Not really KB. The way I see it, it's more of a way to say: 'Go for it, you can definitely beat this'.
Yeah, this is really all I meant. Just some kind of silly encouragement. I think Sakurei's definitely good enough to clear the game with some practice. He's been cranking out so many NMNB stage runs, etc.
Then again, I
do often imply that the game is a lot easier than most people make it out to be, so I can see how that comes across as trivializing the accomplishment. I'd say the same thing about pretty much every game in the series though, so I'm not just singling out UFO.
Rather I'm trivializing all of them. Ack. It's something I firmly believe though. People tend to view them as a test of reflexes, pure skill, etc. I think memorization takes you much further. (90fps runs gave me this mentality.) Maybe my point isn't all that good though. I say memorization makes things easy, but I guess you could also say that memo is the "high effort" approach to something while just trying to dodge it is easy, even if the actual dodging is hard. So when I say "It's easy if you memorize a bunch of tricks," I guess someone else might say "okay, but the memorization itself is difficult." Hmm. Maybe my perception is a little borked. I've been enjoying the hated Psikyo games, after all.
Since we're talking about practice in here, my usual method is to learn strategies for each stage and practice them repeatedly, then do full runs with no restarts, regardless of screw-ups, because I never really know how I'll perform on something until I've done it in a real run (and I get nervous so easily). Once I've determined what kind of performance is actually "mandatory," I'll restart if I think I've made too many mistakes for the run to have any hope.
My overall strategy for approaching this is learn the stage parts to 4 and 5 as best I can so that once I get a run past Stage 2, I can do ok in 3 then beast 4 and 5 and bomb Murasa and Shou giving me enough lives/bombs to bomb through Byakuren since I consistently only die once to LFS. So an attempt session consits of refreshing those 2 stages then grinding out an attempt that makes sufficient progress, I figure I'll learn Stage 2 reasonably well this way (and in fact, I have learned how to do the pre-Kogasa midboss stuff).
So this would be a bad approach, in my opinion. Not only do you get no real practice in the last stages, but the restarts are really uncalled for (especially with such strict requirements). But... eh. Everyone practices differently. I wouldn't want to try to tell people what to do there. (Though I will say this - if you you admit to frequently messing up stage 1, even being offended when Zengeku said it should happen infrequently, do you think you will have the consistency to "beast" stages 4 and 5 so reliably, and die only once to LFS, having only experienced them in practice mode?)
Most of the time I simply don't care for full runs because those involve playing through the boring parts of the game.
I was the same before I kinda stopped playing them altogether. PoDD/FV aside, I think none of them have been cleared more than 5 times, and some just once. Actually, I think that may in fact be a very common mentality for anyone who doesn't play for score. Just judging from the usual discussion on this forum, at least. I think it's strange, in a way.
Bleh. Another wall of text. In any event, no offense intended.
