Mushihimesama Futari bullet patterns not always the same?

[cave hermit]

I've been trying (and failing miserably) to complete the first stage of Futari in ultra mode, but after playing that intro segment countless times (with the first two or three popcorn enemies followed by a floating island), I've been noticing that the bullet cloud given off by the floating island isn't always constant; most of the time, like 80% of the time, the bullets stream out of the floating island curving to the right so that moving left while going forward allows you to easily dodge the stream. But in the other 20% of games, the bullets stream out of the floating island curving left! Is this normal? It seems... really unfair for a game that abuses bullet clouds like this to screw with player's pattern memorization like that. Does the game not stick to given patterns all the time?

[professor ganson]

It's a cool idea to have attacks vary according to probabilistic rules. If the probabilities are as you describe, you can still go the memorization route. You're only screwed 20% of the time. If only Fire Emblem were that merciful on the hardest difficulties!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Does the game not stick to given patterns all the time?

There are plenty of attacks in Cave games that have multiple variations. Futari Ultra's TLB's last attack I think can curve in two different directions, Espgaluda's Stage 4 boss has an attack where you're forced to move to the top of the screen, at which point it picks one of two different attacks to use (both easy to dodge), Progear has lots of "this boss has tons of different attacks during this phase, it will pick and choose which ones to use at random". Futari is actually one of the more memorizeable games, I think at least in terms of boss attacks.

[Zengeku3]

like 80% of the time, the bullets stream out of the floating island curving to the right so that moving left while going forward allows you to easily dodge the stream. But in the other 20% of games, the bullets stream out of the floating island curving left!

Can't you just make patterns for both and then use the appropriate one depending on the situation?

[KAI]

Play Ibara/PS

[Udderdude]

You're supposed to be blowing those islands up before they get more than a handful of bullets out anyway, otherwise you're doing it wrong. Ultra is very memorization heavy and this is just the beginning ..

[rjosal]

You're supposed to be blowing those islands up before they get more than a handful of bullets out anyway, otherwise you're doing it wrong. Ultra is very memorization heavy and this is just the beginning ..

This