brentsg let me borrow his copy of MMP for a while and I have been playing it on and off for about two weeks. It's almost a perfect melding of a Cave title with its scoring mechanics (ala big bonuses like Futari) and the stage layout and feel of a Yagawa game. Unlike a lot of games I like, MMP does place very heavy emphasis on its scoring mechanic and this is especially troubling during boss fights where you have no idea where their health bar is. If you don't wait for the right time to pop the boss, you lose millions. For example, if you pop the mid boss of the first stage and the end boss at the right time, you can leave the stage with 6 mil conservatively (without milking). If you don't 2-3 mill is probably a good average score.
So you tend to look for the right moments to trigger big payouts and that takes away from the game for me. It takes so long to figure out timing and places to score well that you don't pay attention to the stages or the music or the layout. Since most of the enemies are very tame through the first two stages, you can play them with almost never looking at the whole screen, just tap dodge and score.
Where MMP gets it right is the games mechanics. The beauty really comes out when you start to figure things out and put high scoring opportunities together and make it happen. So there's a relatively steep learning curve to score well - most games are like that anyway. When you do start rocking the pork gold, it's immensely fulfilling.
This isn't a crazy high score or anything, just a starting point. I'm working on stage 3 at the moment and want to work on the game without thinking of scoring well to try for the 1CC, but that's kinda hard to think about most of the time as I just want to see the screen filled with gold. So satisfying.
6 comments:
Awesome!
I seem to remember this game taking a little while to get used to at the Missouri Cave Matsuri, but hey, it's Yagawa! It's all good!
Thanks for sharing!
Good to see my crummy high score fall! This is one game I can't play for distance. Every game I get sucked into the scoring mechanics. As funny as it sounds, I was pretty proud of that 17M stage 2 score. Though short, that's a run where I was really doing everything well from a scoring perspective.
Taking apart bosses piece by piece is a Yagawa hallmark, so you will get used to the timining. Funny how people expect Cave like bosses now, with the only depth to them being the amount of bullets the fire. Pfft! ;)
I love taking bosses apart in Garegga, APB, etc. but the timing here seems tough. I think the stage 2 boss is the one I am still madly confused on - I can't tell when I am hitting the body or the parts. At least BG and APB made the body of the boss flash when you were striking the core.
One thing I forgot to mention were the graphics - the art is awesome and the poppy tunes are a lot of fun and make the game feel lighthearted.
@brentsg - I actually find I score the best when I just play for distance and sweep enemies with the B-Shot when its convienent. Since this run I have had a few more high scoring runs, all when I wasn't thinking about score - go figure!
Threw MMP in the cab for the first time since January or February and put up 16M on the first credit. It's not an awesome score or anything but I was pretty happy for my first play in some time.
Nice - it's always hard to get right back into a game after a prolonged absence and do well.
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