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I don't have a consistent playstyle yet, but it's becoming more natural.

Sometimes I play in overdrive 90% of the time, sometimes just blue 90%, sometimes 50/50.

Stage 3 is a complete farm and there is the 1up which i've gotten twice, I know where it is, but not sure why sometimes it appears and sometimes not...can't tell if i'm getting it in kasukei, or with hold shot, or scatter shot...or if it even matters, but, and a big but, if you can avoid getting hit on the 2nd boss, you should have your 1000 meter full, and then it's a matter of just farming stage 3...that feels so nice. Getting so close a good run now that i'm understanding it better...and letting the screen fill up is huge...i'm sure I would've realized that on my own, just like DDPR, but it wasn't until watching a vid that it became obvious.

My best so far:

I finally started on this tonight; don't really understand the Kakusei Overdrive thing, but I've got a good handle on the bullet-canceling, thanks to DDP:R.

Played for about 2 1/2 hrs. before I got a blinding headache. I'm up over the 9mil mark as well, and still feel I'm doing just okay.

Dare I say I'm *enjoying* this despite all the negativity I saw when this game was chosen?

This is a pretty good introduction to Cave. The bullet patterns are easy to weave through, the hitbox is just right, and the risk/reward system is very similar to Dimahoo which I liked a lot. Lots of strategy here and I don't feel like I'm getting beat too early on.

The scores I've been getting, however, need work.

Hopefully I can put time into this one. I've been slacking off/busy with other things these past two weeks. I want to try to get a decent score on this. My copy is buried in the garage somewhere...better go find it!

ExedExes wrote:Dare I say I'm *enjoying* this despite all the negativity I saw when this game was chosen?

This is a pretty good introduction to Cave. The bullet patterns are easy to weave through, the hitbox is just right, and the risk/reward system is very similar to Dimahoo which I liked a lot. Lots of strategy here and I don't feel like I'm getting beat too early on.

The scores I've been getting, however, need work.

Yeah, I was not looking forward to this one at first, but I am having a pretty fun time with it. It is definitely a great introduction to Cave, since you have so many resources, and you can slow the patterns down and understand how they work. Its pretty easy (By Cave's standards), but the last boss is pretty damn tough, and scoring in the game is also not an easy task. So, it draws you in, but still has long term potential.

mjmjr25 wrote:I don't have a consistent playstyle yet, but it's becoming more natural.

Sometimes I play in overdrive 90% of the time, sometimes just blue 90%, sometimes 50/50.

Stage 3 is a complete farm and there is the 1up which i've gotten twice, I know where it is, but not sure why sometimes it appears and sometimes not

Damn dude, you are doing pretty good! (You too Donnie!)

Its tough to strike a balance. You definitely want to sit in Kakesui Over at the start of the game, to get your Over level high by the end of the first midboss. Over level affects not only how many points you get in Kakesui Over, but also how many bonus green gems you get when killing enemies in the top half of the screen, and how strong you are.

What I am trying to do is: Collect a few gems before going Kakesui for the first medium enemy. I stay in Over pretty much through the midboss, but if I can I try to go back to normal before killing his last arm, so that I can Kakesui cancel his bullets. By this point, you should have a decent amount of gold, which will act as a multiplier to your bullet cancelling multiplier. So, with a decent Over level and gold amount, cancelling bullets (in chunks, so that you get lots of x100s) will net you tons of points.

Oh, and you just have to be in Kakesui (not Over) to be able to hit that third-eye looking thing in the third stage.


I've had time to put 3 creds into this so far, and my scores were 10m, 11m, and the last was 13m ending at the start of stage 5. I'm actually thinking a 1cc may be in sight this week.

ExedExes wrote:Dare I say I'm *enjoying* this despite all the negativity I saw when this game was chosen?

I'm enjoying it too. A lot. Easily the most fun I've had with STGT. I guess if we were to play it for 30 hours a week for 2 years so that we can 2-ALL it in our sleep then we'd think it was a terrible game. Or something.

^exactly.

There's only one really annoying guy in the thread, "Kai". Every comment is condescending...yet apparently he's spent hours and hours on this game and after his 27million - ALL, he's "taking the week off."

I like all these guys who are "done" for the week, even though there are other guys posting scores 2x what theirs are. It's a freaking scoring competition - not an ALL competition.

To me, this game has the greatest ability to score high / low of the games we've played.

Personally, i've already gone from 400-500K for stage 1 to averaging 900K an have hit as high as 1.2 mil. To me, that makes every single run exciting. You aren't just surviving / killing stuff that comes in front of you, but you are truly scoring / surviving / building gems / building gold / building overdrive / building powerups...it just has so much more depth from a pure scoring competition than anything else we've played.

That was my knock on V-V / Strikers - there really isn't much scoring disparity level to level, score was completely dependant on how long you survive (though the no-miss level bonuses are very important, there is that, yes).

At least Salamander 2 had the risk / reward score thing going on, the more aggressive you play, the more points you can acquire, use of the options, strategizing which powerups to grab, that had a bit more depth, which is what I want from an STGT, and which is why i'm loving ESPGaluda.

mjmjr25 wrote:Personally, i've already gone from 400-500K for stage 1 to averaging 900K an have hit as high as 1.2 mil. To me, that makes every single run exciting. You aren't just surviving / killing stuff that comes in front of you, but you are truly scoring / surviving / building gems / building gold / building overdrive / building powerups...it just has so much more depth from a pure scoring competition than anything else we've played.

I've noticed that too. I started by getting around 650K at the end of Stage 1, but now that I watched the demonstration mode I saw where I can get more of the gold pieces and increase the multiplier further, and now I get over a million at the end.

I made it to the end of Stage 3 last night after finally figuring out the Stage 2 boss (the final form with about 1/4 of the bar left was really bad), and I maxed the gold counter on Stages 2 and 3. My score was golden all right.

Best of all, I know I can do better.

sounds like watching a video or two would be a good idea. Which ones have people found most helpful? Sometimes SuperPlay videos are too insane to really gain much from...is it worth getting the NTSC-J DVD that came with the PS2 version fired up?

dsheinem wrote:is it worth getting the NTSC-J DVD that came with the PS2 version fired up?

I have this DVD too, but not sure how to watch it