Just cleared Ghost Blade HD on Hard. Figured out I could cheese/time out the final boss and that, plus doing it on Joy-Cons felt like such an appropriate "fuck you" (in the best way) to one of my first shmups that gave me a really hard time when I started.
This was a piece of unfinished business from when I got into the genre and was jumping from Easy Mode to Easy Mode. Going back and being able to assert a level of domination — a couple of casual plays, broke down systems, hatched a gameplan and executed it in a few nights — is really rewarding.
Very flawed game but I think it's much better than it gets credit for. 19:6 presentation is GORGEOUS, and it feels great. I'm grateful it was my first bullet hell, because it is one of the best trainers for not just "where to look" but really "how to look". You will be punished severely for losing track of open lanes and discounting to early the slow moving bullets behind you.
That said, I get why experienced players dog it. Once you can read the multi-color bullets, the game does not have any other tricks up its sleeve. Plus not losing your bomb stock on death is pretty broken.
I think scoring could be interesting. No-missing stages is key which is relatively easy — most players are clumped up around 2.5-3 billion, so the optimization is point-blanking big enemies for bonus points, which pop revenge bullets. Using bombs to clear the area, get the point-blank safely and also not destroy the stars bonus seems like the best strat and adding the layer of routing these, could elevate the game a lot, but as is the curse of genre you can get to this level of play further and faster with a classic.
6/10 game, but the beauty of shmups is the experience all told over 2 years is 10/10 priceless… so if a game can do that what's the number even mean lol
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