Question about difficulty/heavy weapon

[nawj]

I understand that the Very Hard is a joke, I'm no good at bullet hell and I breezed through it on the Awaken and Fallen stages so I'm trying Extinction now, but does anyone know what the actual difference is? Is it just faster/denser bullet patterns or are they harder to destroy with your heavy weapon? I can't put my finger on it but I'm definitely getting my ass beat.
As for the heavy weapons, I'm playing the Chaos angel with the giant laser beam heavy, and it only destroys projectiles while blue, and if I fire for too long it turns green. But sometimes when I fire it just starts green entirely and I don't understand why.
This game's bullet patterns are so dense and fast it's rare that I can actually just lace through them like I'm doing 2hu spellcards so it feels like you have to push through them with the heavy weapon.

[Dysenteric Cow]

Not sure if you got your answers already, but I'll shoot -

There are definitely more bullets, not sure about faster, and your health does not regen nearly as fast.

For your heavy it seems eats a certain amount before it goes green and stops absorbing. Certain bullets (like pink ones) will make this happen really quick, where regular orange bullets get absorbed without much hassle.This game is pretty chaotic overall, pure dodging is doable but can difficult without routing stages or practicing the bosses a bit.

Another thing to note is point blanking will get you more health back, but do so carefully.

I have some 1CCs I uploaded if they'll help, I'll put a link for the Awakening ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBDdBtWexWw ). The others are on that channel as well. They're not great runs by any means; I just tried a couple of times, so they are all based on reflex for the most part and not actual routing, but it should give some hint as to what you can do to get by.

On a side note, I was kind of rushing extinction in hopes of getting the final extinction difficulty, which is in chronicle mode and on the leaderboard, but not sure how you're supposed to get it. Was hoping to actually practice starting there 8( Very fun game though either way.

[FreddyTheMonkey]

Is Final Extinction its own difficulty level? I thought it was only to indicate the yellow stages of Chronicle mode, they didn't seem to be easier or harder than regular Extinction levels to me.

[Dysenteric Cow]

Well in the leaderboard there is a section for that difficulty in arcade sections, that's why I assumed it was it's own. It's also a difficulty in the later stages (both yellow and red) in Chronicle mode.

[FreddyTheMonkey]

Originally posted by Dysenteric Cow:

Well in the leaderboard there is a section for that difficulty in arcade sections, that's why I assumed it was it's own. It's also a difficulty in the later stages (both yellow and red) in Chronicle mode.

This news devastated me, I'm having quite a bit of trouble in levels from 20 onwards, can't even fathom even more difficult versions ahead

[Morty2989]

Just have to grind and get better weapons/upgrade. It's a little steep but some of the 20+ weapons feel mega OP so it evens out.

[Dysenteric Cow]

Originally posted by FreddyTheMonkey:

Originally posted by Dysenteric Cow:

Well in the leaderboard there is a section for that difficulty in arcade sections, that's why I assumed it was it's own. It's also a difficulty in the later stages (both yellow and red) in Chronicle mode.

This news devastated me, I'm having quite a bit of trouble in levels from 20 onwards, can't even fathom even more difficult versions ahead

Basically just try to get weapon levels that are higher level. Orange stages give like 2-3 levels higher than their own. The biggest hurdle will probably be the final 3 stages. But if you start a ways back you can kind of level before the difficult stages to have more attack and health.

[FreddyTheMonkey]

I've completed level 24 so far and yeah strong weapons do all the difference. It's taken me a while to get here but that was also because I didn't realize you could select stages and I started from 1 every time lol

I'm still not comfortable with starting at a 10+ level because I feel like I need to level up before tackling the challenging levels, but I'll get there.

[Dysenteric Cow]

Since you start taking more damage, get some health regen + extra lives, play is slow for your first stage to build up your health. Your weapons more or less start melting everything if they are 5+ levels from the current place you're at. 8)

[akako-tan]

Touhou isn't a good reference for this game, because Touhou has extremely slow patterns for shmup and even bullet hell standards. So much so that it's a meme that Touhou's projectiles are more like mines that you run into than proper bullets.
Touhou's idea is mainly micrododging patterns, sliding through the gaps of dense barrages and making little movements to get your way through. That's the complete opposite to this game, because here micrododging is completely undesirable. You only want to MACROdodge mostly, and when you can't, you create a gap for you through the barrages with your charged shot or laser.
It's very important to learn timing your charged shots according to certain situations during the stage and the boss patterns. Just mindlessly trying to laser shield your way through everything will be unfruitful.

The reason why your laser turns green imediatelly is because it instantaneously appears on the screen in a whole line, meaning it, in a fraction of a second, come in contact with all bullets in the way. So if there's enough bullets (specially red and pink ones), your laser will turn green imediatelly. It's not so bad with the charged shot because that shot doesn't cover the whole screen, it slowly moves upwards, hitting just a few bullets that come all the way down to it, meaning it can generally protect you for longer in most situations compared to the laser.

If you guys are unaware, final extinction mode can be unlocked by clearing the extinction mode while dying 3 times or less than 3 times (I can't remember).