jehu wrote:I have really been enjoying myself as I've been figuring out the mechanics and stage layouts. The over-designed mechanics leave a lot of headroom for skill growth - and every once and awhile I pull something off that hints at what might be possible if I were a more proficient player.
After playing this more myself I feel the same way.
I haven't had much experience with the previous entries in the series, but like many others my first impressions were mixed as if you were to play this like a typical STG "survival run" and not utilize the resources the game gives you the first few stages feel very bland. The later stages offer more variety and environmental hazards to maneuver around, but still nothing to really "woo" you over, especially given the aesthetics that everyone has already mentioned.
I have since done a few more full playthroughs, but mostly concentrated on Caravan Mode in order to focus on learning the "intended" way of playing this game around a single stage (currently 1st on the Steam leaderboards with 500K for now). After several Caravan runs I realized that what I previously thought to be an intentional "slow and spread out stage to ease people into it" wasn't so. After the first 30 or 45 seconds, the design and placement of everything in the stage is VERY deliberate and there is a small puzzle element to maximizing scores with the different formations. It's enough for you to think but it's not so stringent that it ties you down to a single intended route/formation combo.
I suck at explaining things, but I will try:
Recap of the Basics for those who haven't play this yet: Killing enemies with a formation attack earns you more points and also more coins to fill up the "Sol Gauge", but activation of these formations is tied to another meter like a fighting game, named the "SP Gauge". This gauge fills up as you damage enemies. Also, there is a time limit to how long you can stay in each formation as well, and a cool-down timer that goes down to 0 when you exit the formation and then slowly increases when you are not, so even if you have the meter you can't run back-to-back formations forever.
So the main way to increase score is to utilize those formations as best you can. Here is what has worked for me:
The tight groups of popcorn enemies (like the Galaga looking bugs for example) are usually good targets for the formation shots and they are usually grouped in ways that it's pretty obvious formations shots would work great. Since the formation shots are so OP it really doesn't matter which one you choose. You won't have the meter to do this to all of the popcorn so you need to decide where to hold back, and there are somethings intentionally laid out in the stages to help you determine this.
There are multiple cyan orbs placed in every stage, if you destroy these using a formation shot you get 10,000 points and partial refill of your SP Gauge. These are great markers that help identify "when" to activate the formations. For the fist stage, try to time your formations so that you can destroy those orbs as your formation is ending. If you do it right, you will be killing a lot of enemies (HINT: a lot of popcorn is positioned prior to these orbs) and then getting your meter back along with the 10,000 points when you destroy the orb. Throughout each stage you should still have enough meter to activate a couple more formations outside of aligning with these orbs.
That's the core game plan in scoring higher, but in order to do that you have to:
1) Collect the right formation chips that are dropped by crates and some enemies.
2) Determine the best spots to activate formations
3) Manage your meter (regular charge shots use 1/3 of a bar but are very helpful)
4) Manage your formation timer.
5) Manage the order of which your 3 ships are docked (formations sometimes change the order when you re-dock, depending on how you position them when activated)
6) Collect the coins dropped by enemies
Then there are some smaller things that don't mean as much, such as command shots (the fighting game inputs) and going through colored hoops where your lead ship (or a single ship while in formation) needs to match for some bonus points.
In the end, on top of the standard STG gameplay elements you are having to constantly think about all of those things while applying inputs for formations and command shots where needed.
Understandably, a lot of people aren't going to like it. Although I don't believe this is one of the greatest STG's of all time, I think I see where they were going with it. For me, the gameplay design adds some fun and immersion while erasing a lot of the initial hesitance I had.
Edit: Made some corrections regarding the formation timer.
