Alright, now things are getting exciting. Zones E and I feel like a massive difficulty spike compared to D and H, especially Ancient Barrage, who I can confidently say is way harder than Thousand Knives. I'm still trying to figure out how to dodge those stupid homing shots that show up in this route, I feel like they were the real MVP of the enemy team.
Also I don't really think I like the Next. The homing missiles are nice but I really don't care for the way the fixed burst works. My brain just wants to retreat behind the laser, although that's probably just because I played Legend first and that's now what makes sense to me. Anyway, this route was fun! Score was trash, but what can ya do. I feel like H and I routes are probably a good place to dip my toes into each of the ships to see what they can do before pushing much further down the ladder, but we'll see how the coming days shake out I suppose.