What's the trick?

[Tarnished]

To this kind of games? Aside from playing only bullet hell games for training.

[NIH]

There's a bunch of "tricks"... Mostly those tricks are fundamental techniques which some players are aware of and others are not. Google 'Prometheus's' "Full extent of the jam" for an exhaustive list of shmupping techniques, which also get explained well by way of pictures.

Other than that: Kowledge ahead of time will get you through stages a lot more safely. Knowing what happens when and where is key if you ever want to 1cc anything reliably. Routing is the name of the game. Know when you need to enter break mode, know when there's a chance you'll need to bomb, prioritize the right targets and you'll eventually make it.

[Crystaliss]

Well, most shmups, bullet hell or not, are 1 hit deaths. Also, in most cases, you recharge a bomb or 2 after dying, so dying with bombs is essentially lost bombs, always use a bomb if it means not dying.

As far as specific mechanics in this game, larger enemies clear the screen of bullets when they die, so you can clear the screen fairly frequently without using bombs with good timing. Beyond that, entering burst mode, and uh, I forget what the game calls it, but extra/over burst mode also clears the screen of bullets. The item drops at the end of stages are fixed, being either stars (points), energy (E), a 1up, or a stock reset. As you use bombs, the resource cost for your next bomb increases, the stock reset refreshes the bomb cost. I am unsure if the following is correct, but I believe bosses on arcade are garunteed to drop 1ups if you are on your last life (I might be confused with versions, cause there is version with many differences, one of which is if you use a full-lock or nearly full-lock, you clear bullets in a certain area around you).

Saying that, if you're having trouble getting anywhere on arcade modes, don't worry too much, the difficulty modes in this are basically easy/normal (novice) and extremely hard (arcade). Beating an arcade mode without continues would be quite amazing. By no means is this the hardest shmup out there, but I'd still put it quite high on the list.

Best of luck.

[Tarnished]

My concern is the achievements even if it's not important. I enjoy this game(haven't played a lot yet) and I think it's fair compared to some other bullet hell games I tried.
So what I'm saying is that the achievements on most of these games need you to be almost a god of shmups to complete them.
Unless there are tricks for any kind of shmup.
Thanks for your answers by the way, they will help a lot. :)

[shoopy]

Bullet herding and micro dodging is a large part of bullet hell strategy. Many shots are aimed at your ship, which means you can guide the bullet pattern in a way that works for you. The key is to let the bullets come at you and only slightly dodge them so that you end up with a stream of bullets following you instead of being spread all over the screen.

You want to dodge with small movements because it keeps the bullets more compact. When you use huge movements it spreads the bullets all over and you run out of space and have to cut back through a huge cloud of bullets strewn around, and you won't be able to navigate through the fixed patterns.

Also don't forget your vertical movement. There are times you want to be further up the screen so that you can shuffle downwards to avoid bullets while conserving your horizontal movement. Also many patterns spread as they go, so if you can't fit through at first you can some times wait for a hole by following the pattern downwards.

[Tarnished]

Sometimes I see some bullets that should hit me but don't. (not while immune). How does that work?

[shoopy]

Originally posted by Wildspeaker:

Sometimes I see some bullets that should hit me but don't. (not while immune). How does that work?

Your hitbox is just a small pixel in the middle of the ship. Also some large bullets have hitboxes that are smaller than the bullet so it looks like it is hitting you when it actually isn't.