===================================================================== FAQ/Guide for Shikigami no Shiro II, Dreamcast version By Erik Mooney, erik [at] dos486 [dot] com ==================================================================== Version 1.1: May 24, 2004 Many minor corrections and additions, too numerous to list. Version 1.0: May 12, 2004 ==================================================================== Legal: I give permission to copy, post, translate into other languages including computer representations such as HTML, and otherwise reproduce this document for free-of-charge distribution provided that ALL the text, information, and credits to the author and contributors are complete and unaltered. Such uses include but are not limited to posting on a website or email service that generates revenue from advertisements but no charge is assessed to the user or reader. This document and information contained herein may NOT be sold or used in any package for which a charge is assessed to the reader. Such uses include but are not limited to reproduction in a print magazine, CD/DVD-based collection of game information and tips, or on a website that charges either directly for this document or for a package containing it. Got it? Copy and distribute all you like as long as my name remains attached, but nobody makes any money from it. If in doubt as to the legal status or permissibility of such reproduction, contact me. Updated versions of this FAQ should be available at www.GameFAQs.com. ===================================================================== CONTENTS ===================================================================== [1] General Info [2] Game System [3] Scoring System [4] Characters [5] Stages and Bosses ===================================================================== 1. GENERAL INFO ===================================================================== Shikigami no Shiro II (SnS2) is a two-dimensional shooter game, in the category commonly called "shmups". The original version was for Naomi arcade hardware; console ports exist or are coming for Dreamcast, Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox. This FAQ is based on the Dreamcast version but almost all the information should apply to other versions. SnS2 is a sequel to the first Shikigami no Shiro game. I have never played that and do not have much information on it. Here are some of SnS2's features: - Seven different selectable characters plus a second version of one character. - Each character has a unique primary weapon which is generally a forward- shooting attack of medium power. - Each character also has a unique secondary weapon with two different selectable modes. These weapons vary greatly in nature and power. - Each character's bomb also works differently. - Five stages, each broken up into two sections with a boss battle. - An interesting scoring system, that greatly rewards risk (see below.) - LOTS of colorful and intricate bullet patterns to dodge. - When in heavy action, the very small area of your character that's actually susceptible to getting hit glows brightly white. This is a VERY nice feature. - Two different musical soundtracks. I like the original much better than the "S2MIX" remix, but your taste may vary. - Normal and Extreme game modes. In Extreme mode, enemies shoot more and harder patterns of bullets, and explode into additional showers of bullets when killed. - Options for difficulty level and points required to earn an extra life. - An Extra Options menu with some really neat stuff. - Two-player simultaneous play, with each player controlling their own character. ===================================================================== 2. GAME SYSTEM ===================================================================== 2.1 Controls The directional pad controls your character, moving it around on the 2D screen, of course. The analog stick isn't used, at least on the Dreamcast. The arcade version of the game has two buttons: Shoot and Bomb. On the Dreamcast, these default to the A and B buttons but can be remapped in the options. Tapping the Shoot button repeatedly fires your character's primary weapon. Holding down this button for a moment activates your character's secondary ("Shiki") attack. Your character moves slower when the Shiki attack is in use. Pressing the Bomb button uses a bomb. A bomb clears all enemy bullets onscreen, gives its user temporary invulnerability, and attacks enemies in a way that varies by character. In two-player mode, be alert that the other player doesn't get invulnerability, and can still crash into some objects like walls that don't get cancelled by the bomb. The console versions allow an additional button to be used to continuously fire the primary attack instead of having to tap the button repeatedly. This defaults to X on the Dreamcast and can also be remapped. The side triggers/shoulder buttons are not used. The Start button pauses the game. 2.2 Credits and Saving By default, if the game is loaded up with a new or nonexistent save file, you will have 3 credits each time you start a new game. If a player loses all his or her lives, you can continue playing if there is still a credit in reserve. I'm not sure exactly how additional credits become available, but it seems to just be with additional playtime. I think you get one credit per hour of playtime, and after six hours, you get Free Play with unlimited credits. That also enables the Extra Options menu (see below.) SnS2 automatically saves to the VMU unless you turn auto-save off in the options. It requires 61 blocks on a memory card. Yes, that's a lot! The game keeps the highest 20 scores and names for each of the characters, in each of their secondary-weapon modes, in each of the three modes: Easy, Normal and Extreme mode. That's a lot of data. 2.3 Options The difficulty level setting in the options controls two things: the amount of damage required to kill enemies, and the velocity of enemy bullets. Very Hard makes the bullets about 50% faster and enemies (only really noticeable on bosses) take about 50% more damage to kill than Normal difficulty. The option for life extend should be obvious. The first number is the score required for the first extra life; the other number is the interval between extra lives after that. So on the default setting of 400,000,000/700,000,000, you get an extra life at 400 million points, 1100 million points, 1800M, 2500M, and so on after that. Once you have enough playtime accumulated, the Extra Options menu will become available. Available options here are: Game Speed: 50%, 100%, or 200% Bullet Size: 50% to 300% in increments of 5% Bullet Speed: Same options as Bullet Size TBS Radius: Same options. This controls the radius of the Tension-Based System, which is described in the scoring system section below. Extreme Mode: Normal, Extreme-2, Extreme-3, or Extreme-Mix. This changes the patterns of extra bullets that enemies emit when destroyed in Extreme mode. For some insane (and Dreamcast-melting) action, try playing with 300% bullet size and 50% bullet speed in Extreme mode. (Hint: pick Niigi as your character.) The options menu also allows you to play the sound effects and background music in the game. The music track named "Reborn" seens to be a bonus track - I don't think it's used in the game anywhere. Also, one of the music tracks is called "Metempsychosis"; shooter fans will recognize the reference to Ikaruga. 2.4 Lives and Bombs When a game is started or continued, each player has 3 lives and 3 bombs. Losing all your lives means game over, of course. You can have a maximum of only 3 lives, but you can hold up to 5 bombs. Whenever you get hit, an additional bomb is added to your reserve if you don't already have 5. Also, whenever you reach a score level for an extra life, you also get an extra bomb. Losing all your lives and continuing resets your stock of bombs to 3. Using a credit to continue adds 1 to the lowest digit of your score, up to 9. So if you've used 9 or fewer continues, this tracks the number of continues that you've used. At the end of the game (when you either decline to continue, or finish the last boss), you get a status screen showing several statistics on your performance. These should be self-explanatory, so I won't go into detail here. In two-player mode, when one player dies, there's a 20-second countdown to continue while the other player plays on. If you continue, you keep using the same character; if you let the 20 seconds expire and then jump back in, you can pick a new character. 2.5 Story Recollect When starting a game, the "On"/"Off" menu allows you to turn on or off the story interludes that appear before each boss. To have a story section be available in Story Recollect mode, you just need to reach it in-game with that character when interludes are turned on. Any interlude that you've seen with a character in the game becomes available and can be replayed in Story Recollect. Unfortunately, all the stories are in Japanese and I haven't got translations. 2.6 Gallery Mode According to EscargoExpress on the GameFaqs message board for SnS2: "The gallery pictures are unlocked through obtaining the pictures in cutscenes (everytime you see a new picture, it is unlocked.)" I'm not quite sure if that's right, as there are quite a few pictures that aren't part of any in-game cutscene but are in Gallery Mode. For what it's worth, I haven't gotten any new pictures unlocked in my last 20 or so hours of playing, and both my save and my friends' save have exactly the same pictures available although we've been doing different things with the game. So it could be the pictures are just unlocked with playtime. 2.7 Easy Mode On the menu that allows you to turn cinematics on and off is also an option to select Easy Mode. In this mode, you only play the first three stages, with the game ending after the 3-2 boss (the Sword Brothers). Many elements of the game are easier: there are fewer enemies and bullets, and the walls in stage 3-1 are different leaving you more space. Finally, anytime your character is about to get hit, they'll automatically use a bomb instead if you have one. 2.8 IR Internet Ranking Alfa System maintains web pages with high scores for SnS2 on their site at http://www.alfasystem.net , and here is a direct link: http://www.alfasystem.net/game/shiki2/Score.htm For a score to be eligible for the Internet Ranking, it must be played on Normal difficulty, with default settings (400M/700M) for Life Extend, and with all options in the Extra Options menu set to 100%. ===================================================================== 3. SCORING SYSTEM ===================================================================== Note: In two-player mode, there is only one score, which is shared by both players. (Both players always receive extra lives at the same time.) 3.1 Scoring This is one of the most innovative features of SnS2. The scoring is based on grabbing coins and on the "TBS" Tension Bonus System. Shooting and destroying enemies does earn points, but collecting coins is generally much more influential on your score. When you destroy an enemy with your character's primary weapon, gold coins (the game calls them "items") fly out and fall slowly down the screen for you to collect. This is good. When you destroy an enemy with your character's secondary ("Shiki") weapon, coins are also generated. But instead of requiring you to collect them, the coins are immediately pulled straight to your character and automatically picked up. This results in collecting MANY more coins than using the primary weapon. If you're playing for score, you want to use the Shiki weapon as much as possible. The first coin you pick up is worth 10 points, and each coin after that is worth 10 more than the previous, to a max of 10,000 points (after you collect 1000 coins). This value does NOT reset between stages, but it DOES reset to 10 if you get hit -- getting hit decreases your scoring opportunity. In two- player mode, the coin value is counted separately for each player. When you get hit, your character will spray out a pile of coins that can be re-collected (by either player.) Your character won't spray out more coins than they've already collected (so you can't get hit on purpose to get extra coins.) 3.2 TBS Complicating the scoring is the TBS System. TBS is a multiplier that increases from 1x on up to 8x based on how close your character is to an enemy or bullet. Your character's hit-box needs to be within about four pixels of an enemy or bullet to have the TBS multiplier at 8x. Moving away from all bullets will cause the multiplier to decrease again. The TBS multiplier doesn't change instantly when you approach or retreat from a bullet. It takes about half a second to increase up to x8, and about a second to drop all the way from x8 to x1. If your character is surrounded by several bullets, it drops slower than if you retreat from one bullet into empty space. It's easier to maintain x8 over time if you're surrounded than if you're scratching up against one lone bullet. As the TBS multiplier increases, your character's hit-box will start glowing brighter. When the multiplier is all the way up to 8x, the game will emit a high-pitched squeaky buzzy sound to let you know that fact. Whenever you earn points (other than stage-end bonuses), they are multiplied by your current TBS multiplier. If your character is near a bullet or enemy when you kill something, the points for killing it will be multiplied. If your character is near a bullet or enemy when you collect a coin, the coin's points are also multiplied. Instead of 10,000 per coin, you can get up to 80,000 - that's a huge increase! Finally, the *number* of coins thrown out by an enemy that dies is *also* affected by TBS. So if you can keep your character near enemy bullets, using your Shiki weapon: - you get to automatically collect all the coins - there are more coins - and each coin is worth more! Multiply together all those factors and that's how you get really high scores. During gameplay, you'll see a counter on the screen that will look something like "x8: 00150". Both enemy kills and coins collected count towards this: anytime you kill an enemy or collect a coin at x8 multiplier, it increases this counter. The single counter is a total for both players. The TBS Radius option in the Extra Options menu increases (up to 300% of standard) or decreases the space needed between you and a bullet to increase the TBS multiplier. Here's a summary: The TBS multiplier when you kill an enemy determines the score from killing it, and increases the counter if at x8 TBS multiplier when you kill an enemy determines the number of coins that appear Which weapon you used determines whether you automatically collect the coins TBS multiplier when you *pick up* a coin determines the score from picking up the coin, and increases the counter if at x8. 3.3 Hyperfire During time that the TBS multiplier is maxed, each character's primary shot changes to a more powerful version. I've seen this referred to as "Hyperfire" or "Hypershot" elsewhere, so that's what I'll call it. This approximately doubles the power of your primary attack and increases its speed; the exact effects vary by character. This isn't really useful when playing stages for score (since you'll want to be using the shiki attack instead), but it's useful to get out of a tight spot by dealing extra damage to enemies on screen, and is very useful to deal extra damage to bosses. Hyperfire only powers up a character's primary attack; the Shiki attacks and bombs do not increase in power. 3.4 Bonuses When completing a stage (killing the boss), you earn three types of bonus points. Time Bonus: 1,500,000 points per second of time remaining on the boss clock. No bonus if the timer reaches 0 seconds. Item Bonus: 5,000 additional points per coin picked up on the stage (total for both players). x8 Bonus: 20,000 additional points for each kill made and coin picked up at x8 multiplier. (So with both bonuses, each x8 coin adds up to 105,000 in total, including the 80,000 base score.) In two-player mode, you forfeit all these bonuses if either player continues during the stage, or if the second player joined in while only one player was playing. There is no additional score bonus of any kind for completing the game, other than a standard end-of-stage bonus after the last boss. 3.5 Score Tips x8 kills and coins are worth far more than coins at lesser multipliers. The mathematical effect is that your scores are quadratically related to the multiplier; your score is proportional to the *square* of the TBS. Suppose you kill an enemy that generates 10 coins. If you kill it and collect the coins at x1 TBS, that's 100,000 points. At x6, that'll be 60 coins rather than 10, worth 60,000 each, for a total of 3,600,000 points - a huge increase. If you do all that at x8, you get 80 coins for 80,000 each for a multiplicative total of 6,400,000. Once you add in the end-of-stage bonus of 20,000 per x8 coin, x8 is worth more than twice as many points as x6! To maximize score on stages, you need to keep the multiplier at x8 as much as possible, of course. Not only do you have to scratch against bullets, but sometimes you need to plan out the order and timing of your kills so that they'll leave a trail of bullets for you to continuously buzz. Also, you must use your Shiki attack exclusively during stages. The points you get with the primary attack are infinitesimal compared to the shiki. Using the primary attack for a whole stage will net you maybe 200 x8 coins and 20,000,000 points at most. Using the shiki attack can rack up 2500 or more x8 coins and well over 300M on the later stages. Against bosses, you can use your primary to deal damage, but try to always make the kill with the shiki weapon to automatically collect the coins. Occasionally, even if you make the kill with the primary weapon, the game will still let you auto-collect the coins; I've yet to figure out exactly why that happens. I think that if you use a bomb on a boss, it'll always let you auto- collect the coins for that boss lifebar, though I'm not 100% sure on that. "Why can't I get x8 coins on bosses?" When you finish killing a lifebar of any boss other than their last lifebar, all the bullets on the screen immediately disappear. For the boss fights in stages 1-1, 2-1, and 4-1, there remains nothing on the screen to scratch against while picking up the coins, so you can't get these coins at x8. (The 3-1 boss has only one lifebar so this doesn't matter.) For all the other boss fights, you can pick up the coins at x8, but only by scratching up against the boss itself. When you finish killing the last lifebar of any boss, you immediately become invulnerable (you'll see a spherical shield around your character), but the enemy bullets remain on screen so that you can continue to scratch and get x8 coins. The bosses themselves are also worth big points for killing, up to (I think) 5,000,000 for the later bosses, that can be multiplied up to x8. ===================================================================== 4. CHARACTERS ===================================================================== I'll give my estimations of ratings for each attribute of each character, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars represented like this: [***+-] The plus sign represents half a star. An exclamation point added means the character is really awesome in that category. Each character has two modes that you can choose between on the character select screen. The primary attack and bombs are the same in each mode; the only thing that changes is the nature of the Shiki attack. The two modes are usually referred to as Shiki-1 and Shiki-2. Each character has their own type of bomb, as well. During stages, bombs all do the basically same thing: clear the screen of bullets and destroy most or all enemies on the screen. The ratings for bomb power reflect their usefulness and damage potential against bosses. 4.1 Kohtaro Kuga Kohtaro Kuga is the game's main character. He appears on the game packaging and menu screens. Based on the name similarity, he probably has something to do with the Stage 5-1 boss Shintaro Kuga, although the connection is beyond me as I can't read Japanese. Primary Shot: [**---] ([**+--] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [****-] Speed : [****-] ([**---] when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [****-] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [*----] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [*****]! Overall with Shiki-1: [****-] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [****+] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [*----] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [*****]! Overall with Shiki-2: [****-] His primary attack is as standard as they come; a stream of four white shots. It covers area in front of him adequately, but doesn't deal a whole lot of damage. Going up closer to an enemy makes it fire more frequently, because there's a limit to how many shots he can have on the screen at once. His hyperfire is also nothing special; just a slightly larger, faster, and redder version of the primary. His bomb is decent: a large explosion around him. It deals pretty good damage for a bomb, but you do need to be right on top of the target that you want to damage. The invulnerability doesn't last for long, so be ready. Kohtaro moves pretty fast when not using the shiki attack, but slows down a lot when using it. This speed difference can be perilous in tight bullet patterns, although it can actually be easier to scratch against bullets when moving at the slower speed. This character's sole purpose is to rack up big points with the shiki attack. When you hold the attack button, a ghost wearing white robes materializes and starts attacking enemies on the screen with some swords. The ghost is invulnerable, and keeps automatically acquiring new targets and attacking without any further input from the player. Kohtaro is free to find any bullet on the screen, scratch up against it, and watch the coins come rolling in for tons of 8x scores. With Shiki-1, the ghost returns to Kohtaro when there's nothing on screen for it to hit. With Shiki-2, Kohtaro draws a glyph in the air at the point where the ghost first materializes, and it returns there when it's idle. Shiki-2 is slightly more useful, because you can have the ghost stay on the top of the screen closer to incoming enemies (but it's also slightly more dangerous because the ghost may not kill the enemies closest to Kohtaro.) This character's big problem is that he can't deal enough damage to bosses. The ghost deals considerably less damage than his primary attack, and even his hyperfire is lacking in damage capability. Be prepared to spend a lot of time dodging boss bullet patterns when you pick this guy. 4.2 Sayo Yuki She's a female magician, likely related in some way to the Stage 4 boss who also uses cards to attack. Primary Shot: [***--] ([*****]!! with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [**---] Speed : [**---] ([*+---] when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [***--] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [*+---] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [***+-] Overall with Shiki-1: [***--] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [**+--] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [*----] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [**+--] Overall with Shiki-2: [**+--] Sayo is a very average character in many aspects. Her primary shot is a spread of cards of average damage and average screen coverage; like Kohtaro's attack, it's limited in the number of shots on screen so it fires faster when she's closer to her target. Her bomb is also average, dealing decent damage for a little while to an area around her. And her speed is average. Her Shiki attacks are also decent though not great. For both of them, she summons a bird that circles around her rapidly, damaging enemies. It also absorbs enemy bullets of the small orange type. The Shiki-1 bird circles at a short distance from her; the Shiki-2 bird circles directly adjacent and faster. Both are decent for killing enemies while scratching, but don't have the screen coverage to make lots of kills for lots of points, and both are next to useless against bosses because of their short range. Where she shines is with her hyperfire. When the TBS is maxed, scratching up against a bullet, her cards become extremely powerful. She shoots twice as many cards, at high speed, in a wide arc that covers almost the entire screen. Also, the center stream of cards turns red and punches through all obstacles and enemies, continuing to deal additional damage while doing so. If you move up close to a boss so that most or all of the cards hit it, this hyperfire attack obliterates bosses. All by itself, this attack can kill several different boss lifebars (especially the stage 4 boss's second and third lifebars) before they ever get to start shooting at all. Sayo is a fun character to play mindlessly through the game, just obliterating everything with the powerful hyperfire. It's quite a bit harder to actually use the Shiki attack for points; the potential is there although hard to really use well because of the shiki's short range. 4.3 Gennojo Hyuga This is a mysterious man, often seen smoking a cigarette. When I first played SnS2, he was my favorite character, but he is rather troublesome to play. Primary Shot: [*----] ([*+---] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [*----] Speed : [***--] ([*+---] when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [***--] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [**---] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [**---] Overall with Shiki-1: [*----] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [***+-] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [*----] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [**+--] Overall with Shiki-2: [*----] This guy is the weakest character in the game, by far. I've finished the game with one credit on normal difficulty with all of the characters, and Hyuga took many more tries than anyone else. His primary attack is both hard to use and the weakest in the game. He fires shots in a wavy pattern. They cover a decent amount of space in front of him, but not much space at long range, and don't deal much damage. Hyperfire doesn't help: everyone else's hyperfire shoots faster than their standard attack, but Hyuga's just increases in damage slightly. And this attack is completely useless in stage 3-1, as the shots just hit the walls and stop. His bomb is hit-or-miss, literally. He transforms into a werewolf and jumps around frenetically attacking everything on the screen for several seconds. If you get lucky, this can deal decent damage, but often Hyuga will just jump off into space attacking air. And the lunging attacks will miss nearly every time against bosses that move around a lot, like the last pattern of the Sword Brothers. Hyuga's shiki attack is to hold out three energy balls in front of him, which lock on to enemies and continuously damage them. The balls extend upwards about half the screen height, although once a ball locks on, it will stay there at any distance until you release the shiki or the target is destroyed. There's also a fourth ball that remains attached to Hyuga; it's useful to cancel red bullets and to kill enemies that are about to crash into you. Shiki-2 adds two more balls extending behind him at the cost of some range and damage; each shiki-1 ball does roughly 25% more damage than each shiki-2 ball. This makes it harder to hit some enemies during stages, but can collect a few more points from additional kills behind him and the fact that he'll generally be closer to enemies and bullets. Like Kohtaro, Gennojo Hyuga's weakness is dealing damages to bosses. Even having all three balls locked on does only about as much damage as his weak primary attack. His advantage is that once he's locked on, he can go anywhere on the screen (like the farthest corner away from the boss) and keep dealing that damage, but you still have to dodge for quite some time to make the kills. With Shiki-2, locking on all five balls deals pretty good damage, but is hard to do (you have to get up behind the boss to lock on the two additional balls.) 4.4 Fumiko O.V. She's a witch. This is the hardest character for a beginner to use, but does have some redeeming features for advanced players. I've seen her full name given in different sources as either Fumiko Ozet Vanshutien or Fumiko Ozet Vanstein. Why she has a German connection, I can't explain. Primary Shot: [**+--] ([***+-] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [**---] Speed : [**---] ([-----] She can't move when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [-----] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [*****]! Shiki-1 Score Potential: [*----] Overall with Shiki-1: [***--] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [*----] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [****-] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [*+---] Overall with Shiki-2: [**+--] Her primary attack takes a while to get the hang of, but is quite useful once you do. She shoots forwards, but when you move sideways, the stream of shots angles to aim in the direction that she moves in. Hyperfire doesn't change the aiming behavior, but does make it more powerful. Fumiko's aiming mechanism can lead to very undesirable situations like getting stuck in the corner of the screen shooting off to the side instead of at the enemies; try not to let that happen. One very important detail is that pressing up or down realigns her aim back to the center; if you're against the bottom of the screen, you can keep holding down to reset Fumiko's shots back in front of her. Her bomb damages everything on the screen, which is decent, although it doesn't deal a huge amount of damage to bosses. It seems that it may do slightly more damage with the small black things that orbit Fumiko, if you move on top of your target while the bomb is exploding. Her shiki attack is unique. When it's activated, Fumiko cannot move until it's released. Instead of moving Fumiko, your controller moves a targeting reticule around the screen, and when you release the button, a very powerful missile attack drops from the sky at the target. The explosion from the missile stays there for several seconds damaging enemies that it touches, during which time Fumiko can't use the shiki attack again. Shiki-2 is the same general idea, with five smaller missile attacks instead of one big one. This shiki is by far the hardest to use to collect points. Fumiko can only fire it once every five seconds or so, it only hits a small amount of the screen, and it's very perilous to use as you can't move to dodge enemy shots while aiming the attack. Shiki-2 hits more area to kill a few more enemies for more points, but it's still not easy to use and you'll often find yourself resorting to her primary attack simply to survive. Fumiko's only, but excellent, strength is in dealing damage to bosses quickly. While the explosion from the missile attack is lingering to damage a boss, she can *also* use the primary attack to deal damage. This double-barreled damage dealing can take out many boss lifebars before they even start shooting their bullet patterns. The trick to using either of her shiki attacks is to be able to look ahead. Position yourself *ahead* of a wave of bullets so that you'll pass through a gap when it gets to you, and use that time to charge and aim the shiki. Good spots to practice this are on the last lifebar of the 1-2 boss and the third lifebar of the 2-1 boss. When you use the shiki attack, an icon of a character that we can only call "Space Butler" pops in on the top corner of the screen. He occasionally pops up in different goofy outfits, which can be very distracting as you try to aim the shiki. On the character select screen, if you highlight Fumiko on Shiki-2 and press Right again, it will change to Chibi Fumiko instead. This version of the character deals even more damage with the shiki attack, although less damage with the primary. The game maintains separate high-score tables for the Chibi version of Fumiko. 4.5 Kim de John A swordsman, presumably Korean. This is an excellent character for beginners. He's the easiest character with whom to beat the game, because of his very versatile primary attack and extremely powerful shiki-2 attack. Primary Shot: [****-] ([****+] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [***+-] Speed : [****-] ([+----] when using shiki-1, [**---] with shiki-2) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [****-] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [**---] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [****-] Overall with Shiki-1: [****-] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [****-] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [*****]! Shiki-2 Score Potential: [****+] Overall with Shiki-2: [*****]! Kim's primary attack consists of a standard forward shot, plus several homing shots that automatically seek and hit enemies. Using this attack, it is *very* easy to clear large swaths of stages, killing many enemies before they even get to shoot. It's fairly good against bosses as well, as the homing shots will always hit the boss regardless of where you are. His bomb is tricky to use, but fairly powerful once you get the hang of it. He shoots out several missiles that converge directly above him about half the screen height away. These missiles do *not* home in on enemies, although it sort of looks like they do. If you're in the right place when the bomb is launched, it will deal tremendous damage to the target; if you're not, it'll deal very little damage. Kim's shiki attacks are long swords. Shiki-1 is three swords spaced around him at intervals, which rotate as he moves. They deal good damage to enemies, and work well while allowing Kim to scratch near bullets for 8x scores. Against bosses, it can be hard to line up a sword to do damage well. But his shiki-2 is a nearly unstoppable force against bosses. Shiki-2 is two swords that can be held at any angle from Kim, and swing up and down as he moves up and down. He can hold the two swords straight out in front of him to deal *massive* damage to any boss that gets in the way. Both shiki attacks seem to deal more damage when the middle of the sword blade is in contact with the enemy, and less with just the sword tip. Kim moves extremely slowly when using the three-sword version of his shiki, but the two-sword version allows him average speed. With the combination of the homing primary attack, extremely powerful Shiki-2 attack, and decent bombs, Kim is arguably the best character in the game. He simply doesn't have any weaknesses. And he's just /cool/ - he's got a guitar case that doubles as a machine gun. 4.6 Niigi G.B. ("Gorgeous Blue") The "magical girl" of the game, she carries a cat that absorbs and reflects bullets. Like Kim, she's both easy to use and quite powerful. Primary Shot: [**---] ([***--] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [*****]! Speed : [*----] ([*+---] when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [*****]! Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [****-] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [**---] Overall with Shiki-1: [*****] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [****+] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [***--] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [***+-] Overall with Shiki-2: [****-] Niigi has two small orbs that fly around with her. Her primary attack is made up of white rings shot from each those orbs and from Niigi herself. This attack covers a decent amount of the screen, but isn't very powerful. Like Kohtaro and Sayo, she can only have a certain number of shots on the screen at once, so she does more damage over time if she's closer to her target. She can have a hard time shooting specific targets (like the wall-balls of the 4-1 boss) because her shots are so large that they hit other things. Hyperfire boosts her damage reasonably well, but the attack still isn't spectacular. Her bomb is the most powerful in the game. When you use it, she stops moving and shoots out a LONG stream of powerful shots that lasts for nearly ten seconds, long enough to kill almost any boss. As if that's not enough, while she's shooting that, your control pad AIMS the shots! You can almost consider each of her bombs a "get out of boss free" card. :) If you pause the game while shooting a bomb, you can see that her shots are actually flaming ballpoint pens. Magical schoolgirl, indeed. But where Niigi really shines is her shiki attacks, which are shields that ABSORB and cancel enemy bullets, and re-fire them back at enemies, automatically targeting anything on the screen. Both Shiki shields are immensely powerful. Either can damage enemies by contacting them, dealing about as much damage as her primary shot - and also absorbs and reflects bullets on top of that. Combine this damage capability with her amazing defensive ability, and you have one heck of a powerful character. Shiki-1 is a blue shield held out in front of her. When used, it lasts for up to about four seconds, and automatically cancels itself if held longer than that. The shield can absorb an unlimited amount of bullets during this time. Shiki-2 is a purple orb rather than a blue shield. It's somewhat smaller than the Shiki-1 shield, and instead of staying above Niigi, it rotates around her to point in the direction that she moves in. Also, it's limited by the number of bullets it can absorb, not by time. It's a bit harder to control than the first version, and leads to lots of "Oops!" moments when you get hit trying to absorb particular bullets. For both shikis, the game slowly draws an orange circle around Niigi as a visual indication of the time remaining for shiki-1 or bullet capacity remaining for shiki-2. Very important to winning with Niigi is the "swath" technique. Activate the shiki, and charge upwards through all incoming bullets, leaving a trail of empty space. When the shield runs out, then retreat through the space you left, until you get the shield up again. This is easier with shiki-1 (because it's wider), although shiki-2 can cut a swath in any direction, not just upwards. Niigi does have weaknesses: she's slow (but actually seems to speed up slightly when using shiki), and she's not great at going for score. When your shiki attack involves absorbing all the bullets around you, it's hard to keep scratching against bullets for high TBS. :) Shiki-2 has greater score potential because you can selectively absorb bullets leaving some to scratch against. And in Extreme mode with all the extra bullets flying around, this character is absolutely indispensable. 4.7 Roger Sasuke He's a ninja. The name Sasuke is likely a reference to the Japanese TV show called Naruto. Primary Shot: [***--] ([****+] with hyperfire) Bomb Power : [****-] Speed : [*****] ([***--] when using shiki attack) Shiki-1 Power on Stages: [***--] Shiki-1 Power on Bosses: [*****] Shiki-1 Score Potential: [*+---] Overall with Shiki-1: [****-] Shiki-2 Power on Stages: [**---] Shiki-2 Power on Bosses: [***--] Shiki-2 Score Potential: [***--] Overall with Shiki-2: [**+--] Roger's primary attack is a stream of ninja stars shot directly in front of him. They move very fast and deal decent damage, but are lacking in screen coverage. His hyperfire, though, is almost the best in the game, behind only Sayo Yuki. Like the center stream of Sayo's cards, the powered-up ninja stars do not get stopped by obstacles and continue to move through walls and targets dealing additional damage. Roger's bomb is also quite good: he starts spinning around while invulnerable for several seconds, and deals heavy damage to anything he contacts. He's also the fastest character in the game, and remains fairly fast even when using the shiki. His Shiki-1 attack is very powerful; it's right up there with Fumiko-1 and Kim-2 in damage, though is a bit harder to use because it takes a while to charge up. When you hold the attack button, Roger summons a fairy-like sprite that creates floating green bubbles that float in front of him. These bubbles can be released in any direction by holding the directional pad while releasing the button. When they hit something, they explode, and the explosions remain in place dealing damage for a few seconds. If you release this attack close to a boss so that all the shots hit it, *massive* damage will be dealt. It's hard to get good screen coverage to kill lots of enemies during stages, so his scores won't be too high, but he makes up for that with his boss damaging power. His Shiki-2 attack isn't very good, though. The bubbles charge up as with Shiki-1, but instead of holding them to release at a target, they float away a small distance and explode on their own. This covers a bit more space than Shiki-1 and can lead to higher scores by making more enemy kills, but it's much harder to deal good damage to bosses with it. With Shiki-1, Roger is prone to accidentally releasing his shots in the wrong direction if you're trying to dodge while shooting, which is always embarrassing. :) ===================================================================== 5. STAGES AND BOSSES ===================================================================== 5.0 General Info This is a guide to all of the stages and bosses in the game. It's geared mostly towards survivalist play (completing the game on one credit), but has a few notes about scoring. This isn't meant to be a guide to ultimate scores; for that, you'll probably want to find a video guide such as the Shikigami Appreciate DVD on sale at lik-sang and other places. No, I do not have a source for videos of this game, and I do not make my own. All the stages last for a specific amount of time. In all stages except 3-1, enemy groups appear when each previous enemy group is killed or leaves the screen. So the faster you kill enemies, the more enemies you'll get before the stage ends. Conversely, you may wish to *delay* killing certain enemies, to delay and/or avoid certain difficult enemy attacks at the end of a stage, like on 4-2 and 5-1. Against many bosses, the best strategy is generally to use the primary attack most of the time (with hyperfire if possible), switching to the shiki attack briefly to deliver the killing blow to each lifebar so you can collect all the coins. Kim-2 and Roger-1 will want to use the heavy damage of their shiki attacks most or all of the time; other characters (especially Kohtaro and Sayo) can deal better damage with their primary. All boss fights have a timer displayed on the left side of the screen that counts down to zero. If the timer reaches zero, the boss fight does *not* end immediately. Rather, a number of indestructible, dangerous, red death's-heads begin to appear and float around the screen to make your job much harder. About a minute after the timer reaches zero, the boss fight will end anyway. If you run out of lives and continue, the death's-heads disappear for the remainder of the fight. 5.1 Stage 1-1 Not much to say about this stage. For the first few groups of enemies that don't shoot bullets, you can still raise the TBS multiplier by moving up near them. Practice using your shiki attack and hitting enemies with it while scratching against enemy bullets; a good plan is to let the planes shoot their green bullets and hug them all the way down the screen while killing enemies. Like most stages, this stage has several additional groups of enemies that will appear at the end, based on how fast you kill the earlier parts of the stage. After the part when about fifty small enemies dive straight at your ship, if you were fast enough on the stage up to this point, there are two wide waves of small enemies that attack, shooting red bullets. After *those*, a number of medium-sized ships will continuously appear one at a time, until it's time for the boss to appear. Boss: Garum This boss is very easy to kill with any character. For extra points, you can destroy its four "claws", and also two small guns that are its "ears" before actually killing the boss. 5.2 Stage 1-2 This stage is also very straightforward. Again, killing enemies fast will result in some extra enemies appearing at the end of the stage. Boss: Arala Cran Her first lifebar segment is easy; just dodge and shoot. Sayo and Niigi can absorb all of her shots. For the second bar, she tosses out several orbs around her. If you're playing the game for score, you can kill those orbs, and keep waiting until Arala throws more and keep killing them. The third lifebar is only slightly harder; remember that any shot of yours destroys the puffy red bullets, leaving you space to move through. 5.3 Stage 2-1 Another easy trip. By now, you should be getting adept at finding a green bullet and hugging it all the way down the screen to rack up x8 scores. Boss: Nornen Again, easy patterns to dodge. The only hard one is its third lifebar, when it locks on to your character and fires a spray of lasers. Make sure to MOVE after it locks on before it does this. The trick to dodging the green spray pattern in the fourth lifebar is to only look at the left-side shots. The right-side shots follow each other in straight lines. (Set the game to 50% bullet speed and you can see this quite clearly.) During the fourth lifebar - only the fourth lifebar, as far as I can tell - you can blow off some pieces of the boss for extra points. Hyuga is the character best capable of doing this, by holding out the energy balls before the boss appears. 5.4 Stage 2-2 The dodging starts to get a little tougher in this stage; characters with short-range Shikis (Sayo, Kim) may start to find themselves getting pushed towards the bottom of the screen instead of staying up top to kill everything as it appears. Boss: Anolegos Dundeon On all of his lifebars, all of the balls that whirl around are destroyable if you can deal enough damage. Any of the patterns can be milked for score by repeatedly letting him throw more orbs for you to destroy. On the second pattern of the first lifebar, when he throws an orb directly downward at you, dodge to the LEFT and UPWARDS. If you stay on the bottom, you can get trapped; and after attacking you the orb orbits off to the right, so you want to stay on the left side. The second lifebar will introduce you to an important trick for fighting bosses, which I call the buzz-hyperfire trick. You can go right up to Anolegos before he starts shooting, and buzz/scratch ON HIM to activate hyperfire! A few characters (Sayo especially, Roger as well, and Fumiko if you use both her shiki and this trick) can kill Anolegos before he starts shooting at all. Once he starts shooting, you'll have to retreat and just dodge as usual. If possible, try to make the kill while he's near one side of the screen. If you do, you'll get extra time to start dealing damage to his third lifebar while he slowly returns to the center of the screen. Anolegos Dundeon's third lifebar involves the first seriously hard attack pattern to dodge. He throws out six orbs across the entire screen, each of which shoots several streams of shots. On this pattern, you need to first look at the balls to dodge them, then find a safe spot between the streams of bullets. The trick is to get *off* the bottom of the screen. If you're all the way at the bottom, you'll still be dodging the last bullets of one volley when the boss shoots the next wave of balls, and you'll get killed. You have to look ahead to find a safe spot in the two-dimensional space of bullets that you can move *upwards* into. Just using a bomb is entirely acceptable here, especially if your score is close to an extra-life number when you'll get the bomb back anyway. 5.5 Stage 3-1 This stage may possibly inspire the most complaints of any stage in any shooter ever. "Why is the 3-1 stage the hardest in the game?" "How do I dodge those frickin walls?" "How on earth do you dodge all those extra shots in Extreme mode?!" Well, I can't really help you with the last one, but I can get through it in normal mode without getting hit or bombing about 80% of the time. :) Probably the most important piece of advice is to stay *off* the bottom of the screen. Many of the bullet patterns in the stage are set up to converge and trap you if you're staying at the bottom. The next most important piece of advice is to learn a safe route and stick with it. These routes vary by character, based on what they're able to kill. For example, consider the second place where you have a choice of routes, where there's three different routes with a large enemy blocking each. If your character can take the leftmost path but *also* kill the large enemy blocking the middle path, the leftmost route becomes very free of bullets and easy to get through. Kohtaro, Fumiko, and Kim can usually do this. Other characters will have to take a different route; the easiest is to take the middle path and get UP through the passage before it gets clogged with bullets. Here's how to deal with the last section, after the parting walls. There's a narrow path to the left and a large space full of small purple-shooting enemies to the right, before the sliding walls. The best way I've found to do this is to take the left path, killing the large enemies there, then jump over into the right-side path when you get to the opening. To do this, you have to stay *up* as far as you can in the left path, to lure the purple-shooting enemies into shooting farther upwards. (If you stay down, they'll trap you in the corner.) Getting over to the right side is very important to get through the sliding
walls.  The trick *here* is to start at the right side and get through them
FAST, before the enemies appear and start filling up the space with bullets.
It definitely takes practice.  If you try to start the sliding walls from the
left, you'll most likely get crushed against the side of the screen.

Boss: Freyr

This boss is a series of cubes or boxes, which appear in rows, four across the
screen (three across in Easy mode.)  When you kill any box, boxes following it
tumble downwards to fill in the empty spaces.  Every 20 seconds or so, the
entire formation of boxes drops down by a row.

To kill the white boxes, you must use your primary weapon.  Red boxes can only
be destroyed by the Shiki weapon.  (Bombs don't kill any boxes.)  Gold boxes
can't be destroyed by you at all.  When any row is full of identical boxes all
of one color, they all explode; this is the only way to destroy the golds.

To get the most points in this section, you'll want to kill the red boxes with
the shiki attack, letting the white boxes explode on their own when they line
up.  If you kill a white box with your primary weapon, the coins float out as
usual; if four white boxes blow themselves up, you get to auto-collect the
coins as if you used the Shiki weapon.

It's possible to get 2,000 or more x8 coins just from this boss alone, if you
use the above strategy, scratching up against bullets the whole time.  If
there aren't any bullets on the screen, you can move up between rows of boxes
to scratch against them instead.


5.6 Stage 3-2

This stage is a bit of a relief after the chaos of 3-1.  There are lots of
laser-shooting enemies, but they're easy to kill.  Learn the patterns as to
where they appear, and learn which ones you need to kill fast to ensure
maneuvering room and which ones you can leave for your shiki attack to kill as
possible.  Killing all the stage enemies quickly will cause piles of extra
small enemies to appear for you to kill.

Two specific notes: When four laser boats appear with one at each corner of
your screen, kill the top-left or bottom-right one (whichever you can hit more
easily with your shiki) to get more maneuvering room.  And when four
horizontally-shooting laser attackers appear, you can stay on the bottom of
the screen and the lasers won't hit you.

If playing with Kohtaro Kuga, it's this stage where you may start to notice
his ghost having trouble dealing enough damage to kill everything on the
screen quickly.


Boss: Fai Aja and Say Aja, aka the "Sword Brothers"

This pair of enemies shares a common lifebar; damaging either reduces the
lifebar.  If you've got an attack that can hit both of them at the same time
(such as Fumiko's shiki or Kim's sword), you'll do double damage.  Other than
those, you'll probably want to use primary hyperfire most of the time for this
fight, especially with Sayo.

I can't say much about their first lifebar attack except the usual: just
dodge.  The second version of the pattern (big waves of yellow followed by
streams of green) is actually easier to dodge than the first.  All those
greens aim at your current location, so just move a bit in any direction -
find a crack between the yellow bullets - and the greens will all miss you.
Niigi of course can have a field day absorbing and reflecting the greens.

Second lifebar: One of the sword brothers stays in the middle, shooting lasers
at angles around the screen; the other orbits around while firing lots of
shots.  Get yourself in the middle, and when you see the first laser appear,
get on the side *behind* its movement.  Keep doing that whenever a new laser
appears; and when you see or sense that a laser is about to run out, move
towards its location.  It is possible to get caught between two overlapping
lasers with no way out; you'll have to either die or bomb if that happens.
Whatever happens, you'll be hyperfiring almost constantly during this pattern.

Third lifebar: The brothers taunt you for quite a while (about 10 seconds),
then one raises its sword and lunges at you.  Before that, stay in the middle
shooting them (you can use the buzz-hyperfire trick as with Anolegos.)  Kim's
sword, Fumiko's missiles, Sayo's hypershot, and Roger's hypershot can hit both
of them to do double damage.  When you see the guy with the blue sword twitch,
jump sideways as he stabs at you, circle around him, and stay in the middle
shooting the top brother until they're finished off.

Fourth lifebar: My strategy is usually to just bomb. :)  If you don't want to
do that, circle around clockwise between two rows of purple shots, dodging the
yellows as you go.  Stay in the middle of the screen; don't try to circle
around between the outermost rows of purple.

When the fourth lifebar is almost gone, the brothers will rush to the middle
of the screen and stab each other.  Watch out, as they can crash into you
while moving; get away from them after they stop shooting the previous
pattern.  They only need a very small amount of damage to be destroyed now, so
try to set up to hit them with your shiki while at x8 TBS.


5.7 Stage 4-1

Now it gets hard.  Players playing for survival, to win on one credit, will
most probably want to shift from the shiki attack and start using the primary
attack to kill most enemies (except for Niigi.)  Players that continue to play
for score with the shiki: good luck.  :)

If there's any trick to this stage, it's to be ready for the giant enemies
that shoot the big green sprays, and kill them FAST before they flood the
screen.  There's four of them, in a right-left-right-left sequence.

For the part where small enemies flood the screen with vertical green bullets,
along with planes swooping in firing purple spreads, the trick is to stay at
the bottom as long as you can, then dodge *upwards* into clear space.

The last tip is for the section when a dozen large enemies appear at once,
with columns of enemies at each side shooting sprays of green and a few in the
middle shooting streams of purple.  Stay in the horizontal center of the
screen until the purples shoot.  Then dodge sideways through one spray of
green, and reverse course to dodge through the other spray.

Other than that, just focus on your character and dodge.

Boss: Mimir ("Balls to the Wall")

When this boss fight starts, the walls start closing in.  To move them back
out, you need to deal damage to the balls that hold the walls.  It is
worthwhile to do that; the couple seconds spent not damaging the boss are more
than made up for by having triple the maneuvering room.  Fortunately, crashing
your character into the walls doesn't kill you; it just blocks your movement.

Strategies for this boss vary greatly by character.

Kohtaro needs to move around the screen a lot to be able to shoot and hold out
both balls.  He'll take some time to win, as he can't effectively damage both
the balls and the boss at the same time, and his shiki is useless.  Dodge a
lot and be ready to bomb.

Sayo owns Mimir: any use of her hyperfire will smack the balls to the outside
and keep them pinned there, while still dealing heavy damage to the boss.

Hyuga is quirky.  If you hold out the energy balls before the boss appears,
you can lock one onto each of the wall-balls and one onto the boss core.
You'll be damaging the boss very slowly, but you'll have plenty of space to
dodge.  After that first pattern, it gets harder, as his weird primary is hard
to use to hit the wall-balls, and you can't lock your balls onto both wall-
balls at the same time anymore.  Dodge a lot and be ready to bomb - his bomb
is actually pretty decent here for dealing damage as he'll attack the balls
instead of jumping out into space.

Fumiko's aimable shot is very useful; she can spray shots at the balls to keep
them pushed outward inbetween shiki shots at the boss.

Kim can generally keep the walls at bay by just moving around a lot; his
homing shots will hit the balls.  He'll damage the boss slowly but reliably.
Kim-2 can also try to hold out his swords to hit both balls simultaneously.

Niigi has a unique approach.  Her primary shot actually can't hit the balls
when they're all the way in, and her reflected bullets won't aim for the balls
either.  She seems to be best off just letting the walls close in, and using
the swath technique with the shield in the enclosed space.

Roger can take a variety of approaches.  My favorite is to use the shiki,
firing diagonal shots with it so that some hit Mimir and some hit the ball on
the opposite side from where you are.  Use his hyperfire to deal heavy damage
to the boss when you've got an opening to do so.

Mimir's first lifebar starts with a bunch of big yellow shots that are easily
dodgeable.  Use this time to shoot the balls and push them all the way out.
The attack then shifts to a combination of purple shots and yellow rings.  The
purple shots aim for your position, so just dodge slightly in any direction
and they'll miss.  If the walls are all the way out, the the yellow rings
won't cross the vertical centerline of the screen in the top half of the
screen; if you stay in the upper center, all the rings will miss and you can
just move up and down to dodge the purples.

The second lifebar starts with a big purple spray.  Sweep across the width of
the screen dodging between the gaps shooting whatever you can (you'll be
hyperfiring), and don't get caught at the bottom of the screen or in a corner.
Next, Mimir shoots large waves of fire down the walls; at this point, it's
VERY important to have the walls pushed out or the firewalls will trap and
kill you.  The balls fire a standard green spray during this although
sometimes they don't; I'm not sure exactly when that happens, but it seems
that they don't shoot if you've dealt a lot of damage to the balls.  Also,
Mimir also continues to shoot some big yellow shots; the launchers for those
can be destroyed independently.

I've found that the best way to deal with this attack is to MOVE a lot,
sweeping around the screen.  Keep pressure on both balls to keep the walls out
and give yourself room; many times you can swing all the way around the edge
of a purple spray rather than jumping through it.  Do NOT get caught at the
bottom of the screen, whatever you do.

I call the third lifebar attack "Cheerios from Hell".  :)   Push out the walls
to give yourself space, and just deal damage however you can.  Staying in the
horizontal center of the screen can work for quite a while, at least until the
screen fills up with Cheerios.  If you're not in the horizontal center, try to
dodge by jumping past one row of Cheerios at a time instead of getting
surrounded.

If you can keep the walls all the way out (Kim-2, Sayo), during the third
lifebar, there's a safe spot in the center just below the boss core, where the
Cheerios will be down past you by the time they bounce off the walls and
return, and thus won't hit you.

During all three lifebars, there are several pieces of the boss around the
core that are destroyable for extra coins.  You can actually get up to about
800 coins here.


5.8 Stage 4-2

Once again, all you have to do is dodge millions of bullets; there aren't any
real tricks.  When the big enemy shooting double-lasers appears, you can
survive by staying dead-center (pardon the expression) between them.

Beginners or survival players may want to *avoid* shooting certain enemies,
especially the last couple of laser ships.  The sooner you kill them, the
sooner will begin the last barrage, with zillions of small enemies flooding
you in purple shots.  If you avoid killing earlier enemies quickly, that will
*delay* the appearance of the purple flood and the stage will probably end
before it gets really hard.  (If you're playing for max score, you'll need to
kill everything else quickly and meet this threat head-on.)

If you must dodge it, the trick is the same as in 4-1; get out of the center
of the screen and dodge sideways so that you're only dodging half of the
barrage at a time, then reverse course and dodge the other half.

Boss: Yukari Horiguchi ("Card Lady")

Lifebar 1: No real tricks, just dodge.  Stay off the bottom of the screen or
the expanding flower-patterns will nail you.  If your character's shiki tends
to damage the cards instead of Yukari (such as Kohtaro and Niigi), use
primary/ hyperfire instead.  If she finishes the first pattern with the
flowery shots and goes into the second pattern with large fast yellow shots,
good luck.  I believe the cards in this pattern are indestructible.

Lifebar 2: There's a BIG trick for this one, same as for Anolegos Dundeon's
second lifebar.  Immediately after the first lifebar ends, go right up to
Yukari and buzz/scratch ON HER to activate hyperfire.  On normal difficulty,
Sayo's hyperfire can kill Yukari before she starts shooting at all!  So can
Fumiko and Roger by mixing shiki damage with their hyperfire, and the other
characters can deal lots of damage as well. You can move your character's
hitbox about 4 pixels up onto the bottom of Yukari's dress without getting
hit.

If you must actually fight against this pattern of Yukari's (on harder
difficulty, or if your character can't kill with just the buzz-hyperfire
trick), you're in for some tough time.  Note that you can use the buzz-
hyperfire trick to start, then retreat between the front line of cards just
before everything starts shooting.

If you're Kohtaro Kuga or Gennojo Hyuga, activate your shiki and lock it onto
Yukari before you retreat between the cards.  Anyone else will have to shoot
through a wall of cards before your shots can reach Yukari.  Then you have to
dodge in a very cramped space between streams of bullets - the only trick to
that is to look far ahead and plan your path to dodge the isolated shots.

Score-attacking players can milk this pattern as long as possible, repeatedly
kill cards for extra points.

After a while, Yukari will switch to another pattern of bullets, with giant
waves of green and yellow bullets.  I don't really have any tips for this
other than to kill Yukari before she gets this far.

Lifebar 3: Again, many characters can make the kill with just the buzz-
hyperfire trick.  If you're all the way up against Yukari, the orbiting card
won't hit you and you can stay there until the meteors come.

There isn't any trick to dodging the meteor shower; you just need skill.  Like
the previous pattern, Kuga and Hyuga can lock their shikis on to Yukari to
keep dealing damage while you dodge.  If you survive the meteor shower and
Yukari still isn't dead, you can use the buzz-hyperfire trick again for a
short time while she sets up her next pattern.  Once the cards start firing
lasers, stay in the exact center of the screen where you can shoot Yukari and
the lasers won't hit you.  Takes nerves of steel or a bomb, but it's doable.


5.9 Stage 5-1

Avoid the first wave by staying on one side of the screen to lure bullets that
way, then loop around to the other side and upwards.

In the next section, the enemies on the left side shoot green and the right-
siders shoot purple.  Concentrate on one group to kill so that you're only
dodging one type of bullets.  As you emerge from this bullet flood, try to be
on the left side of the screen.

Two gigantic brains will float up and each launch a volley of homing lasers at
you.  You must start on the left, because the right one fires first, and you
want more space between you and the lasers..  Start somewhere below the left
brain, and move in a semicircle from there to the exact bottom center of the
screen (you want to get here after the first volley of lasers has passed but
before the second) to a spot on the right opposite from where you started.

This is hard to describe in text, but once you get it, you'll get it.  The
idea is to always be moving at a right-angle in relation to the incoming
lasers.  Slow Niigi needs to time it *perfectly* to dodge this and should
probably just use a bomb.  In two-player mode, both players need to move along
the same pattern in synchronization to avoid getting hit; just using a bomb is
greatly recommended.

Anyway, after that, two indestructible laser guns will appear and shoot lasers
while small enemies fly up each side at high speed.  Each enemy in these
streams will fire shots when it gets halfway up the screen.  Do whatever you
can to stop one of these streams before they shoot to keep the number of
bullets onscreen manageable.  If you scratch up against a laser, your
hyperfire can destroy the stream of enemies on that side before they shoot.
(Fumiko needs to aim her shot sideways, and Niigi needs to align one of her
primary orbs into the channel.  Roger and Kuga need to get extremely close to
the laser, but it is doable by every character.)  And Kim-2 can stop *both*
streams by staying in the middle and holding his swords sideways.  Eventually,
bullets from around the screen will converge in on you; if possible, try to
cross the screen and do the same thing to the other side for a little while.

Once past that, three more big enemies will float in, firing big purple
streams and waves of yellow and green shots.  If you have a heavy-damage shiki
that can kill these (Roger is ideal, Fumiko if you're good), use it; otherwise
bomb or dodge.  Survivalist players will want to *avoid* killing the third one
of these, to delay the final barrage at the end of the stage.

Don't worry much about the laser shooters that appear next; the purple floods
will restrain your movement enough that you won't be bumping into lasers
anyway.  The final barrage will appear, based on how fast you killed earlier
waves of enemies (especially the three big floaters); good luck.

Boss: Shintaro Kuga

There's probably some relation between this boss and the player character
Kohtaro Kuga, but darned if I have any idea what it is. :)  Anyway, this boss
attacks with a lot of the attacks of the player characters.  Niigi can use her
swath technique to great effect against all of Shintaro Kuga's attacks.

Lifebar 1: He starts with a barrage that's very similar to (although much
larger than) Roger's shiki-1 attack.  The way to dodge it is to stay on one
side of the screen; when you hear the slurping noise it means the boss has
locked on to you and now's the time to MOVE out of the way.

After four barrages of this, Shintaro throws out a bunch of energy balls like
Hyuga's shiki attack, except that there's millions of small purple shots
around as well.  This just requires twitch skill to dodge, or a bomb if
necessary.

Lifebar 2: He fires wide spreads of cards, like Sayo's primary attack, with
volleys of purple shots mixed in as well.  The only trick is to be aware that
all the purple shots aim exactly for your location; if you dodge sideways,
they'll all miss.

After a while of this, he'll move down the screen and send out an explosion of
fast yellow shots.  Shintaro is INVULNERABLE while doing this - it's as if
he's using a bomb.  This is very hard to dodge and you may just want to use a
bomb yourself.  To dodge this, wait until he starts moving downwards, then get
yourself *upwards* into a top corner farther away from the explosion.

Then he'll start an attack that resembles Kim's primary attack.  A column of
shots fires down the center of the screen at you, while a number of balls (not
homing, thankfully) fly out to the sides and cross back across the middle.
Characters with diagonal attacks (Fumiko's primary, Roger's shiki, maybe Kim's
primary homing) can try to get out of the center and over to the sides where
there's more space to dodge.  If your character can't attack from the side,
you'll have to stay in the middle and dodge vertically.

Lifebar 3: This sort of resembles Fumiko's and Kohtaro's primary attack.  All
you can do is look very closely for paths between the shots while hyperfiring.

Lifebar 4: Shintaro will crazy-go-nuts.  I just bomb.  If you do want to try
dodging, one tip is that the floating green orbs (that shoot the purple shots)
don't actually hurt you themselves.


5.10 Stage 5-2

There is no stage for 5-2, just a boss.

Boss: World Order

Against this boss, if you're playing for survival, feel free to use all your
bombs.  There are six lifebars, but each is fairly short, and any character's
bomb will destroy at least half of a lifebar.  Every pattern after the first
is dense enough that you'll be hyperfiring constantly.

Lifebar 1: A standard spread of green shots, along with purples that aim at
you.  Try to stay in the middle using hyperfire.  If you get pushed out of the
middle, wait for a break in the purples and get back in.

Lifebar 2: Lots of round purple shots.  Stay towards the bottom of the screen
where the spaces between shots are larger.  Focus on your character's hitbox;
I can almost always finish this one without getting hit.

Lifebar 3: Orbs that track you around the screen and leave a trail of diamonds
behind them.  There is a trick to this pattern: the orbs have a certain
turning radius, so if you jump in next to an orb just right, you can get it to
circle around you endlessly while you remain motionless and hyperfiring.
Another orb will soon come to chase you out of there, but it's useful for a
while.  Another trick for this pattern is to know that you can safely circle
up *behind* the boss core.  (Really useful if you can damage it from there,
like with the shiki of Kim or Roger or Fumiko.)

Lifebar 4: An insane circular spray of green shots, along with walls that
circle around that will kill you if touched.  Again, there's no tricks other
than looking ahead and planning a path (unless you're Niigi and using the
swath technique.)

Lifebar 5: Diamond-shaped objects coming from all sides of you.  This is
actually easier than it looks, as the hit area of all the diamonds is quite
small.  It's quite similar to this boss's second lifebar, in fact.  If your
character can attack from the bottom corner (Fumiko's and Kim's primaries,
Roger's shiki-1), you can go there, as then you'll have to dodge shots from
only one side instead of both.

Lifebar 6: World Order goes nuts with a circular spray of green and purple
bullets.  The best spot to be in is underneath the right side of the circle,
as that's where the shots are traveling vertically and are easiest to dodge.
If you have any bombs left, just use them.

And that's all.  Now try it on a harder difficulty. :)


=====================================================================
CREDITS
=====================================================================
Written by Erik Mooney, erik [at] dos486 [dot] com

Contributions and being my two-player partners:
Jason Moiron, jmoiron [at] stevens [dot] edu
Dev Ramudit, dramudit [at] stevens [dot] edu