Game:

Sanvein (2000)

Duration: 23:50

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2

A pretty clean Sanvein run with only one damage taken, and a neat 115k score!
I used to mostly play with the Gluon body and its spread shot, but after watching this TAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpNrpcb8iQM I felt I needed to switch to Graviton and go ham with it to get some more points in above the 100k range.

Gluon body is decent and reliable, but moves slowly. Graviton body is the technical high-reward shot type in comparison. You move and turn fast but you have to be precise with your powerful sniper shots to make the enemies insta-explode. It is difficult to properly line up your ship at times to get those clean kills and having to scramble to get back on track if you miss your strat can be costly time-wise, but being able to end some of the floors super quickly (especially in Mine) is very satisfying once you know how to do it!

I watched some speedruns before too and saw the meta being Graviton body and parts. Since they were playing on Easiest difficulty and with low time strats (it seems like you get more power when the timer gets low-ish), I assumed that weapon wouldn't be that strong in default settings, but the TAS proved me wrong. Of course the TAS itself does crazy things I will likely not replicate and uses Gluon parts for insane missile attacks (which I couldn't replicate) while I stick to Photon since the missiles are a lot worse for the bosses but it gave me inspiration.

After practicing a bunch, I fully switched to that new setup and didn't initially have noticeable gains. While a stage like Mine is not too bad to get right with good muscle memory, the earlier ones are messier and more inconsistent. Some stuff cropped up like the inconsistent enemy placement from a similarly-numbered floor to another in Inner Wards, or how plane enemies in Stratums didn't always die to two shots which forced me to use that sword double kill strat at times.

But once I got over those and got some runs going, I was starting to see the potential. Even though I usually have a slightly better score and time out of stage 1 with my old Gluon setup, by the end of stage 2 I can more easily harness the advantages of Graviton and start gaining time. As long as I kept my cool, I could get...a cool score.

In this run, the pressure started to be felt in Mine, since I didn't take any single hit at that point, which is really good for score. Since the score is all about time * power level on boss fights, every hit (and the ensuing time loss) is gonna be a blow to the score potential of every subsequent fight in the run (unless you somehow hit the time cap like in the TAS lol). The earlier hit, the worse the scoring penalty. I got away with some crazy stuff against Kugelfang at the end of Mine too, and entering The Core I knew I had a very good pace.

Sadly The Core itself didn't go as well as I wished it did, even though it was not bad at all either. The Himmel fight took super long, even for Himmel rematch standards. At worst I used to kill it on the third sword attack...but here it was worse. I played it a bit safe since I was on a no-damage pace...but maybe a bit too safe.

The Shicht fight was also kinda disappointing. This boss can either take 3 seconds or 3 hours lmao. Guess how long it took here. I also only recently realized why that is : the 3 initial monoliths you fight on this boss have way less HP than the ones they summon if you don't chain-kill them and end the fight in one blow. On the first fight in Stratums it doesn't really matter since you are at power 6 and can obliterate them either way. But here it takes a lot more hits to weaken the subsequent enemies. I usually can setup my initial kill properly but of course not in this run uh. I think I lost something like 3500 points out of that time waste, which is not too bad since it's closer to the end of the game.

The final boss isn't too difficult if you play it safe since it only attacks as retiliation when you attack it...sadly I took my one and only hit there on a spike ball whose altitude I misread, preventing me from getting a truly clean run survival-wise. Thankfully it's just around 540 points lost and I still managed to get a 115k score I can happy with. It's far from the 175k insanity from the TAS but I think it's pretty good regardless.

What a neat game! I already loved it a few months ago when going for the clears on the three routes, but going for score is also exciting.

Played on Duckstation, recorded with OBS Studio
#stg #shmup

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