I just tried MSD again. I had forgotten how addictive it is to play a game that rewards you for playing like a raving lunatic psycho and gives you a shot type that lets you come in like a wrecking ball.
There are some things you may not know already, so I'll point them out now.
*The game has no native BGMs. If you hear music, that's because you're getting the previous owner's secondhand preferences. You can find the BGM folder easily enough and figure out how to swap in and properly name things.
*All shot types share the same unfocused bomb, which is a basic screen clear with meh damage. Focused bombs are unique to the shot type.
*MarisaA is the homing shot type with low firepower. Her bomb is a long-lasting shield that stays in place and munches bullets. Note that your own invincibility frames end long before the bomb's effect ends, and that bomb-immune bullets kind of defeat the purpose.
*MarisaB is the standard forward-firing shot type for boring people. Her focused bomb has a narrow range.
*MarisaC is the best shot type in the history of best shot types. It does more damage than any other shot type if you can get both your forward shots and your point-blank lightning to latch onto something, but without the lightning her firepower lags behind the standard. Still, being able to kill things from any direction is really useful during stages. Her focused bomb is basically Master Spark.
*MarisaD has some weird lock-on thing going on. I forgot everything about it.
*In the Config menu you can select whether you want full autobombs, half autobombs, or no autobombs. With no autobombs you get bomb extends pretty frequently, but if you get hit, that's it. Half autobombs give you two bomb extends at a time at half the original frequency, and if you autobomb it costs two bomb stocks. Full autobombs use one bomb up every time you get hit, but you get four bomb extends at a quarter of the original frequency. So, it comes out to about the same number of bombs, but they come at less convenient intervals. Playing as MarisaC, I strongly recommend the full autobombs. The wiki disagrees with this, but I swear I remember verifying that bomb extends (with no autobombs) are at every 800 million points.
*With that said, you always want to use a not-an-autobomb if you have the option. The autobomb is basically a really short, really bad version of MarisA's focused bomb.
*Life extends occur at 1, 3, 6, 10, and 15 billion points (in the original game), and you may get the first four of those by the end of the game. You may not even get the fourth one unless you're totally styling on the game, although I'm open to being told I'm playing the game the wrong way.
*There are no spell card bonuses - the equivalents of spell cards in this game are named patterns the boss mixes in with regular patterns without fanfare (you can see the names during replays). You do get a score bonus dependent on time, though. What I'm saying is that in true CAVE fashion, you can bomb the attacks you hate without a twinge of guilt.
*Instead of point items, this game's enemies drop stars when defeated. Red stars are worth diddly while green stars are sweet. The color distribution of the star drops is dependent on how close you are to the enemy when you destroy them, and the maximum is really difficult to get, so get as close as you can.
*You get points very quickly when you point-blank medium-sized enemies or larger. Enemies do not have hurboxes, though of course they can fire bullets from the center of their bodies. This applies to bosses as well!
*Most large enemies (the ones with the larger spell circles) will not shoot if you are inside their spell circle. There are exceptions for some reason (like the ones in Stage 2) and any familiars they have absolutely will keep shooting.
*When you have 1000 charge, press C to use a hyper. This clears some bullets around you and causes enemies to drop vengebullets. Press C again to convert the vengebullets into super-sweet silver stars that are worth huge points. The vengebullets will wink out after a while if you don't clear them, so don't try to string them along for too long. Note that when your hyper ends, all vengebullets are converted to red stars, so cancel them before that happens.
*Stars and other means of getting points feed into your hyper meter. This means that you can get into some medium enemies' grills as they enter the screen, mooch some point-blank bonus, and then tap your new hyper to ignore all the bullets they may have just started shooting at you.
*Note that the silver stars from canceling vengebullets also feed into your hyper meter! If possible you want to cancel enough vengebullets just before your hyper ends that it puts you back at full charge.
*The midboss of Stage 3 is Star Sapphire. If you destroy all of her familiars before clearing her lifebar (she has two sets; make sure you get all of the first set before they fly away), she will drop a 1up. You want this 1up.
*The difficulty curve of this game is exponential. The first two stages are there to let you feel cool, the third stage is more challenging, the fourth stage stops messing around (especially the boss), and the fifth stage is both longer and harder than the rest of the game combined (maybe not literally true but it's close).
