It's tough to know what the developers intentions were on this. I'd bet there was at least some attempt to balance around autofire since it's so common. On DG Saturn I've heard the rank rises slower and when using the auto cheat code there is no corresponding rank increase for using auto like there would be on PCB. So the Saturn port can give a false impression of how broken auto is in this game.

I'm wondering if something like breaking off Zone U boss' tail before the boss times out is possible with default fire?

If they were dead set on having the default fire rate be the max they could have capped it there, but they left the door open for mashing or auto to increase it at the end of the day.

[Rastan78]

This is one of the only quotes I've seen on this from an actual developer. From shmuplations Gun Frontier producer interview. This game was an influence on Garrega and probably Darius Gaiden as well being an earlier Taito shmup.

"As for the rank increase from autofire, that came from something the programmers had been struggling with; that is, how to create a game with a “relative” or dynamic difficulty. Preventing operators from installing autofire circuits was not our intention. After all, the game doesn’t just increase the rank from autofire. It also uses the number of ships destroyed and a variety of other factors. But I do think all those things resulted in the game feeling too difficult, and that is something I would have liked to change."

[To Far Away Times]

I would start out aiming for a 1CC in a fairly easy game that you really like and will want to play over and over again. Don't pick a game because it is easy though, pick one because it is good.

My first 1CC was Touhou 08, and first non-Touhou was Mushi Futari Black Label.

For my friends, it was Deathsmiles and Darius Burst. To this day, Darius Burst Another Chronicle in the arcade is the only game I have played with a friend and we both 1CC'd it together in the same playthrough.

All fairly easy games that are totally possible for a new player to 1CC.