RefleX 1CC (11.6M)

Channel:

LimeCultivist

Subscribers:

7,400

Published on August 28, 2025 12:03:08 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZmsGf4OFwM

Duration: 0:00

102 views

5

The last game I needed to clear in the trilogy. This was my first 1cc of it.

The Alltynex trilogy has gotta be my favorite shmup series out there. Kamui is my favorite shmup ever made, and RefleX and Alltynex 2nd are both solid games too. This genre as a whole has always been hit or miss for me: I usually prefer watching someone better than me play (hello Jaimers) as opposed to playing the games myself. But Siter Skain's releases are an exception to that rule. They just had the magic touch, it seems, and I really hope they come back to making games someday.

It's hard to say which game is my 2nd favorite in the series. I prefer RefleX's bosses and overall presentation/mood compared to Alltynex 2nd, but this game also drags on at times, especially during stage 3. The final 2 levels are also very stressful despite looking easy on paper. RefleX is the most story focused and cinematic of the trilogy, and it even contains 2 long cutscenes after stage 6 and the final stage (both of which I skipped during this run).

The main mechanic in this game is your ship's shield. Blue bullets can be reflected, red bullets can be blocked, and purple/pink bullets can be blocked or destroyed with your regular shot. Missiles are apparently the best anti-shield technology people have invented in the future, because your shield does nothing against them and you have to shoot them down instead. When you drop your shield, the meter recharges. Your regular shot gets weaker at low meter levels, and the meter refills very slowly when firing. You can't hold shield and fire at the same time.

Scoring is mostly based on reflecting bullets. Killing an enemy with a reflected shot increases your multiplier by 4x, 16x, 32x, and finally 64x. You need to kill enemies quickly with reflected shots in order to keep increasing this chain. Shooting enemies with your regular shot while you have a multiplier active gives fewer points (2x, 4x, 16x, and 32x), and it won't increase the multiplier any further, but it will keep your chain alive. Killing bosses with a reflected shot is extremely important as they generally give the most points. For the final boss, this means the difference between getting 1 million points and 4 million. I don't know the best scoring route overall; this run was mostly just me winging it. There's lots of room for improvement (I've seen some people get over 20M).

Health (or durability as the game calls it) is located at the bottom right corner. RefleX can be split up into 3 parts, and your health is fully restored whenever you reach a new part. Part 1 is stages 1-4, then stages 5-6, and finally stages 7-8. Stage 7 contains a forced story death where Virgo decides it doesn't want to deal with your crap anymore. Your ship revives (the pilot dies, but the Ophiuchus core takes over [don't worry about the story if you're not already invested lol]), and your shield now becomes infinite use. But the downside to this is that you also die in 1 hit. As I said earlier, this part of the game is both stressful and easy. The infinite shield is amazing, but you really can't make a single mistake with it. The fact that this happens 40 minutes into a run alone almost makes me want to rank this game as the worst in the series.

Like Alltynex 2nd (and to a lesser degree Kamui), the later parts of RefleX feel more like a boss rush than anything else. I don't mind that. None of the Alltynex games are too difficult by shmup standards, and that's a good thing in my book, but I think RefleX is the scariest to 1cc thanks to its instant death mode. My biggest mistakes in this run were likely against Enropi in stage 5, where I forgot what some of their attacks were and even let one of them timeout (oops).

I've never been super into mechs, spaceships, or vehicles in general, but Siter Skain's designs have always been cool. The Kamui ship in particular is iconic to me. It's also neat seeing all the recurring bosses that show up throughout the series. The ships look good in RefleX, but the flat backgrounds don't hold up. I've heard them described as random google maps screenshots before, and that's unfortunately accurate. Somewhere over a random town in Wisconson right now, people are watching as space ships fire blue lasers and missiles at each other.

Gonna end the writeup here for now. I might want to do a video about the Alltynex trilogy as a whole in the future.

00:00 - Stage 1
03:33 - Stage 2
09:43 - Stage 3
17:33 - Stage 4
20:14 - Stage 5
27:36 - Stage 6
32:51 - Stage 7
40:20 - Stage 8