Some notes related to the playthrough * 1st Zone - I think it's quite impossible to achieve the true 100pts in this stage. The cruisers during the final fight against the battleship could appear from anywhere instead of having a fixed initial spawning location, and your location will be stuck below the battleship to defeat the boss quicker. If these cruisers are prioritized, it's almost impossible to quickly destroy the battleship, which hurts your time even further. * 2nd Zone - My destroy ratio was 71/74 and I think I know where the remaining three targets are. 9:12 has three launchers that could be targeted before a swarm of enemies take off. However, the enemies will normally take off during your second batch of homing lasers, and pushing the scan button after this point would redirect you towards these enemies instead of the launchers. Instead of scanning, these three launchers should be destroyed by shooting manually before they descend back to the planet. However, doing a no-damage run while aiming for this would be quite challenging I guess, since the swarms will shoot bullets from all over the direction. Without no-damage restriction, this would be your priority. - Time-wise, the battle against Beta Boost could be improved by utilizing homing lasers instead of rambo-style shooting. I did this for about 20 seconds since the start of battle (10:28 - 10:48). Homing lasers seem to deal more damage in the long run and finish the battle quicker as result. * 3rd Zone - 13:03 There are these three enemies that are quite tough to be destroyed, and then around 13:12 there are seemingly untargetable 12 fighter jets since they are flying quite low. Scanning would redirect you towards one of the first three enemies, which is located more likely at the opposite direction of the jets, so these jets have to be located manually (and approach by boosting if necessary) in order to destroy them. - The final boss have a total of eleven destroyable parts, and destroying parts takes a chunk of his health so it's always recommended to destroy as many as possible to finish the battle quicker. Those parts are two thrusters (the first two I destroyed), four beam shooters (the next four I destroyed), the bulging part in the middle, and two targets on each wing, which are quite hard to be targeted by normal shooting. The proper strategy would be consistently targeting one side of the wings by homing lasers as many as possible, but doing that (consistently) is proven to be quite difficult due to the constant movement of the plane (and you too). Therefore, it looks like that I target randomly during the last segment but in fact it's not. Perfectly executing that will obviously improve the final time. * 4th Zone - The first five set of enemies will drop from above and try to land on you. If successfully done, they will self destruct and deal moderate damage. They are also destroyed upon touching the ground if you can't destroy any (no second chance), so during the drop launch as many lasers as possible and shoot the rests to maintain high destroy ratio. - During the fight against the final boss, after the boss shooting the beams (around 18:54), it's recommended to stay at the front side instead of going to the back. Doing this would make the boss attack by shooting red bullets as shown in the video, which is rather easy to be dodged. Going to the back will make the boss launch consecutive homing beams instead, which is quite difficult to be dodged compared to red bullets. * 5th Zone - The first sub boss has hexagon-shaped object rotating back and forth on the tunnel. This boss has to be defeated as soon as possible since there will be six enemies appearing on the tunnel (21:56), and it's impossible to target them if the boss is still nearby. However, one unique fact is that this boss is automatically destroyed when the tunnel gets narrower, somewhere after the six aforementioned enemies spawn, which it's perhaps the only sub boss in the game that will be eventually destroyed without doing anything, although it would still hurt your time (and destroy ratio as well, since you will miss seven enemies.) - Against the spider boss, when fighting the boss from above, do not let his six legs stay too long. When having strong grip, the boss can launch a lot of homing rockets that is almost impossible to be totally dodged. They are actually destroyable by each of your bullets, but their spawning rate is faster than you could shoot so eventually you'll take damage. * 6th Zone - During the fight against a battlefleet (the first sub boss), their mothership has at least three destroyed parts that could take a chunk of its health: they are the middle part on both sides (the same parts that spam homing beams) and one big part on top of the ship. There seems to be none on the bottom that I can find. Destroying other turrets doesn't seem to deal damage to the body, but it's important to limit their shooting capability. 27:46 after defeated, the boss will teleport behind you and shoot a gigantic laser as its limit break. This beam is a guaranteed instakill if connects, even on full health. Playing the game on normal mode gives you around two seconds to react by boosting somewhere out of the path, but on hard mode dodging must be done instantly. Count one second after the ship disappears, move somewhere, then immediately boost on that direction when your back becomes white. * 7th Zone - 30:34 when fighting against these carrier planes, the third plane is located at a higher elevation than second one. However, if you move too close to the second plane, scanning the third plane is almost impossible to be done. You have to be as far as possible when laser lock-on becomes possible so these two planes could be destroyed. - During the fight against Beta Boost, he will shoot homing beams by performing airkicks (32:50). These beams are originally very hard to be dodged. But if you move closer at certain distance, all of these beams will somehow miss. Finding the distance, however, is not easy since the beams could still hit you if you are too close. Use thrust and brake to find the right distance, and then happy gunning when he is airkicking. * 8th Zone - The first boss' weakpoint is his core, which is the spinning object that will be detached among other body parts after dealing enough damage to the body. The boss will gain a portion of health when all parts are going back to the body. Therefore, when being detached, quickly look for the object (that glows blue) and shoot it as many as you can. Actually lasers deal more damage than bullets, but lock-on will target the body instead, so it's impossible to fully concentrate only on the core, which decrease its potential maximum damage output. I could only predict that two instances (or 1.5) of full lock-on (14) lasers on this part would possibly finish the battle before the boss could heal. - Fighting the second boss that has jelly-like structure is very easy on normal mode since the boss (almost) never attack you, but on hard mode, they will consistently produce homing jelly missiles to attack. If you try to fight by locking-on while braking, it's almost impossible to deal damage since your lock-on will be redirected towards these missiles instead. Dealing damage could only be done by attacking his tentacles, so you have to constantly move and lock on these tentacles while dodging the missiles. * Last Zone - The core of AlphaCore during the first fight reflects back your lasers so you can only deal damage through bullets, but the consistently-produced orbital orbs behave the opposite (reflect bullets so they could only be destroyed by lasers.) The strategy here is to destroy most of the orbs but let one (or at most two) alive, and then move clockwise to always be at the opposite direction of the remaining orbs while gunning down the core. - The second fight against the worm-like creature has the same AlphaCore as the first fight, so you can only deal damage through bullets. 37:22 During the first part of the fight, the direction of the head while spinning determines the direction of the bullets he will shoot, which determines your dodging direction as well. While dodging the bullets try to be as center as possible so your bullets could hit the core as many as possible. * The Result An interesting fact is that the screen only shows Destroy Ratio but the calculation for determining the title is actually based on Pilot Ability. If using Pilot Ability: (97 + 93 + 95 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 99 + 100) / 9 = 884 / 9 = 98.22pts If using Destroy Ratio: (96 + 95 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100) / 9 = 891 / 9 = 99pts Therefore, if the screen shows Destroy Ratio, the final result should be 99pts. Or if using Pilot Ability, the column should display Pilot Ability points instead of Destroy Ratio.
