Fuggin' yus. Hopefully there's a Switch version. Zwei on the bus? SOLD.

hylian_elf wrote:

If only we could have a Saga remake but I think Sega lost the code?

That's what they say, IIRC. I'm hoping that the recent advances in breaking Saturn security should mean that emulation is easier, and hopefully we'll at least see Saga re-releases on download services.

Just watch some playthroughs, Elf.  I'd still sell it if you can make a profit as you can always grab it on PSN if you want to give it a go.  I'd have been kinder to it if I'd only payed £11.50 but it doesn't warrant full price or the time investment when there's Cave stuff I've never played. 

Like Ketsui!  Only had a few goes but it seems cool, nice chunky military designs and certainly doesn't pull any punches.  Christ.  Stage 3 destroyed me.  Training mode seems useful as it splits the stages into sections, rewinds a few seconds when you die and gives you a rating at the end.  Got a basic grasp of scoring from STG Weekly but I'm not sure how or if you can keep the countdown timer topped up.  Will have to inspect some replays.

There is a quiet buzz around this game with many people tipping it as a real return to form for Shmup games, looks stylish as:

Gameplay starts at 3 mins or so.

That does look good. Thanks for sharing Temps.

Hmmm. Only Windows at the moment.

I'm really enjoying it.  There are plenty of extra features to help with practice and potential frustration.  Even something as simple as being able to quickly change the OST arrangement makes it so much easier to have just one more go.  Stage 4 is my limit at the moment but it seems doable.  The opening of Stage 5 is brutal so I'm trying to conserve as many bombs as possible for that ie: dying on stage 2 with full bombs grrr.
Only played the other modes once each but Deathtiny seems cool as you can charge up a meter which allows you to dip into the 2nd loop on the fly, earning more points as you do so.  At least I think that's what was happening.

Noticed couple of days ago that Fast Striker has been released on PS4/Vita as a cross-buy and costs only £5.79/€6.99. Decent little game from what I've played. No online leaderboards and only 6 levels but the soundtrack is lovely and every different difficulty level makes it basically a new game with different mechanics and ships.

I’m dumb enough to do that too. 

Fast striker is port of a DC game, no? Will buy on PS4.

hylian_elf wrote:

I’m dumb enough to do that too.  Fast striker is port of a DC game, no? Will buy on PS4.

It was on Dreamcast too but think it was originally released for Neo-Geo. Same devs that made Gunlord which was also on those consoles and iirc is getting rereleased on the Switch in the future.

Picked up a Ketsui yesterday as well as ltd ed copy of Mushi HD, sealed and under £100 seemed a good deal!

Can’t wait to get teeth into Ketsui but have a cold and went bed early last night and now have to go to in-laws dammit

Yeah I’m gonna get it digital and sell my Play-Asia exclusive physical copy. Watched some YouTube videos and read reviews and it doesn’t look that good. I got sucked in by it being a shmup and limited physical copy etc and cos I’m a mug.

Got a scrappy 1cc on Ketsui, far from consistent and frequently dying on the Stage 2 boss' final pattern when it gets real narrow, aargh.  Extra loops are a pipe dream at the minute.

Just over 50 hours played.  Got it in early December and have played little else since so I was expecting it to be more tbh.  I suppose it is difficult to play for long sessions without going cross-eyed.
I use practice mode a lot, yes, then attempt Arcade mode when I'm comfortable.  Otherwise you just end up doing the first level over and over.  First thing I practised was how to get the 1-Up from the stage 3 mid-boss, then routing from stage 3 onward as it becomes increasingly important.

I just play on a 32" TV with a PS4 controller, even on Steam, sitting a couple of metres away I guess.

It's an intimidating game but actually quite generous with lives (two extends plus two 1-Ups) and bombs.  Starts to feel very doable once you start bombing more, assuming you don't care about score.
I thought I'd lost the replay but apparently there's a Replay Theatre buried in the menu somewhere so I'll have a look and try and get it uploaded later.  Like I say, it is scrappy, but might help by showing a beginner's strategy.

Always used pad for shooters.  I went from pad to stick for Street Fighter but whenever I've tried it for a shmup I can't really see the benefit.  I'm sure it'd be fine after a while but it never felt worth the effort, I feel much more nimble on a pad.

Here's my first Ketsui 1cc anyway.  It's actually not a bad survival run until Stage 5 where I start making mistakes.  I think I was just deflated because I bombed the final boss a lot, making it a bit of an anticlimax. 

Those are all the "gadgets" and you can toggle them on/off individually.  The rate counter, clear bonus and 2nd round ones are nice to have.  The rest I don't look at very often but they don't distract me.  I'm going to see if I can get to the easier of the 2nd loops, which requires a 1cc with fewer than six bombs used+deaths.

The Arcade Challenge mode is great, here's the menu which shows how it breaks the game up:



The LOCKED ones can be unlocked by simply playing (not finishing) the preceding area.  By doing this you can quickly unlock the entire game and both of the 2nd loops in their entirety, including the True Last Boss which is as ridiculous as you'd expect.  So far, pretty standard, but when you select a section to practice, it gives you the option to tweak the difficulty in 10 increments.  10 is the same as Arcade mode's difficulty and as you lower the difficulty, the bullet patterns get simpler, all the way down to 1 where streams of bullets are often reduced to just a single shot.  When you die in this mode, the game rewinds a few seconds (it varies fairly intelligently) to a relatively safe spot so you can try again.  You have brief invincibility when you resume control.
You can also toggle on "Sparta training" when selecting the difficulty.  With Sparta mode on, every time you die you have to survive that bit three times before the game will let you carry on.  You get bronze/silver/gold medals for each section and there's some kind of scoring called "jigoku" which I haven't deciphered.

Also also, there's another mode called Kizuna.  The creates a save state whenever you die in other modes, so you can then go to the Kizuna mode and practice that section in isolation.  It seems to start 5-10 seconds before your death, so right now I can go and practice those patterns I died on on the final boss as many times as I want, without having to do the whole boss.

edit:  one other little detail I very much appreciated is that you can set a button as restart and that you have to hold it for a second or two so you can't hit it by accident.