Diadra empty, I don't get some things in this game, help!

[Ghaleon]

I tried fooling around with this game for a bit, and there are some things I just don't really understand.

What is the "diff" meter that shrinks after you take a hit? Are the amount of hits you can take before it takes away your life instead a fixed amount? I reached level 8 with 1 life bar left and forgot to buy "gard restore" or whatever they call it. But yet I was able to take a few hits on stage 8 anyway without getting owned. So does gard restore only restore your life, and not the hits you can take before it takes away lives?

Does anybody make use of a different shot type between normal and turbo? I understand it would be useful to be able to switch between 2 weapons sure. But when I tried it, it wasn't very useful at all, it would just stop shooting between turbo and non turbo for a second or two, making it so I end up doing a whole lot of nothing between boosts. Plus I don't like having the turbo button activated ALL THE TIME if I want a 2nd shot type, bleh.

Are you supposed to turbo thru walls of bullets? or is that considered bad somehow? Seems to me there are alot of times there is no way to dodge something, so you just turbo thru it. Is there a limit to how many times you can do this? Also, can anybody tell me what the options in the extra menu do? They aren't exactly self-explanitory.

Last, is there some secret to the boss that pwnt me? I just don't know how. On stage 8, I beat a cloaked figure boss (not much of one), then a giant multi-segmented dragon thingie, then some naked laidy-fairy thing with annoying yellow wisps that follow you around, then a buncha green crystals orbiting some kind of wisp. After killing all the green crystals, the wisp goes apeshit and just *SPEWS* bullets towards you really fast. There's no dodging it, there are no gaps between anything but the fringe bullets. But it's always towards you, even when turboing in circles around the boss I can't outrun them unless I'm so far away that I can't hit it with my own bullets, so I just had to bomb and hope it died before me, alas it did not.

Last, I thought I saw a thread about this game on these forums somewhere, but I can't seem to find them anymore, and the search function is now gone so... If someone has a link I'd appreciate it.

[beaver1231]

So does gard restore only restore your life, and not the hits you can take before it takes away lives?

I'm not sure if you know DS or not... but I'll do my best.

Gard restore actually does nothing to the health. It's about the shield. You should have noticed this by now, when you're hit, you lose the shield. Then it recharges. Note the large text "shield recovery" on the top right corner. As the shield takes another hit, it takes more time to recharge. Gard reset "resets" the charge time, making it useful for later stages when the game truly becomes bullet hell.

I can't answer most of your questions, maybe this play may help you out.
*WARNING* *EXTREME SPOILERS*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3L12obnP34

[Ghaleon]

I've seen that video before, and to be frank it made me not play the game to begin with. Looked like a buncha colors flying all over, and the palyer just flying thru absolutely everything. I thought, how is this danmaku dodging? It doesn't really show the player a whole lot IMO.

Anyway, I've figured some stuff out. I could have sworn that I've lost a life bar after taking a hit even when my shield had time to recover before, but I guess not.

I've 1cc'd the game's natural difficulty a few times, getting to be pretty easy now. But now the gameplay is starting to change. It's not really a shooter anymore. It's hard to explain, but pretty much the only time I take a  hit as the player is when I'm zooming around like a madman, and accidently stop in a bullet or something. I'll play it some more but it definately feels like the game gets less interesting gameplay-wise as you progress, and only APPEARS to get more impressive.