[DEVIL BLADE REBOOT] Inferno ALL CLEAR [CC Commentary] (Score: 20,597,936)

I had been hearing great stuff about Devil Blade Reboot. The extravagant graphics (Vanillaware guy, not surprising), great music, blood-pumping stage design, simply awesome. They're right! Though, my evaluation will be a bit harsher than the others. I LOVE IT in Inferno and also kinda HATE IT! Controls first: You can move, shoot the wide shot with max speed, shoot the narrow shot with slower speed (you can change the controls from the mode switch style to the Touhou style), and bomb. You won't see me bombing in this run because it's totally disabled in Inferno. I'll explain it later. Precise, functional and as basic as the shots look, they surprisingly have their own intrigues like the Narrow Shot as an aura-like range for surrounding your ship. Note that there is no benefit in doing stack-shooting between the two shots in this game DPS-wise. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a doujin soft shmup. It's a style that is easier to identify on the 2000s era, where the meanness is at the in-between of CAVE and Compile. Count Touhou 6 as one, for example. Non-Touhou ones tend to be on the faster side, though. This is the niche this game's Normal Mode lands. Bombs, shields, Touhou-kind amount of score extends, must be because I played the difficulty order in reverse, but Normal is run-of-the-mill when put side-by-side with great shmups. Also great, but not memorable enough to be considered excellent. That's why the game has Hard and Inferno. I'll be blunt: I'm not a fan of how Devil Blade Reboot handles its difficulty differences. There are 3 pattern difficulties: Lv. 1, Lv. 2 and Lv. 3. Berserk acts as the "Rank system". On Berserk, it's the default Lv. + 1. Inferno is always stuck at Lv. 3, even when you're in Deadline. That means Inferno won't go any harder, though it's also true that Inferno won't go any easier either. Hard is something a veteran can appreciate more despite pattern-wise the difficulty difference is not that notable. It's just the extend count is 2x stingier. It still has shields and bombs, however, so resource-wise it's as lenient as one can expect from a doujin shmup that decides to bite back. Inferno? NO BOMBS! NO SHIELDS! DON'T SCORE? YOU DIE! It's as if people still complained that Hard is still too easy! Yet Shigatake didn't want to crank up the actual pattern difficulty, must be due to the scoring system. The resource adjustment is so brazen it makes Inferno so special in this 2020s! In practice, well, with some routing the don't score = die mechanic is not that cruel; many formations let you recover back to Berserk quickly and once you're at it the Berserk is hard to fall off assuming you don't get hit. I mean it. I do miss some Rayforce-level cruelty. The good news is Devil Blade Reboot's stage design is that awesomely designed to accommodate no-miss no-bomb. Peak! The thing that makes this mode easier than Hard is because you can't bomb, you also can't boost. Pure pew pew pew and maneuvering. It really offloads the routing for boost activation. So refreshing in this Toaplan formula-infused market, you know? The most fascinating thing is how the stage design accommodate the scoring system to the point of comedy. Finish enemies close = max multiplier and Berserk boosts it further. Guess what? Getting close is often so safe when you pointblank at the center 80% of the time you're SAFE! When you properly analyze the stage design it does look goofy! The enemies can ram you or shoot you directly and what-not but nope, they're being polite and let you stay there and shoot them in melee range. This even works for the final boss. So funny! This gives flexibility for the enemy formations. Like, it's so varied and creative with unique solutions too. Staying still, rush in, tap dodge, it's arranged masterfully. These are mostly consistent too with healthy does of RNG. ...EXCEPT STAGE 1! I swear that Stage 1 is the most difficult stage in this game just by the sheer fact of how plentiful the RNG is in this stage alone! The 1st enemy wave, the boss lasers, while you gotta move fast too! It's overall not the worst RNG in shmup ever, but goodness, I need to get out of the Deadline zone here! Pattern-wise the difficulty not that ideally calibrated either. A good bulk of the difficulty is on Stage 1, then it jumps down on Stage 2, then kinda plateaus until the Stage 4 boss where the difficulty RNG spike rises again. I guess it has reached its meanness limit. Complaints aside, it is a fantastically made remake. I guess having an existing setting to be based off has its advantages? As a standalone, this is godly! Difficulty calibrations aside. It's a must play! At least, on Hard. Inferno is for us masochistic veterans :P By the way, Raynex of Grand Cross Renovation was one of the game's testers. I guess Raynex and Shigatake know each other. This is played on PC. #stg #shmup