Good thoughts, and congrats on the Spicy 1CC! I got my Sweet 1CC on stream a few days ago, I just need to push the Twitch Highlight to my YT channel so I can post it. Regarding your thoughts:
- Bullet eating is a big strategy, and that's one reason why copious use of the charge attacks is practically mandatory. Because the smiley faces show up based on the number of targets you eliminate, bullets appear to factor into that, so any of the weapons or charge attacks that you can use to exploit that are helpful, as is dropping bombs. Even the default shot's charge can clear bullets, so if you die, you're not stuck w/o some ability to clear bullets.
- The bomb is OP in some ways, though I've found that its bullet clearing is sometimes inconsistent. There have been a couple times I dropped a bomb and still got picked off.
- Spike Ree is powerful, yes. He cuts through the 1st stage boss like a hot knife through butter. I haven't tried him on later stages, because I'm following the pairings suggested by Ed from Studio Mudprints, but it might be interesting to see how he fares against other bosses.
- Yes, this is very weird, and it makes me think that either they designed it that way because they knew the final boss fight was kind of unfair, so it was a "late in development" way of compensating, rather than balancing the difficulty better. That's my supposition, anyway.
- The damage from the rocket boots is a GREAT feature that definitely makes the game more strategic than you might think upon initially playing it. I noted on the very first podcast episode that there was a bit of that with the original Gradius, where the Vic Viper's flame out the rear of the craft could damage enemies, but it's really well implemented here, as you said.
- I actually like the slowdown aspect, and have used that to my advantage a few times, but you're absolutely right - the flicker can make things difficult, so it's definitely a balance.
- I think I kind of understand what you mean. I feel like the reputation is partially deserved, because it is fun, and has a lot going for it, but I feel like maybe the hype is greater than the game itself. But then I don't have nostalgia for it, and I feel like the console had better shooters, even around the time of its release and prior.
- You certainly have an easier time adapting to these games than I do! I think my Sweet clear probably took me 10-12 hours, some of that time spent playing Spicy, then moving down to Sweet just to try and get the clear.
Air Stonk vs Air Zork? I'm not sure I quite get the context here
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