[Steam I・II] Deathsmiles - Death Mode Level 3 EX-ALL - 294 Million (Souffle)
210Turn on captions for some extra text commentary during the run.
Little bit late for Halloween but it should still be fine right?
Deathsmiles is Cave's iconic Halloween themed bullet hell that first came out in arcades in 2007 and was Cave's highest grossing arcade success.
After the initial release it also got a Mega Black Label release with adjusted mechanics and added content.
It has gotten many ports since, some more successful than others.
Currently playing the Deathsmiles I・II collection which came out on Steam and every modern console recently.
This port is basically the definite version of the game, it's really good and makes the other version on Steam obsolete. Way better slowdown accuracy, less input lag and -brand new- playable characters with multiple new soundtracks.
The DLC adds the 5 main girls from Mahou Otome as playable characters. Mahou Otome being Cave's big mobile gacha game that takes place in the Deathsmiles universe.
The characters get their own dialogue too and I really like how they managed to blend the new art with the old. Seeing them edited into the old Deathsmiles cutscene art is quite a trip.
And they're not just pallet swaps of existing characters either, they tried to add and expand on the already existing Deathsmiles roster with new and unique shots.
Plumeria for example lets you put your familiar stationary, you can then hide inside it while it acts as a perfect shield against revenge bullets. It's very unique and new, especially for a very established game that hasn't seen new content since 2010.
Two new soundtracks for the game too, one is composed of existing Mahou Otome tracks and another is an arranged soundtrack that blends the Mahou Otome tracks with the Deathsmiles soundtrack.
Overall very high effort DLC.
I used Souffle for this run. She's very strong and her shot can angle in the direction you move towards, giving her good coverage too. Probably the easiest to clear Death Mode out of the new characters?
Her down side is that her lock-on shot sucks, it's very weak and your meter drains -very- slowly while using it, making hyper recharges extremely hard.
So basically very good for survival and more sucky for score (she's extremely good in the Version 1.1 modes though).
Deathsmiles gives you many options to adjust the difficulty to your skill level.
The first 6 stages let you pick between level 1 to 3 for the difficulty. If you pick level 3 four times you activate Death Mode Level 1, and unique revenge bullets start appearing that you can cancel with your option familiar.
There is an optional very hard EX stage you can pick after the first 6 stages. Going there increases your Death Mode level by 1, putting you in Death Mode Level 2 if you were already at Level 1.
Going to the final stage then puts you in Death Mode Level 3, which is the hardest you can make the game on the Vanilla release.
On Death Mode Level 3 enemies shoot an insane amount of revenge bullets and the final bosses also get buffed. Jitterbug even gains an additional phase with a crazy final attack.
Deathsmiles is a very complex game when it comes to scoring so here's some textbooks to get you started on this course:
Mechanics: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=33625
Overview: https://www.trueachievements.com/game/Deathsmiles/walkthrough/6
Insane enemy item chart: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/649671696277569548/1004001897742598225/Dsmilesshotchart.jpg
All of this will be on the test.
Oversimplified tl;dr:
1) Kill each enemy with the right shot for more items to fill the hyper.
2) Hyper for more items and get to fever mode asap at 10k.
3) Spawn tons of items right before the hyper ends for an instant refill.
4) Break items into skulls during hyper, don't break them outside hyper.
4) ????
5) Profit.
There are actually still more advanced scoring mechanics that are simply not explained anywhere in English, like the tutorial bug, the item limit or the burn points combined with enemy i-frame scoring. There is a very good Japanese guide that explains everything though! - https://deathsmiles.game-info.wiki/
Maybe I or someone else can translate all of that onto the wiki at some point.
Twitch VOD with live commentary:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1640944848
Buy the game on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1884300/Deathsmiles_III/
00:00 - Intro
01:45 - Stage A-1 - Port Town
04:24 - Stage C-2 - Volcano
08:12 - Stage B-1 - Forest of the Lost
11:20 - Stage A-2 - Graveyard
14:07 - Stage C-1 - Lake Shore
16:45 - Stage B-2 - Swamp Wastes
20:12 - Intermission
21:09 - EXTRA - Gorge
26:54 - FINAL - Hades Castle
40:06 - Ending & Credits
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