Eschatos [360]

[fuse]

There's plenty of post related to this over in the 'post your new imports' thread but thought I'd try and get some dedicated chat going over here. Just to confirm, this game is completely region free and will work on any region 360.

I've spent a good few hours with this over the past couple of days and must admit I'm quite enjoying it. I would agree that production quality-wise, it's not fantastic (definitely more Triangle Service than Cave), but it's got a much more easy-going pace which makes it considerably more accessible.

Basic run-down of modes are as such;

Eschatos Original: Choose between easy/medium/hard (changes bullet patterns) and endless (appears to be 'easy' for first loop at least). Two shot types - straight and wide - plus a shield used by holding both, and the option to change your ship speed from a choice of 3. Battle your way through a series of areas; scoring is handled by maintaining a 100% destruction rate throughout these.

Eschatos Advanced: Same mode breakdown as original. Using your shield on bullets generates scoring items, and whilst there are now powerups that improve your shot power, this is at the expense of reducing your max shield; as such, there are also 'power down' pickups to help you balance.

Judgement Silversword: Digging this Wonderswan port a lot - very similar in format to Eschatos with a series of stages and the same shot + shield types, but (obv) much more low-fi and with quite a steep difficulty spike. Thankfully no 3D spinning about / buggering around with the perspective either.

Cardinal Sins: Another WS port. Idea being that you have 7 different scoring mechanisms for each of the sins - only had a shot at trial mode so far but you get a minute for each and then receive an alphabetical grading dependent on how you did.


As a testament to just how accessible it is, I've already 1cc'd Original on easy mode and made it through one loop's worth of endless. Looking at the scoreboards it would seem that Silvergun has a pretty good idea of how to play Cardinal Sins, would strongly welcome any tips on how to do half the stages as I cannot work them out!

[Combination]

Accessible = easy, dumbed down etc.

[Silvergun X]

Hiyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Yes, Cardinal Sins is ****ing awesome.

You have 7 different initial stages, each with different 'rules'. The objective is to pass these 7 stages, then go through a bonus round (Puluto), then defeat the Mirror of Cardinal Sins.

The 7 stages are as follows:

Envy (1st Stage): Score is based entirely around destruction rate. Kill all enemies, don't let any get past.

Sloth (2nd Stage): Score is based on how many 1up items you pick up. 1ups drop at a very, very high rate off all enemies, but will be destroyed when shot, so this stage is all about regulating your fire and making sure you don't gun down those 1up drops.

Greed (3rd Stage): Now this one is really, really weird. This one is based around 'Scan Rate'. Basically, you have 30 different things to do that will result in a scan (thanks @ shmups forum):

1 Enemy A Destroyed Before Attacking
2 High-speed Missile Destroyed
3 Enemy B Destroyed
4 Enemy C Destroyed
5 Enemy D Destroyed
6 Homing Missile Destroyed
7 Homing Missile Pursuit Ended
8 Enemy A Attack 1 Completed
9 Enemy A Attack 2 Completed
10 Enemy A Attack One Round
11 Enemy B Attack 1 Completed
12 Enemy B Attack 2 Completed
13 Enemy B Attack One Round
14 Enemy A Destroyed
15 Enemy A Destroyed While Escaping
16 Enemy B Destroyed While Escaping
17 Enemy C Attack 1 Completed
18 Enemy C Attack 2 Completed
19 Enemy C Attack One Round
20 Enemy D Attack 1 Completed
21 Enemy D Attack 2 Completed
22 Enemy D Attack 3 Completed
23 Enemy D Attack One Round
24 Small Bullet 1 Erased
25 Small Bullet 2 Erased
26 Small Bullet 3 Erased [star bullet]
27 Medium Bullet Erased [round bullet]
28 Needle Bullet Erased
29 Large Bullet Erased
30 Low Speed Small Bullet Erased [small blue bullet]
31 Low Speed Large Bullet Erased [large blue bullet]

So basically, it's a mixture of killing enemies, letting enemies fire their bullet patterns off, and erasing bullets. It's a weird one that i've never managed to get very far with.

Pride (4th Stage): Score here is based on how many enemies you can kill on a 100x multiplier. You want to be using your shield to take down as many enemies as possible.

Lust (5th Stage): Destroy everything as fast as you can - Score is based around how many waves of enemies you can get past in the time limit.

Gluttony (6th Stage): Score is based on pickups. With every enemy wave, there will be a flashing item that the game tells you to shoot. Wait for the screen to fill with as many bullets as possible then shoot the flashing item to turn all the bullets to pickups.

Wrath (7th Stage): Survive bullet patterns and don't die. Score is based around death count so keep it no-miss.

After these 7 stages, your rank for each stage is tallied up. This is important for the bonus stage.

Puluto (Bonus Stage): You have to defeat 7 enemies. These enemies will give you bonuses depending on the rank you scored in the 7 missions. S rank will give you a 50mil point drop, A rank will give you a 10mil point drop, B rank or below will give you an extra life.

Mirror of Cardinal Sins (Final Boss): Defeat this boss for a bitching score bonus.

And that's it for Cardinal Sins!

-------------

As far as Eschatos itself is concerned, i've come to the conclusion that the game should only ever be played on Advanced Hard, because it's absolutely awesome.

As I mentioned in the import thread here, the higher the difficulty, the quicker and easier the score multiplier actually goes up, so playing on the harder difficulties does have a purpose. Couple this with the fact that hard mode bullet patterns are awesome, and you can power your weapons up to really lay some smack down (and build an even further multiplier with this), and you actually get quite an exciting game to play.

It's possible to get a 25x score multiplier by the first boss, and finish Area 05 with a 5mil+ score. It's really, REALLY good fun and if you find the game a little bit boring etc, I would strongly suggest playing Advanced Hard mode.

[fuse]

Accessible = easy, dumbed down etc.

No denying that, there's challenge to be had in the game if you crank up the difficulty but it's not a particularly deep scoring system and there's plenty of options for people who aren't looking to dedicate serious time into learning the game. I think most who are looking for something on the other end of the spectrum know which titles to get already For what it is, I'm enjoying it.

Puluto (Bonus Stage): You have to defeat 7 enemies. These enemies will give you bonuses depending on the rank you scored in the 7 missions. S rank will give you a 50mil point drop, A rank will give you a 10mil point drop, B rank or below will give you an extra life.

Weird - was wondering about the drops. So if I do a low-score run I can at least go into the Mirror with a decent stock of lives?

It's possible to get a 25x score multiplier by the first boss, and finish Area 05 with a 5mil+ score. It's really, REALLY good fun and if you find the game a little bit boring etc, I would strongly suggest playing Advanced Hard mode.

Hadn't even touched that yet - will give it a shot!

[Silvergun X]

Weird - was wondering about the drops. So if I do a low-score run I can at least go into the Mirror with a decent stock of lives?

Precisely. The better you score, the less lives you get to do the mirror boss with.

FWIW it's not worth deliberately low scoring just to defeat the mirror with - 2 S rank drops are worth tons more than you'll get for defeating the mirror. My high score on the online scoreboards was done without defeating it, and with only two S rank drops.

[CMcK]

Finally got a bash at this lot tonight. Has to be said Eschatos is pretty good fun in an old fashioned way but the two Wonderswan games are the real surprise for me here. Cardinal Sins is superb! I can see me putting more time into it than any of the other games on the disc.