I was talking to someone in PM, they told me that they completed StB and DS in half a day and proceeded to ask me if I think DS is the apex of the genre. I wrote a pretty lengthy reply and since it read more like a blogpost I decided to put that reply here for anyone interested. Just contains some thoughts on my favorite games I guess!
"It's stupidly fast. The norm is to take 5-10 times as long at least,
and it's not unusual that people get stuck on some scenes for hours.
Like my first DS playthrough, I could beat most scenes right away or
almost right away, but I encountered a few that I'd get stuck on for
half an hour maybe. And in StB since I was more of a beginner back then
(Just had easy 1ccs in the bag) I encountered many scenes that took
hours to crack. A flawless speedrun through Shoot the Bullet is around
50 minutes, and in Double Spoiler around an hour. (Not sure of the
specifics since I don't speedrun them). But the games are designed to be
incredibly rough the first time around and yeah it's normal to have a
lot of trouble adjusting to the game play and figuring out or just
surviving the scenes. So many people hit a wall as early as level 5 in
StB. Honestly, you must be incredibly skilled and I hope to see your
gameplay in action sometime if you ever decide to (have decided to?)
play some shmup more seriously!
Of course, I could see how watching others would speed things up. I
mean, you have scenes like 10-4 in StB which noone could be expected to
beat through skill alone, you'd have to either know how to do it or
spend a while figuring it out. I think it's normal to take hours to beat
this scene because people can't really crack the strategies. So if you
already saw someone else do it for example then that would speed up the
playthrough, and this goes more or less for a lot of stuff.
I mean, I don't know about using the word apex, especially not since
it's so damn different from normal. But DS and GFW are the games that
have fascinated me the most. The problem with DS is that a lot of the
scenes are kinda shitty. I just gloss over that because there's so damn
many of them so you don't have to play scenes you don't like if you
don't want to. Another hurdle to get past is that the game is incredibly
unfair. I never midned unfairness itself though, I just wanna enjoy
myself and feel engaged. If something is unfair in a fun way then I
don't care.
For the pure fun factor, sometimes I gravitate towards the
Phantasmagoria games, but PoFV, intense as it is, is too monotonous and
simple to be compared with DS and GFW, which are deep and varied. and
I've never played a multiplayer match in PoDD which means I'm rating it
entirely as a single player game... not to mention comparing multiplayer
with single player is always iffy.
I don't think there is an apex because there aren't any clear rules
about what makes a game personally appealing. Like you can tell with the
games I view as favorites that they're quite RNG heavy and really
difficult and scoring oriented usually (Dragon Blaze being an exception
in the RNG area, though. that game is pretty static. Then again, I
haven't put as much time into Dragon Blaze yet, so I don't feel as
strongly in my opinion in that one) On the other hand, many other
veterans loathe this kind of RNG and prefer to be able to do what
they've practiced more reliably. There is also the issue of how much we
value game feel versus mechanics and stage and pattern design. Would I
give Batrider a 4.5 if I wasn't totally in love with the style of the
game? Definitely not. The style is so appealing to me so the feedback
you feel from just playing is all there which makes it a great game to
play casually. There are games that I can see as being genius and
classics but that I don't personally get turned on by, like DOJ. I
learned some chaining routes and gave it an honest chance but, althought
he game is undeniable amazing, It's just not a game that personally
excites and fascinates me to this extent that it's at my top. Like I
find the game kinda dreary and ugly looking, I'm not sold on DDP-style
chaining, Hibachi is a really stupid boss to have at the end...
For conventional shmups, Perfect Cherry Blossom or Guwange would be
the apex for me. You could say that they both floor me but I think both
aren't quite perfect. Both have a lot of milking that turns off some
people and I think that milking being quite mindless (and ruins your
hand) in Guwange aside from on the Catspider is its biggest flaw. Other
than this the game is pretty much perfect with an ideal scoring mechanic
with its gauge management and deep cancelling structure. Perfect Cherry
Blossom has one of the most ridiculous and awesome scoring systems ever
with an enormous skill ceiling. I think it has the perfect scoring
system and an amazing relationship between its mechanics and design. For
the most part they are flawlessly linked so you can be doing something
cool and difficult in almost every part of the game. a common discussion
about fans is about how much of an accident this game may have been for
ZUN. Some people insist that ZUN doesn't put that much thought into his
games (with his newest games I can believe that he doesn't) but I think
there's no way that PCB is much of an accident. Now, if PCB does have a
flaw, I think I can point out some. The first two stages can feel a bit
slow other than some key techniques available being absolutely bonkers,
and I was never that keen on the Extra or Phantasm stages. Lots of
pointless nonspells in these. As well, PCB is a pure score-em-up, this
isn't a flaw per se, but it isn't a very interesting game to just dodge
bullets in IMO. The bullets are mostly really slow, which works fine
with its scoring, but for fun of dodging I like faster bullets.
For me, GFW and maybe DS are my favorites, but I would never say
that they're objectively the best or anything. GFW is just such an odd
game that gets easily misunderstood by newcomers. For example, a common
complaint about it that I hear from people that didn't really play it
(much) is that using ice to bypass patterns is cheesy and that such
mechanics hinders dodging. The truth is that GFW is a very dodging heavy
game, and it's dodging heavy in the way that I personally love: there's
a lot of multitasking. You're not just avoiding the bullets but you are
managing boss health, shot versus boss positioning, timing of shooting,
whether how much to graze to reach a certain ice meter percentage at a
certain time, timing to charge and timing to freeze and positioning to
freeze depending on how you want the ice to behave in relation to bullet
space and enemy positions. Then you are also multitasking the resource
game which is by far the best in any game I've played, the way you gain
perfect freeze and motivation and how you "spend" your resources and the
routing around this is totally unmatched IMO.
So in short, I have some clear favorites because of my tastes, but I
think there are other potential "best games" that I don't feel as
strongly about personally due to some personal dislikes being too
prevalent (Ketsui, DOJ, Garegga spring to mind...)
And of course, since these examples are more geared towards hardcore
players, there's no objective truth saying that a simpler game with a
lower skill ceiling is worse for it. Some people love games like
Gradius. But I just don't see anyone spending 1000s of hours on such
games when there's the aforementioned alternatives, and for me an apex
most definitely need to provide incentives for you to pour such time
into it. Shmups are very divisive among fans and there are things that
could easily turn you off or on them, small or big things. Like in the
touhou community just about everyone has a different favorite game or
least favorite game."
