shmups.system11.org

Okay I'm no expert so I'll call this a GD, but I thought I'd document the basic rank/scoring systems of PS2 Arrange/Black Label. Anything I say with regards to scoring is only what I've found to be useful for me so far, so don't take it as the final word.


General differences between OG Ibara and Black Label

Extends are given out every 10 million (as opposed to 1 million in OG Ibara).
You receive 1 full bomb upon dying (as opposed to 1/2 a bomb in OG Ibara)
The ship's hitbox is smaller, standard Cave size.
Holding the fire button slows your movement, and significantly increases the firing speed of the main shot.
Sub-weapons are selectable once collected, and fire from all three options.
Option formations are selectable, you can choose from Normal, Back, Wide, Rolling (spinning), and Search (lock-on).


Ship Types

For the differences between ship types, refer to Icarus's last post in this thread. The lists retain the A,B,C,D order of the PS2 menu. The only difference is that option control is of less consequence in Black Label because of selectable formations. For reference, here is how the ships' speed
compare to each other.

P1 Type D [Fast]
P1 Type C
P1 Type A
P1 Type B -\ These two have
P2 Type D -/ identical speed
P2 Type C
P2 Type A
P2 Type B [Slow]

I've been using P2 Type D, and sometimes P1 Type D because I like their bomb for catching patterns, and P2 Type D is as slow as I can handle while still being able to chain medals for the most part. I haven't really experimented with the other ships, so post and let us know what you think about the other ship/bomb types.


Rank system

In Black Label, rank can increase much, much faster than in OG Ibara, and can decrease just as quickly. Collecting powerups, bomb fragments, sub-weapons, and medals will increase rank. Powerups and bomb fragments add a small amount, while sub-weapons add a bit more. Medals increase rank based on how much they are worth; a 100-point medal will add none (or almost none), while a 10,000-point medal will add 10~15%. Destroying parts of bosses increases rank significantly. Survival time and using stronger sub-weapons may increase rank, but it is a completely insignificant amount if they do. Collecting roses decreases rank, and dying resets rank to 0.


Scoring system

The central scoring system in Black Label revolves around the multiplier (up to x300 for max rank) applied when you cancel bullets into roses by bombing. The roses in turn decrease your rank and the cycle starts over. So you should try and increase your rank as quickly as possible, then wait for a big pattern to cash in on your x300 multiplier. Medal chaining still exists, and it is still very important for scoring. Not because of the points they are worth, but because of the rank they are worth. The higher level
medals you can collect -> the faster your rank will recharge -> the more often you can cash in on a big multiplier. Destroying bosses/boss parts and certain enemies/buildings will also trigger all on screen bullets to be canceled into roses. For example, all the big square white factories in stage 1, or the beige tanks in stage 2. It's important to learn which things trigger it, since it's a free fullscreen cancel and you can save your bombs.

It's really all about the multiplier. If you have a high multiplier, but you bomb a not-so-juicy bullet pattern, it's still worth it for the most part. You won't cancel that many bullets, which means your rank won't go so far down, which means you'll soon have a high multiplier again. The only downside is that you wasted a bombing opportunity. But if you bomb a big pattern with 0/low rank, it really doesn't matter how many bullets you canceled, at x1 it's simply insignificant. Though the only time there are usually big patterns with low rank are boss fights.


In-stage rose triggers/scoring opportunities

Stage 1 - White factories (they always appear beside or close to the cranes with rocket launchers). When bombed, they will spawn a large number of medals (12 I think). I usually use these to max my rank right before the last factory on the right, then destroy it to cancel the last enemy swarm before the boss. Optimally you can end up with about 5 million before the boss, and 6.5 entering stage 2, though usually I end up with around 5 million after the boss.

Stage 2 - Beige tanks. These have 2 forms, the first fires straight rockets, then when the uns are destroyed they will fire a simple ball pattern. There is a point where there are falmethrowers on each side, with a tank in the middle. It seems a bit tough to destroy the tank early enough to catch both flames without risk. A better idea seems to be destroy the tank's guns, then destroy each flamethrower's first form. They will start shooting the ball/spread pattern from behind you and you can destory the tank then. You can get a lot out of the flamethrower pattern, but it takes a little finesse. You can alternately bomb the pattern with two turrets (one in the middle shooting twin sets of 3 rockets and one shooting a ball pattern) that comes just before it. The last pattern before the boss is also a big scoring opportunity. There are mechs on the left, railroad turrets on the right, and a twin rocket turret in the center above them. There are also two turrets on each side of that which will come into view a little into the pattern which should fall into your bomb.

That's it for now, have fun shooting stuff.

Wow, thank you for the tips. I'm still having a very hard time getting a great score. Before I was getting under 1,000,000 after defeating the stage 1 boss and now I'm getting more than 2,000,000. Very sad to hear about your average of 5 Million at the end of stage 1... I guess I need more practice.

Thanks again, Mr. Pang

I normally take about 5.8 million in stage 1 (I have broken 6 million a couple of times). I think it's possible to take over 10 million if you can kill the boss at the right time though (it seems to benefit the player to max out the rank during boss battles and pray you can kill them before getting tagged so as to collect a hefty rose bonus... like almost 6 million for very dense patterns).

I think with the stage 1 boss, you have to balance damaging the main fuselage with chipping away at the wings so you can get the boss weak enough before really pissing it off since bombing will drastically drop the rank back down.

And is it just me or does the HadouGun just decimate bosses in Arrange?

Over 15 million on stage 1 is possible, wink wink.

Man, yet again Cave has done it again. This is the same thing that happened with the past 3 titles I have on PS2. I would play it for a bit and then once I figured out all the details, I got addicted and played them like a mad man. Keep the good tips and strats up. I already know this is another Cave classic.

Dumb Question:

How do you actually make the rose medals appear?

It seems to me that it doesn't work like in arcade mode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in arcade mode you produce rose medals by bombing bullet patterns, right? That doesn't seem to work roses in arrange, or at least it doewsn't seem to work all the time. Instead it seems that certain enemies release roses upon destruction.

So what's the system behind it?

Rose medals still appear when you bomb enemy bullets in Arrange; however, as you've noticed, you can also clear the screen of shots (turning them into rose medals) by destroying certain large enemies; this doesn't happen in Arcade mode. Another (minor) way to create rose medals is to activate the "aura flash" by either powering up your main shot or collecting a new option when a bullet is close to you; it'll turn into a rose medal (not exactly good for scoring, but can save your butt at times). In case you hadn't read it elsewhere, be aware that in Arrange mode the value of rose medals is determined by how high the Rank meter is; by collecting the medals, the rank meter lowers, so you'll want to wait awhile for the rank to go back up before collecting a bunch of them again to score well.

I can't seem to crack more than 2.5 mill on the first stage

I could use a vid or two for tips

I think I got that down now. Strangely enough, in stage 5 there seem to be some small key enemies that make rose medals appear, while the bigger ones of which you'd expect it don't do it.

What I still don't understand is that on certain occasions bombing a patttern won't turn the shots into roses, which can be really disappointing if you set off the bomb to lower rank in the first place. I'm not talking about the hadou cannon, obviously, just normal bombs.

This is the only thing that still puzzles me. Well, this and the question how to beat the fifth boss without using two hadou cannons.

Here's a stage 1 replay video by some Japanese player, over 20,000,000.

http://rapidshare.de/files/15057448/ibarastg01.avi.html

Notice how fast rank increases from max medals. It recharges fast enough to bomb several x300 patterns.

thanks

I didn't know how important the medals were until reading this thread

Sorry for quoting myself.

Could it be that bombs stop turning bullets into roses when you have to many lives in stock? It seemed to me this way, when I played yesterday. I had a very good run and didn't lose a single life up to stage 4, but then rank just overwhelmed me, because my bombs would only turn enemy bullets into normal medals (like the hadou usually does) and just using a bomb didn't lower the rank bar significantly. Once I inevitably lost a life everything went back to normal.

Could this be a control mechanism to stop the player from totally exploiting the score system and stock up on lives without end? If that's the case, it's a pretty cheap way of balancing the game, if you ask me.

that "aura flash" stuff is tricky

any more vids?

I'm still trying to do anything similar to what that guy did in the vid

good thing this game is like digital crack

Using a bomb in itself doesn't lower rank: the thing that does lower it is collecting the rose medals that bullets turn into when you bomb them (I can't say I've ever seen a bomb turn them into "regular" medals or anything like that, guess I just haven't played well enough, heh heh). In any event, if you want to lower the rank a lot via bombing, you have to make sure that you manage to catch a LOT of bullets in the bomb's explosion, to make lots of medals; if you don't catch very many, the rank's not going to go down very much, and you'll be out one bonb to boot.

Also, if you're coming up to an area in which the rank tends to nail you, you could just stop collecting a lot of the items you come across, since that's the only thing that raises your rank substantially in Arrange. This'll hurt your score, obviously, but it might help you survive through a couple o' tough spots.

One more thing:

If you press "select" in Arrange mode, the display of the option formation type you're using will change colour from blue to purple. When it's purple the "nomal" formation means that the options will fire straight up instead of behaving like your ship type dictates. This can come in pretty handy at times, as it allows you to aim very accurately. All other formations are completely unaffected and behave just the same, though.

Interesting fact: if you have every weapon in the game in stock (full selection of weapons), every flying enemy will release an item if shot. I was caught out by this, and subsequently fucked up a great run at the start of stage4. -_-;;

Here's a full arrange mode run, just shy of 70mil.


Ah, thanks for the tip, I surely wouldn't have found this myself.


O_o? That is major king shit. I'm trying to think, when does that first happen? Homing is the last I think...is that dropped by the stage 4 boss or is it dropped before that?

Icarus your recent Arrange mode scores are insane. Are you going to upload a video when you hit 130mil? I would love to see it; I'm sure a lot of others would as well. I've had a bit of re-interest in this game (both arcade and arrange) since an Espgaluda 2 port is taking hella long.

Arcade mode isn't being very nice, though.

You can get the full stock of weapons by the start of stage4, as the stage3 boss drops Rocket, Five Way and Homing (and Machine Gun off the missile spew), and you can get the other three main weapons from stages 2 and 3. I really don't recommend trying it unless you have a nice stock of bombs though, as rank typically skyrockets from it, especially at the start of stage3 and upwards.

Here's a replay demonstrating it in action. As stated, I got it by accident, and wasn't prepared for the results. -_-;;

Player: Icarus // Maximum Weapon Stock "Bonus" (XVID - 3MB)



Of course. I'm not sure how likely it is that I hit 130mil though, as my run would have to be near-perfect with maximum takes from each stage, and so much depends on stage3 and the layout of the trains. If all the trains come loaded with the item boxes (meaning four Medals per train) then scoring is good, but the randomness of the stage layout makes score fluctuate by anything up to 10mil at a time. I might end up releasing a sub-130mil if the run is decent enough.

At any rate, good to see you're getting back into the game. Arrange Mode is quite difficult if you start to push for a higher score, as is typical of a lot of Cave games. The trick is to know your stage layouts, more importantly, what will spew a ton of bullets at maximum rank, and then plan a route to get to those particular sections at max rank with a few bomb fragments in stock. You can safely get around 10-15mil per stage if you take a few of these sections in the correct manner.

Getting a good start is also important. ^_-

And yes, I agree, Arcade Mode is quite evil. You lose the comfort of being able to bomb blast your way through a stage, as totally different strategies are needed to play in Arcade Mode, and most of the weapons are useless. It's worth it though, as Arcade Mode is played at a much faster pace than Arrange Mode.

Icarus, I watched you 130 mil video, Nice Job very great 1st Stage with 30mil, and your fifth stage performance is very good too. Congratulations..

I work my score, my goal is 100mil.. more is too hard for me I think...

Thanks. ^_^

The only tip I can give you is learn which enemies will fire a lot of bullets at high rank, and then try to plan a good route through the stage that will get you to these enemies at maximum rank. A good average score per stage is about 15mil-20mil, which shouldn't be too hard to get if you hit up the proper hotspots.

Yep, I known mainly the route and the enemies, the problem is I can't get a proper run from start to the end...

I can't score 10 mil on the first boss (around 2-3 mil no more), and basiquely my fifth stage is rarely a good run...( specialy where I should score a lot...) anyway, still trying... (I hope to beat plasmablood, that should be possible, your score is too far away.)

The best strategy for scoring on Meidi (first boss) is a little complex and quite risky if you are not comfortable with the rest of the game yet, as it involves a double suicide. If anything you should aim to wear down Meidi so she fires her sword spread pattern (final attack) and get the rank to maximum before destroying her, which should give you about 4-5mil off that one pattern.

Stage 5 is never any good for me either, most of my points come from Lace, so I wouldn't worry about that either. ^_-

Just concentrate on the other stages and you should break 80mil no problem. The key stages are the first three, and good play from those will give you about 45-55mil.

I watched the Lunatic Superplay DVD, and Black Label seems to have some differences than Arrange mode for PS2. There is a counter above your head when you reach maximum rank, you get a red aura around your ship when you are grazing bullets, and the syphon feature seems to sweep up everything (not just the roses).

Or am I just wrong and not playing Arrange mode correctly?

I posted this at both Arcade Extreme and Team Cowboy's forum:



Stage 1 replay here (for those who haven't seen the game yet):
http://www16.ocn.ne.jp/~poor/movie.htm

sorry to drag up this old post but i'm a bit confused by the apparent randomness that you've mentioned.

according to this post by Cthulhu the order in which items appear in ibara is set in stone (see quote below). now Cthulhu's post is a bit ambigious in regards to whether or not this fixed pattern of item appearance is also valid for the items that appear on the trains in stage 3 (as his post is refering to flying enemies). to me it seems logical if the destroyable objects on the train will follow the same order of appearance as "normal enemies". so then technically it wouldn't be random though most people will experience it as random because your not always killing the same amount of enemies so your not always on the same place in the "item-appearing-order-chain" hence giving the suggestion of randomness...but it's very well possible that i'm totally off with my idea and/or misinterpreting your statement. anyway i'm just currious to how the system works so if anyone has any (new) thoughts / insights into this mechanism i'm quite interested in reading them.

eretsua.

I'm already familiar with the item order. Yes, it is fixed, and yes, it does apply to the items that appear on the train carriages with the item boxes. ^_-

However, the randomness of stage3 in both Arcade and Arrange Mode comes from the appearance of carriages that appear on the trains themselves. They are never fixed - sometimes you'll get a large cannon (the one that fires the spiky cannonball), sometimes you won't; sometimes you get the carriage with the 8 item boxes, sometimes you won't; etc etc - and while in Arcade Mode it isn't so much of a problem, in Arrange Mode it affects your total score output for stage3, as you pretty much want to have maximum rank every time you approach the top end carriage on each train.

When the carriages are set in a random order in this manner, it does play havoc with the way you approach stage3 in Arrange.

thanks for clearing this up for me! it's quite interesting to know...i hadn't really noticed it yet. i severly dislike it when scores are dependent on your luck to get a favourable pattern. think it's a bad design choice which cave sadly made before.

i really should put more time into the game. i had pre-ordered it the moment they opened up the pre-orders but haven't really played with lot's of dedication yet.

if anyone can post up some links to some replays/superplays of ibara black (and/or) arrange that would be cool. the links prior in the thread are no longer working.

there is an awesome BL run on the insanity naked hunter appreciate dvd (comes with a pretty cool mcd as well!). for arrange superplays check this.

enjoy!

eretsua

Yeah, you really need to get the Ibara DVD, that has the only Ibara BL run out there.

When I get a chance I'll try and post in more detail the differences between Ibara BL and Arrange. The differences are far greater than what Icarus posted (and some of the info he posts on Ibara BL is erroneous).