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SOL CRESTA - PlatinumHard ALL Clear (No-Miss/ No-Deaths)

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It's the year 2022 and Platinum Games, developer of cult classics like Bayonetta and Nier Automata, releases a fully-fledged out shmup with all the bells and whistles of a big studio budget, directed by the famous Hideki Kamiya of Resident Evil and Devil May Cry fame, with music by the equally as famous Yuzo Koshiro, with an epic 2 hour long story that's fully voice acted. 
And all for a sequel to a jank 1985 arcade shmup that was made by a company that was mostly known for making arcade shovelware.

It pays deep respect to this original Cresta series, keeping the original jank base while trying to modernize it as much as possible. With many different references and enemies making a return from the original games. Silly music and designs from the originals clashing heavily with the serious plot of the game.

Platinum Hard is the hardest difficulty you can start from (though the game loops infinitely and later loops keep getting slightly more difficult I believe). In-game Platinum Hard is labeled as loop 5. 
Platinum Hard has some very notable differences from the difficulties before it:
- Formation attacks are severely nerfed, they only last about half as long as normal.
- In addition, formation attacks are now consumables. After you use them once you need to collect a chip of the same kind again in order to use it again. This includes the phoenix formation. 
- The amount of shields you have is limited to only one. 
- Sol Gauge gets reset upon death (including losing your command input shots)
- More enemies and obstacles. 
- Addition of a lot of bouncing bullets during midbosses and bosses.
- Tons of revenge bullets in general. 
I like Platinum Hard because it forces you to master and use all of the many mechanics of the game. Normally you can just ignore most of these and still clear the game easily.

The game plays quite differently to most other shmups out there. 
The amount of mechanics and options they crammed into this game is so massive that it almost feels like you're playing a mix of a character action game and a shmup.
You have 3 shots that you can mix and match in 9 different ways, 3 different charge attacks, 9 different formation attacks, 5 different command input attacks, a bullet time mechanic, options you can use defensively and offensively... 
Besides that the scoring system is also comprised of a million different mechanics and secrets.  
Platinum released a video explaining all the gameplay mechanics, scoring mechanics and secrets and it lasts over 2 hours long (yes there are that many): https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/news/app/1575640/view/5254017618798009772

For survival I found that bullet time is kinda the answer to everything. 
It's massively overpowered and you get so much of it. Besides the slowdown, you can also cancel bullets with the tail of your ships and can get more shots off than you normally would.
Also spam command attacks constantly.

The game has a lot of story with character chatter going on almost constantly.
There is just one problem though; they made far more story than game. So all the story got contained in a separate Dramatic Mode DLC where in order to fit the story in they had to artificially lengthen the game. What this usually means is adding a ton of dead air to let the dialogue finish. You're not likely to replay this mode much, which I think is a shame. Ginga Force/Natsuki Chronicles handled this way better.

Visually the game looks like vomit because it uses a weird filter to make polygonal graphics look like fake pixel art, with no way to turn it off. The gameplay is great fun though, it offers a lot of variety in playstyles and is strategically rich.

On Switch the game has 10 frames of input lag but on PC it felt like one of the smoothest games I've played with Special K injected. This is part because you can play at framerates far above 60, something not many shmups have but really need.

The game had a very rough launch with more game-breaking bugs and softlocks than any other shmup in history. Random softlocks is also a bad combination if your game has infinite loops.
 
A game having infinite loops in 2022 is also very wild, and I think it ultimately does more harm to the game than good. You can have all the scoring mechanics in the world, but ultimately the only thing that matters is endurance and nothing else.
I did two loops once and still had 32 lives in stock, I don't think it's actually possible to game over in this game once you learn it a bit and that scares me.

Buy the game on Steam here:
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/1575640/SOL_CRESTA/

00:00 - Intro
03:52 - Stage 01: Neptune
10:56 - Stage 02: Uranus
17:45 - Stage 03: Saturn
27:10 - Stage 04: Mars
34:40 - Stage 05: Terra
41:40 - Stage 06: Mercury 
50:23 - Stage 07: Sol
01:05:15 - Ending & Credits:

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