You shouldn't be concerned with planning ahead and taking safe routes
Yeah, never planned myself, was busy trying to integrate visual information on where the tunnel is (which is why I assumed that this was my mistake).
Pay attention to where the red butterflies are as they are usually the only thing that's really dangerous on those waves.
Personally, that's was my problem. Later on I have incredible difficulty to just see them (and yes, I looked for them). Sometimes I got hit and I didn't even know that one of those was creeping up on me. The decreasing size of the tunnel doesn't make it easier to react to the ones I actually spotted before they hit me.
Not that I didn't fuck it up at times but most of my deaths where to the fast red barrages.
Funny that, I fell more and more victim to singular red bullets as it went on while the fast red barrage just seemed like little extra.
Well, in the past I jokingly called myself the "bullet seeker, if there is just one bullet on the screen I might hit it!". Guess my true nature reappeared.
... oh well, glad it's done.
I also don't like how those red butterflies keep hiding behind the rest - since they're clearly supposed to be more dangerous than the ones traveling in simple vertical trajectories, them being concealed like that kinda falls under bad design, I think.
Definitely agreed. The last few waves are just a huge pile of sprites overlapping each other and with some luck you might see one (or more, they love teaming up on you) that's heading straight for you. If not - oh well, you 'just' need to go through the whole card again.
Considering that ZUN dropped one part of the pattern at about 30 seconds left (the blue/violet bullets accompanying the red fast barrage) he probably should've dropped the bullets in hiding instead. Way less aggravating and keeping the fast pace of the rest of the card.
That always felt weird and seemed like a bug when I got that far the first time.