Deathsmiles part 2: The tweaks and twixes of Mega Black Label

K got the slightly-non-scrub clear of Deathsmiles (all stages Rank 2+, beat the penultimate boss for real and beat more of the final boss than I expected (only used 3 bombs I think)). Ultimately it's definitely not a game I'd call bullet hell (**danmakuu** \'>_<'/ kawaii densetsu gaiden, senpai!! *\^o^/*) - the multiple aiming directions and handful of bullet-clearing techniques make it much more about planning how to keep bullets from piling up than about herding or tap dodging or reading geometry. In fact, sans the final two bosses, if there are ever enough bullets on screen that I'd have to go into weave mode, I just bomb. That's how rarely it happens (if you're playing decent at least). Nearly all of my character movement is with the goal of orienting my option or lining up a shot - in the final playthrough I made good use of Sakura with her reverse option, alternating locking it into place as Double or Tail. This time I was playing Mega Black Label, a mode that tweaks the scoring and adds some content but not much else (I'll be referring to the base game as "vanilla").

Before we start discussing the updates, you might want to check out my full run-down of Deathsmiles' score items and Power-Up mode. There's one detail of the base game that I left out, which is that the Overall Counter maxes out at a value of 10,000, after which all item drops will be crowns (which can still break apart into tiaras and skulls when hitting the ground). I've seen this state called "Frenzy mode", but nothing in the game or manual uses that terminology. I didn't mention that because I forgot to, but it also has no bearing on gameplay incentives - Power-Up scoring is two orders of magnitude greater than Normal even without it, and raising the Overall Counter as quickly as possible is inherently beneficial.

Mega Black Label's two biggest changes are meant to send scores into the tropoplosphere: first, Power-Up can be deployed at any Item Counter value above 500, and second, the Overall Counter is never reset. The scoring is so inflated that the second extend now sits at 300 million, far above my top All-Clear score for vanilla. Better still, the Overall Counter is now displayed directly below the Item Counter (just like I suggested in my previous post!). There's also a new playable character, a new optional Chapter 4 stage, and Rank 999, a fourth selectable difficulty alternative for each stage.  I'm not going to go into the new content, but I ought to note that playing stages on the highest available rank is necessary to maximize score, because higher rank means more enemies, and more enemies means more items. Since I'm interested only in scoring within the confines of a 1CC, I pick stage rank based on what I think I can (learn to) survive, and work on score only after.

Into the weeds on the first point first: the lower threshold for Power-Up. Transparently, this opens up a lot more flexibility in planning where to deploy the transformation, and it likewise makes doing so less costly. It's quicker to charge and it's quicker to recharge. This has obvious survival utility (Power-Up still boosts attack and clears bullets when transitioning), but also allows burning off some Item Counter value before a big item flow is known to be coming up to provide a refill (for instance, I know the ogres in Chapter 5 are going to spill gallons of items, so I make sure I'm always coming up to them on empty). At the same time, there are new costs to consider. Fever mode, which you'll recall lasts as long as the Item Counter is kept at 1000, remains unchanged - from Item Counter values of 500 to 999, the player character remains in Normal mode, despite Power-Up now being available. And if the transformation is triggered in this range, the Item Counter will immediately drop to 500 and count down from there, meaning any progress toward Fever is lost and the transformation duration is artificially shortened. Because of that counterbalance, it's still worthwhile to think ahead to get the most out of the Item Counter.

This wouldn't be as meaningful if the Overall Counter was resetting to 0 at each of these refills, as it was previously established that OC is the driver of exponential scoring. A shortened Power-Up would mean lesser Overall Counter values and probably wouldn't be very consequential. Likely with that in mind, Mega Black Label drops the Overall Counter reset (that in vanilla Deathsmiles occurs at the end of Power-Up) and also drops the cap value of 10,000. Now the Overall Counter is free to grow and grow throughout the entire run of a game, ramping up the suspension of a scoring run while also sacrificing most of its atomic nature. Although it's value is preserved throughout, it's still only active (i.e. applied to item pick-ups and able to grow) during Fever or Power-Up modes. If the player loses a life, the Overall Counter takes a big hit (maybe 30%? hard to track precisely during gameplay). More significantly, for the entire duration of boss battles the value quickly drains. Bosses need to be killed as quickly as possible or milked for items (which is only possible in Power-Up) to keep the counter up. This also seems to discourage the all-Fever style of play I briefly mentioned in the previous write-up.

These changes are interesting, but as my descriptions probably convey, I haven't fully wrapped my head around the best ways to use them. More flexible planning is ultimately more complex planning, and the full playthrough suspension of the Overall Counter throws massive flux into potential scores. I remarked about the vanilla game that you can completely blow a stage and still get consistent results in the next - that's no longer the case in Mega Black Label. There's more happening in parallel, more choices available at every point and more potential for tradeoffs, all making it harder to identify where one strategy is outperforming another. At some level of play I could see myself enjoying this granularity, but at the moment I find it more satisfying experimenting with routes and timing my Power-Ups in vanilla, getting that more straightforward feedback.