So I got Espgaluda II yesterday and I’ve been playing the crap out of it. I finally have a copy (as opposed to a setup at a con or a candycab), thus giving me time to learn its scoring systems.

When I learn scoring systems that seem fascinating to me, I try not to read strategy guides too much, instead only using them to give myself some direction as to how to tackle playing for score, then I dive into the game and experiment to see which strategies will milk me the highest scores. This is what I know (or at least think I know) thus far:

Xbox 360:

  • Killing enemies in Kakusei Shikai mode cancels their bullets and produces gold from the bullets.
  • In Zesshikai mode, enemies release more bullets, and will release suicide bullets upon death.
  • When killing an enemy in Zesshikai, suicide bullets of other enemies will cancel out. Also point-milking ensues.
  • In Kakusei Shikai Over, enemy bullets turn red and go faster, and killing enemies releases small amounts of gold.

Black Label:

  • Killing an enemy in normal mode cancels its bullets and turns them to gold.
  • In Kakusei Shikai, killing an enemy releases suicide bullets.
  • When killing an enemy in normal mode, suicide bullets of other enemes cancel out, also hueg numbers.

I’ll post my (mostly) self-done analyses of Arrange and Omake later. For now I wanna focus on 360 and BL.

I should probably focus on surviving as well; it would be good to actually see stages 4, 5, and 6 instead of losing 3 lives in 10 seconds trying to crank out 15 million points in that time interval.