[1cc] Gradius III (Arcade, JP) - 1-ALL - Type B 

(turn on captions for extra comments)
The game can be really janky and ridden with slowdown, but I also really love how epic the whole thing feels. The soundtrack is also really nice, and generally speaking I love the Gradius power up and option systems.
The game isn't impossible overall, but it has a few sections that can be really hard and are enough to ruin your attempts. These hard parts are the Fire stage and the Cube Rush. The final stage can be a little difficult, but compared to the previous two it's not that bad overall. On top of that, slowdown is extremely inconsistent, and sometimes the game will go back to full speed abruptly, leading to awkward movements and making you ram into a wall or bullet if you're not careful (this issue is particularly present and hard to control in the Fire Stage). If using type B, your missiles' blast will also often cover enemy shots which can be annoying. Combine that with dreadful checkpoints that are extremely hard to recover from, and you end up with a pretty hard clear.
The cube rush itself is probably one of the most annoying things in any video game. You have to play it yourself to really understand how bad it is. It may not look that hard just watching a replay, but it's really awful. Cubes rush at incredible speeds, leaving you almost no time to react. It's essentially random, there are just too many cube patterns to learn, and you have to rely on some strat that works rarely, which is to build a wall to block incoming cubes. However, what's not random is the timing at which cubes charge. For example, the first cube will always start charging at you very early, no matter what his vertical spawn point was. On the other hand, some cubes will charge very late, basically when they're at the left part of the screen, and they're the most dangerous. If you can, you may be able to count the number of cubes to anticipate when some will charge. Otherwise, they're way too fast to be reacted to.
It could really have been a fun challenge, but the cubes' speed make it pretty much impossible unless you rely on the "wall" strat, and even this strat isn't very consistent because some of the homing cubes will just ram into you from behind and you'll have no time to dodge even if you anticipate.
I'm not even sure I would recommend spending a lot of time practicing the cube rush itself, instead focus on learning its corresponding checkpoint, as it can be a little difficult (but recommended) to get 2 options + missiles at the start. Not to mention the fact that practicing this cube rush is extremely frustrating.
As for the Fire stage, it's just a pretty messy stage where a lot of stuff can happen and get you cornered. On top of that, shields are useless against fireballs, although they will still work to block bullets from zakos (especially at the end of the stage, if you managed to keep it until there). The big fireballs have static spawn times, which means that you could in theory do the same thing every time and it would work. But the timing at which you'll destroy them will always be slightly different from run to run, and you'll get different alignments from the small fireballs. A pacifist strat would be a consistent solution in theory, but it's extremely hard at full power because of the high rank and speed of the fireballs. I find it better to just shoot stuff, that way you get slowdown and it's more manageable. I avoid using missiles as it hides the fireballs, and try to keep all my options together.
The stage right after the fire stage is very easy and feels really out of place and incomplete, not sure what's up. It feels like it should be the first or second stage but it's the 7th one.
Each boss requires a specific strat to do them consistently, but once you understand them it's fine, and I'd say that most of them are actually easy. A lot of them can be simply speedkilled, and the rest is cheesable.
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but for the Shadow Gear (big walking thing at the end of the final stage), it looks like the hitbox of its legs are disabled whenever the rightmost (and 2nd from the left) are up, so I use this opportunity to move safely. Any other time is risky.
The checkpoints I'd recommend practicing are the crystal/cube stage (because of the cube rush itself), Shadow Gear and the boss before, and the final checkpoint with the meatballs (because it's actually easier when recovering from a death, and that part is always a little tight and prone to errors). The rest is up to you but will be very hard.
00:00 Boot
0:13 Stage 1 (Sand Storm)
2:48 Stage 2 (Aqua Illusion)
6:35 Stage 3 (In The Wind)
14:27 Stage 4 (High Speed Dimension)
15:11 Stage 5 (Easter Stone)
20:24 Stage 6 (Dead End Cell)
24:33 Stage 7 (Fire Scramble)
28:03 Stage 8 (Cosmo Plant)
31:26 Stage 9 (Crystal Labyrinth)
38:55 Stage 9 (Crystal Labyrinth) - Successful attempt
42:38 Stage 10-1 (Boss Rush)
48:55 Stage 10-2 (Mechanical Base)
57:54 Ending
59:33 Loop 2 is really hard

Игры