機器幻想 - 心靈女神計畫 ~ Machine Fantasy - Standard Mode ALL Clear + TLB (Slow Mode Off) - 1.4 Billion
66Machine Fantasy is an obscure Chinese freeware doujin shmup made by Mr. JX that came out last year. What sets it apart from other games is that it's a full-scale Cave-like bullet hell shmup made in RPG Maker of all things imaginable. Even still, it's a very good game that also has a ton of content and extras in it.
In terms of shottypes, the game follows the Daioujou route where you can choose between a strong laser, a strong shot or both with EX. The downside with EX is that the focused speed is very slow.
The game has a branching path system in terms of stages. The replay doesn't show it, but you can select the higher stages if you play well enough. Stages in this game are stage 1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 4-1, 4-2 and 5. Every stage is completely different and has a different end card. I went 1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-2, 5 in this run.
The game has a True Last Boss. In order to trigger it, you need to have a counter of 60k+ or beat 5 bosses/midbosses with a hyper active. The TLB looks like the normal final boss, but her wings are red and she uses way harder patterns.
The game also has 4 different endings depending on whether you faced the TLB or not and whether you beat or did not beat the boss you faced.
The game has a hyper system that you charge by collecting gold. You do more damage when your hyper is active and by holding the hyper button, you can expand a circle around your character to cancel blue bullets and only blue bullets. Doing this drains the hyper much faster though. The game has some Saidaioujou influences were collecting gold outside of hyper makes your hyper fill up faster, so you want to collect gold outside of hyper as much as possible. Using the cancel mechanic is a good way to quickly drain your hyper.
Scoring in this game is all about building up your counter and cashing in on said counter with the gold. You raise it by destroying enemies, getting screen cancels and cancelling bullets. You get screen cancels from certain enemies and you can do a screen cancel yourself by activating a hyper. During the hyper you can cancel blue bullets with the cancel mechanic. If you get hit you lose a -third- of your counter which is really harsh. Using a manual bomb only makes you lose a sixth of it.
This was a pretty good run. I kinda shat the bed in stage 5 but oh well. I tried Ultra for a bit but it looks incredibly silly without Slow Mode. Slow Mode is a pretty lame option you can turn on where the game slows down as soon as more than three bullets are on screen.
Turns out that using a shitty engine for bullet hells like RPG Maker simulates Cave's own shitty hardware and slowdown very well.
Download the game here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mrjxrmplan/mfgoh
You'll need to download and install RPG Maker XP RTP for it to work. As well as run the game in Chinese locale for any of the text to show up (Taiwan locale worked for me).
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