I decided to die on purpose after the first loop as the mode infinitely repeats itself with no changes so it'd purely be doing the same thing again. It appears the game bugged out anyway as the 1st loop score was put on the leaderboard & I got kicked into the loadout menu.
Some visually cool looking enemies and bosses in this game but the stages can get very repetitive.
Regarding loadout: max homing % on all shot patterns. I played on gamepad using analog stick most of the time but switching to d-pad on certain boss fights. Auto-fire button used to make space for missile on R2.
Shot pattern set to the highest available number for small (10%?) damage bonus. For safety in certain spots stayed on 6 power with basic shot and just collected health items. If all 12 energy is already maxed there's no reason not to fire a missile.
Constant transfer of shield into weapon energy before picking up more health & raising shot pattern leads into a lot of controls micromanagement which started feeling less meaningful and more automatic/mindless the more I got used to it. I guess it's the unique aspect of the gameplay so there wouldn't be much left over if it was automated.
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