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Battle Garegga
  PS4Shooter_VertJ  
  opened by paleface at 12:08:35 07/19/24  
  last modified by paleface at 22:56:00 07/27/24  
  paleface [sys=PS4; cat=Shooter_Vert; reg=J]
           
Revered Raizing shmup with hard-to-see bullets, lots of ship types. M2 with another very sharp port, in their M2 ShotTriggers line.
 
The game's designer said he'd wanted to make a game like Gun Frontier (see entry 877), and it has a somewhat similar aesthetic, and collecting little bomb shards and things. But it isn't a parody like Gun Frontier, is way more technical--juggling rank medals and such--and the pacing is more like a standard shooter, where you're slowly powering up--and juggling rank medals to keep your score chain going or something...--against mostly weak enemies en route to the boss, where the main gameplay takes place.
 
A lot of ships and hidden ships to pick from, more technical stuff going on there.
 
Some of those bullets really are hard to see!
 
  paleface 12:20:16 07/24/24
           
It has the slender, semi-realistic rendering of Gun Frontier, but not the dark gritty almost photorealistic/scanned quality that leaves you wondering just what is real in Gun Frontier, nor the parody of conventional gun designs--so Garegga comes out looking much more conventional.
 
  paleface 13:41:46 07/24/24
           
At the start you can only have 3 credits or so before Game Over; as you use credits and get Game Overs (or clears, I suppose : PP) you gradually unlock more credits (I'm up to 4! after eh a few game overs) and eventually the Option (under Other Options or whatever) to turn on Free Play. : PP
 
Ah there fifth I think option down under Other Options or whatever lets you change the enemy bullet colors--either to a brighter blue (non-flashing) or eh various flashing modes that I don't want to use. The non-flashing setting does help though.
 
The third I think other option down is turning on the hidden ships, which are four fantasy ships that shoot big cartoony shots; more flashy so I think I'll leave that off.
 
Well with the bullet color tweak this game is kinda fun. Not sure the DS4 is making my wrist feel great, hm. Anyway until that gets bad I'll see how much progress I can make toward Free Play, maybe. There are save states but you have to go through the (touchpad-activated) menu which is kinda slow so having free Continues would definitely speed things along.
 
  paleface 14:02:00 07/24/24
           
Oh wait I'm up to 6 credits already, hey-o. I wonder if Free Play unlocks after you get to 9, or maybe shortly after.
 
  paleface 16:19:14 07/24/24
           
(Videos from 2017:)
 

 
My first Premium mode run on my own copy of Battle Garegga Rev.2016 on PS4 and I get 4,413,820 points, playing as Bornnam the Necromancer--one of the four secret Mahou Daisakusen characters, which you can enable through an option setting (in addition to the old input code version, probably), ABC version. Boy, you take away the Arcade mode's dynamic rank system, and add auto-bombing, and suddenly the game is kind of a cake walk, even for a scrub like me. : o May have to stick to Arcade mode from now on--hm unless the Hard code works in Premium, that might help.
 

 
My (tiny) high score so far in the Arcade mode of Battle Garegga Rev.2016 on PS4: a measly 353,490 points with Bornnam the Necromancer--one of the four secret Mahou Daisakusen (aka Sorcer Striker) characters, which you can enable through an option setting (but not through the old arcade version button code, apparently: the English PS4 version manual--I have the Japanese version--says "The secret command to unlock them on the title screen cannot be used" https://m2stg.com/en/battle-garegga/ps4/manual/3.php#sec4 ), ABC version.
 
Yeah I need to play this a lot more and not be bad. ; )
 
  paleface 20:02:01 07/25/24
           
The ship names are (from the online manual):
 
Silver Sword (A - default)
Cannon Ball (B - speed)
Masamune (C - hitbox)
Shatter Star (ABC - speed & hitbox)
 
Grass Hopper
Reinforcer
DGR October
Diving Fox
 
Flying Baron
Stormy Omen
Red Impulse
Black Zeppelin
 
Wild Snail
Iron Mackerel
Rust Champion
Golden Bat
 
Valhallyzer aka BATTLE-VALHALLAIZER (Gain the Warrior)
Gun-Dalf aka NEO-GUN DALEF (Chitta the Magician)
The Samurai-Dragon (Miyamoto the Samurai-Dragon)
Golgodian aka FINAL-GOLGDIAN (Bornnam the Necromancer)
 
Timing out at ship select gives the ABC version of the highlighted ship.
 
  paleface 21:03:47 07/25/24
           

 
When you first run M2's ShotTriggers version of Battle Garegga, you can only use 3 credits per play of the game; that limit gradually increases as you feed in credits and play the game (I've read that using the built-in save states slows the process down). I'd messed around with the game for an hour or so before starting recording and was already up to having 7 credits--and in the course of playing in this session I got the FREE PLAY mode unlocked! : )
 
On limited credits, with the mighty Golden Bat (ABC version of ship 4), I got to stage 6. And after sleeping on it, I'm not sure this game is going to get me in its grip quite like Gun Frontier, the game that inspired it, did, because the only part that stands out as kinda nifty is the part where you're flying over huge airships in stage 3, with that midboss driving along under their wings; other than that, nothing in the stage and enemy designs--though they're all well drawn--particularly sticks out out.
 
But given how complicated etc this is, and how revered by hard-core players, it's probably one of those games that grows on you the more you play it. Anyhoo now that I have FREE PLAY I can do a quarter-feeding play-through ^ _^, so I'll give that a shot and see how it goes. Probably not as ship 3 and its not-so-hot bomb, though. ; D
 
  paleface 22:46:30 07/27/24
           

 
Playing through as Diving Fox (ship 2 ABC version), then through AGAIN as Gain ABC. Saturn remix soundtrack.
 
Well I complained the whole time about not quite being into this game, yet I couldn't stop myself from playing through again immediately so eh well it IS one of the few non-eye-killing 90s shmups, which is no bad thing, even for someone like me who's too dumb to appreciate the scoring intricacies and such.
 
  paleface 22:56:00 07/27/24
           
Found a couple more things I like in the game: the giant laser turrets that track on you, and the horseshoe crab boss who comes along and glomps onto the innocuous-looking mid-boss.
    
 
references:
· Dangun Feveron (PS4)
· Ibara (PS2)
· Taito Memories: Gekan (PS2)

 
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