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Warning: this game is HARD.


PeaceSquid
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Really. Even on the normal mode? I figured that'd be easier while the insane mode would be... Insane. Still getting it, it has Grasshopper's name attached to it. And the achievements look like they're rank-based? Not sure how that works.

 

Normal is hard. Insane/Arcade/whatever is just ridiculous.

 

Each rank has like 5 or 6 tasks/accomplishments to do. They aren't just based on score or level progression. The second rank requires you to get at least one A rank on a level. Most people won't manage that!

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But what do you mean by "I'm not exactly going to 1CC Deathsmiles"?

Because getting a 1cc in Deathsmiles 1 is a very easy task. Took me about 5 hours. Are you saying normal mode is comparable to that?

Edited by wariomona
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This game is awesome so far, so I don't mind the challenge. Not that I've run into a challenge yet, level 1 is easy. I'm redoing the tutorial right now, though, because I somehow didn't get the one for "don't take a hit and destroy everything" even though I totally did that.

 

But what do you mean by "I'm not exactly going to 1CC Deathsmiles"?

Because getting a 1cc in Deathsmiles 1 is a very easy task. Took me about 5 hours. Are you saying normal mode is comparable to that?

I'd assume he means properly 1CCing Deathsmiles, not cheesing it by doing level 1 on every stage and skipping the bonus stages.
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Not the hardest shmup i've played but certainly not the easiest. I'm never really any good with these type of games but I guess I must love them, because I keep buying them. I'm guessing for me i'll be able to get about 6 out of the 12 achievements. Would like more but like I said, I like shmups, it's just they don't like me! :uzi:

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Wow, haha, even the "beat the tutorial properly" achievement is hard! The advanced route is a bitch for a tutorial...

 

Played a few levels now and I'm not so sure this one's going to be as hard a completion as some of the other shmups out there, though. It's all going to boil down to learning when and where to use the slow-mo, which makes things 10 times easier.

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I am right there with you. However, I don't think that it is really a matter of the game being hard perse, but it's just ridiculous that your move so goddamn slow and your power ups, when hit move so goddamn fast. That and they fly right the f**k off the screen. Half of the time, before you even have a chance to pick them up!? Also, they should take a note from CAVE and show the hit box and make things stand out from the background a little more. There is a reason that CAVE has the reputation that they do.

 

EDIT: Why even include screen-shake? And if you didn't know, as I did not, you can turn it off in the options. :/

Edited by KidKobun
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I'm not sure what some people here are on about. Even without ever using the immensely helpful slowdown mechanic, this game is significantly less difficult than contemporary offerings in the bullet hell genre. In fact, the game has been praised by multiple reviewers for being a relatively easy game in the shmup genre that is accessible to non-hardcore players. Do people mean to say that the achievements are difficult to obtain?

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I'm not sure what some people here are on about. Even without ever using the immensely helpful slowdown mechanic, this game is significantly less difficult than contemporary offerings in the bullet hell genre. In fact, the game has been praised by multiple reviewers for being a relatively easy game in the shmup genre that is accessible to non-hardcore players. Do people mean to say that the achievements are difficult to obtain?

 

Well, it's an achievements site so, y'know, have a guess...

 

Anyway, it is a tough game given that it is effectively a series of tough boss battles with unconventional bullet patterns, hard to see weapons and weakpoints, one hit kill body slams and you're armed with a peashooter and you move quite slowly.

 

Story mode is doable (thanks to the credits and reduced difficulty) but Arcade mode is utterly savage.

 

Difficulty level aside, it's not a very good shoot 'em up. An okay first effort by the devs but not up there with the best of genre.

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Anyway, it is a tough game given that it is effectively a series of tough boss battles with unconventional bullet patterns, hard to see weapons and weakpoints, one hit kill body slams and you're armed with a peashooter and you move quite slowly.

 

Story mode is doable (thanks to the credits and reduced difficulty) but Arcade mode is utterly savage.

 

Difficulty level aside, it's not a very good shoot 'em up. An okay first effort by the devs but not up there with the best of genre.

 

Yeah, I agree it's not really easier than other shmups (definitely harder than novice modes on bullet hell shooters), or a great game.

 

I dunno about arcade mode being way harder than story.. on story you keep switching ships and subweapons, neither of which are balanced very well. GA-22 (the ship in the tutorial) does by far the most damage and actually has some spread in its shots. Seeker missiles and the bullet cancelling laser are probably the only subweapons you want to use. And in arcade you get access to reflector and rollback which are both better than the slow-motion mechanic.

 

And all of the rank achievements have some stupid grinding things in them, I'm currently stuck on the fourth one because one of the requirements is continuing a hundred times -_- and all of them require you to have played the game for a certain amount of hours, which is just pointless.

Edited by Zaarock
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I'm not sure what some people here are on about. Even without ever using the immensely helpful slowdown mechanic, this game is significantly less difficult than contemporary offerings in the bullet hell genre. In fact, the game has been praised by multiple reviewers for being a relatively easy game in the shmup genre that is accessible to non-hardcore players. Do people mean to say that the achievements are difficult to obtain?
What reviews are that, can you link them? I'd love to read them, because that's just dead wrong.

 

I think what they mean is that the story mode is more lenient than many other shmups and grants you 10 continues, and if you run out of those you can choose to start over (with 10 continues) from the start of the last chapter you reached. The actual bullet hell being thrown at you is not child's play and, in my opinion, actually has some harder stuff than your typical Cave game. (Because Cave bullets move more slowly and you can slow your own ship down by holding the firing button in pretty much all of them. This game has somewhat jerky controls when you're trying to move a pixel at a time, making it overall harder.)

 

And all of the rank achievements have some stupid grinding things in them, I'm currently stuck on the fourth one because one of the requirements is continuing a hundred times -_- and all of them require you to have played the game for a certain amount of hours, which is just pointless.
Same here. Really hate when achievements require you to play more poorly than you actually can, or when developers expect everyone to just suck at everything. I don't see how they could think that any player who could reach rank 4 at all would need 100 continues to do so. I'm currently at 19% and that's WITH doing a bit of farming while I cooked dinner!

 

Edit: Oh great, the next rank after that has "empty 100 full capsules." Why aren't all the "do X 100 times" on the last ranks?

Edited by DROGTURIST
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Well, it's an achievements site so, y'know, have a guess...

 

Anyway, it is a tough game given that it is effectively a series of tough boss battles with unconventional bullet patterns, hard to see weapons and weakpoints, one hit kill body slams and you're armed with a peashooter and you move quite slowly.

 

Story mode is doable (thanks to the credits and reduced difficulty) but Arcade mode is utterly savage.

 

Difficulty level aside, it's not a very good shoot 'em up. An okay first effort by the devs but not up there with the best of genre.

 

Agreed. This is exactly what I was trying to get at. I can't believe some of these reviews - obviously some of these editors don't play shmups all that often. That or they consider playing Raiden II back in the day a good example of a bullet hell game. Not that I'm trashin' on Raiden. I love that franchise. ;)

But, yeah...the game definitely leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

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...wait until you play Arcade mode, that is where the real fun begins =.=" Seeing as this mode is rather hard I started by practicing the bosses in training and I have run into a problem: On Papa Carlo the time always runs out. I am using the G22 with full power-ups and the laser weapon (the toad-like pilot). I can destroy every part of the boss without getting hit (the chainsaw blade even before the boss swings it, to save some seconds...) but on the last form I always run out of time. I destroy the lower part with my special attack and then move to the safe spot right before the boss where you can point-blank him and he can't hit you, yet even 40 seconds remaining on the clock is not enough to take him down. What am I missing? Is there maybe some trick to beat him faster...?

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Man I thought I was home free in arcade mode, had a great run until I ran into Domus... He is ridiculous in arcade! I lost all my continues on him :(

 

That said after practicing him in boss training, you need a very different tactic to kill him. Its less about taking him out piece by piece compared to haul ass and hope you dont get shot, makes for an intense boss fight :Bounce:

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Use Speed Up ability (or Reflection) to avoid the coal or particles that it throws at you and keep spamming your "bombs" (default Cluster Bomb in Story Mode) on the top lid. That's how I did it.

 

Glad to help out. ^^

 

Ah, good to know. I was having the same problem.

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Man I thought I was home free in arcade mode, had a great run until I ran into Domus... He is ridiculous in arcade! I lost all my continues on him :(

 

That said after practicing him in boss training, you need a very different tactic to kill him. Its less about taking him out piece by piece compared to haul ass and hope you dont get shot, makes for an intense boss fight :Bounce:

That sucks. Domus is going to be what makes me permanently rage quit this game eventually, I swear. That screen-jerking that happens every time you move even a pixel is incredibly frustrating to me, and the biggest mistake in this game. It's been a while since I played a Gradius game, so I had forgotten how very frustrated I get by chasing powerups too.

 

Edit: Oh I forgot how bullshit it is that the ground that gets thrown at you when you fight the observatorium, right after Domus, is random and the game actually can throw up so much ground that it's impossible to dodge and you just die... If that shit is in Arcade, I'm rage quitting right now.

Edited by DROGTURIST
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Domus is probably far easier if you have the bomb subweapon (Koss) equipped and use it on the weakpoints, it should go through walls right? And yeah, I always have to use one subweapon to kill the last part of papa carlo on hard without timing out too..

 

and yeah, the screen jerking parts are the worst parts of the game.. Domus, going through the stupid lasers in the garbage in stage 3 and dodging the lava bursts in stage 4. All of them are hard for the wrong reasons.

 

BTW, note on the requirement of beating story mode only using your main shot: you cannot use the time capsule or the subweapons. I beat it using time capsules a bit and it didn't count. Selecting the last stage from story stage select and only using shot didnt work either.

 

Maybe the prologue doesn't count as part of the requirement because those two big ships at the start are impossible to kill without using time capsule or subweapons. I used speed up there and played through story assuming I was allowed to.

Edited by Zaarock
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I haven't gotten to Arcade yet, still doing the way too many Story Mode playthroughs they expect us to do...a whole playthrough for different text on the text screens? Not even alternate paths or new dialogue? All that for some other guy showing up at the end, saying "I can't let you do this, I'll do it" and then everything ends the same way anyway? Come on with wasting our time!

 

Anyway, are the garbage and lava parts in Arcade too? Not every part of Story is in Arcade so I was assuming they'd remove crap like that from Arcade.

 

And, yup, I too just found out that you can't do alternative narration nor "primary only" by loading the final boss. Weird how they managed to screw up the Story 1CC but not the lesser, easier ones. Maybe a programmer snuck that in there because he agreed that the garbage/lava parts are bullshit with how they instakill you.

Edited by DROGTURIST
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Maybe the prologue doesn't count as part of the requirement because those two big ships at the start are impossible to kill without using time capsule or subweapons.

I was able to get passed them using ONLY primary weapon, by destroying the first ship then let the timer go down while trying to shoot the other ship. You can fly close to ships without getting hurt too. Remember, the first two segments are only a Tutorial, and you don't technically die there.

 

Anyway, are the garbage and lava parts in Arcade too? Not every part of Story is in Arcade so I was assuming they'd remove crap like that from Arcade.

Any stage segments that are in Score Attack mode exists in Arcade mode too, so practice there first if you want.

Edited by VixyNyan
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The observatory boss is really very difficult, the fact that you have little time and the bosses weak point can be hidden is very annoying, I literally made it by the skin of my teeth and I was destroying every segment in one pass.

 

I think all the tough sections (Garbage disposal, fire cave, observatory, Domus)

is what is going to make the game difficult to 1cc.

 

Oh, also a little trivia, the subname for Domus is "SOBB PU DEKCUF" , read it backwards ;) A little nod from Grasshopper studios and Shadows of the Damned which had the Moor Pu Dekcuf.

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