New Astro City Tated, Ibara is here!

Well, we got the monitor rotated and Ibara running. The game is very pretty and also very hard. Now its time to dig in and learn to play. Ive started to read some more about this game and it seems very complex. It seems you want to not get many of the power ups as this makes the game extremely hard. You also want to bomb more and to get more medals and points.

Hi game play video:

Dyne2.avi

Player 1 and player 2 are 2 different characters with 2 different ships. And 4 options for each ship.

Player 1 = Bond's Ship:

* Default (ST)
- Shot: Twin firing stream, upgradeable to double threeway.
- Bomb: Wide Napalm. Amount of bomb fragments affects width and travelling distance - up to half-bomb gives two streams, more than half-bomb adds one extra stream to each side
- Option: All Options are fixable upon holding the A button
- Speed: Faster of the two default ships
* (A)
- Shot: Twin firing stream, upgradeable to double threeway. Bullet size seems bigger than default. Shot Reinforced power?
- Bomb: Concentrated Napalm. Amount of bomb fragments affects travelling distance and width as default. However, according to a Japanese forum, this bomb can be controlled like the Silver Sword's Napalm in Garegga. So far, I haven't ben able to do that though :?
- Option: All Options are unfixable.
- Speed: Slightly slower than default.
* (B)
- Shot: Gets a penetration bullet with higher Shot levels
- Bomb: Homing Twin Napalm. Two homing missiles are fired which leave a trail of napalm in their path. Amount of bomb fragments affects homing missile travelling distance.
- Option: Side Options are fixable, while the back Option is free.
- Speed: Slightly faster than default.
* (A+B)
- Shot: Shot is wider than the default.
- Bomb: Area blast attack, similar to Gain's Weapon in Garegga. Amount of bomb fragments determines how long the bomb "burns" for.
- Option: The back Option is fixable, while the side Options are free.
- Speed: Fastest of all subtypes.


Player 2 = Dyne's Ship

* Default (ST)
- Shot: Three way, upgradeable to five way (?)
- Bomb: Wide Napalm. Speed of napalm is a lot slower than 1P, but burns longer. Amount of bomb fragments affects napalm cluster width and burn length.
- Option: All Options are fixable upon holding the A button
- Speed: Slowest of the two default ships
* (A)
- Shot: Bullet size seems bigger than default. Shot Reinforced power?
- Bomb: Fast short ranged cluster bomb, similar to the yellow cluster bomb in Raiden DX, but fired ahead of the ship.
- Option: All Options are unfixable.
- Speed: Slowest of all subtypes (ack -_-;; )
* (B)
- Shot: Shot width becomes a lot more narrow and concentrated.
- Bomb: Short ranged cluster bomb, similar to the yellow bomb in Raiden DX, but dropped underneath your ship (like in Raiden DX).
- Option: Side Options are fixable, while the back Option is free.
- Speed: Slightly faster than default.
* (A+B)
- Shot: Shot is wider than the default. Much, much wider -_-;;
- Bomb: Area blast attack, similar to Gain's Weapon in Garegga. Amount of bomb fragments determines how long the bomb "burns" for. Dyne's area blast is a double explosion, while Bond's is a single explosion. Apparently, this is the strongest bomb out of al subtypes, even at minimum bomb fragment amount.
- Option: The back Option is fixable, while the side Options are free.
- Speed: Faster than default.

[BOMB]
By just tapping bomb, you use the standard napalm style bomb wave. Regular bombs are almost instantaneous (depending on the ship type you have selected). They do not make you invincible, like Garegga, so caution must be exercised.

You can also use the hadou (wave cannon) bomb, which takes up a full bomb. To use the hadou, you hold down the bomb button instead of tapping it, and to fire the hadou, you release the bomb button. The hadou travels straight, and follows the targeting trail in front of your ship when activated. Anything that touches the hadou's vaportail and the ball-shaped explosion will be destroyed, and bullets will nullify and turn into Rose Medals.
There is a delay with the hadou, as it needs to be activated and then released. The hadou missile moves very slowly as well, so it is not used as a panic weapon, but more of a scoring weapon, since it can be used to destroy large groups of drones that drop items, and to generate Rose Medals from nastier boss patterns.

[SHOT]
Garegga style: rapidly tapping the Shot button, then holding the Shot button will alter the firing rate. Also known as Shot Frequency, covered in detail in the Garegga ST.

The stronger the weapon is, the higher rank is increased by it.
From lowest to highest (this is speculation:):

* Machine Gun
* Homing [weak, but rapid and seeking]
* Five Way [higher in power due to five shots, great at point blank(?)]
* Rocket [piercing]
* Gatling [faster Machine Gun, think Juno in Einhander]
* Burner [slower to fire, high powered]
* Napalm [slow firing, explosive missile, high power, residual damage]

If you're going to go with weaker weapons, you might need to raise your Shot level up a bit to compensate. You seem to be able to get a lot of Machine Gun, Rocket and FiveWay in the game, so I don't think that waiting for these weapons to appear is going to be a problem.

[FORMATION]
* SEARCH: Drop five small bomb fragments, then pick up an Option powerup.
All the equipped options will lock onto and fire at enemies within range. Usually targets boss main weakpoints.

* WIDE: Drop five Option powerups, then pick up the sixth Option powerup.
The side Options will point out to fire into a wide V shape (similar to Dyne Type D's main Shot), while the rear Option will retain it's usual behaviour depending on your ship subtype.

* ROLLING: Drop five Medals, then pick up an Option powerup.
Your Options will spin around while firing. Goddamned useless >_<;;

* BACK: Drop five small Shot powerups, then pick up an Option powerup.
Your Options will point to fire at your tail, in a formation similar to TFIV's unpowered up Tailgun, or Silvergun's Back-Wide (about 30degrees out back). Again, also useless >_<;;

[SCORE]
If you use an Option to pick up a powerup, it will change that side's weapon. You can also exploit this to get 10,000pts for identical powerups. It's a little messy though, so don't always rely on it, as it can swap weapons around.

[1UP]
The only 1-up item in the game (not sure) can be obtained by taking apart level 4's mid-boss. You must damage both wings to the point they are shooting 3 long rows of bullets at you before destroying the boss.
Destroy all parts of the stage 4 midboss before destroying the main body to drop the Extend, the only one available in the game.

[MEDAL]
Before the medal value can go up, you must have the screen absolutely, positively clear of medals. If you just blew up a large 4x4 building and now have a pile of 5000 medals, you'll need to get them all cleaned up before a 6000 one will appear. Otherwise the next medal that shows will be the current value, 5000.

[RANK]
The more important things to consider are how long you've played without dying, how many lives you have in stock and what weapons you're carrying. The longer you play with a couple of lives, napalm and burner options the faster rank goes up- if you know you can make it to the next extend it's best to plan a suicide early and often.
Also, the higher rank gets the less effect an eventual death will have so you should plan periodic suicides and keep rank as low as you can while still scoring well.

[TIPS]
Grabbing weapon change items gives a moment of invulnerability similar to Zanac Neo. Bullets will be turned into roses if you come into contact with them during this. That's the "aura flash". It only happens for a split second when you collect a new subweapon, or when your ship increases Shot power level. The aura is very very shortranged, and it is not a recommended strategy to rely on constant weapon changes a-la Zanac Neo. That "aura flash" will do huge amounts of damage to bosses too. If you get killed on a boss make sure you grab your power ups right on top of them.
You get 50,000 pts for waiting for the little ship to drop off the stage 1 boss and destroying it before it leaves the bottom of the screen (not so sure you have to wait for it to fall).
The Ground turrets in stage 2 will not fire at you if you fly close to them, or you can take them out just as they are appearing on screen. Their effective "blanking" range (the minimum range you can be within for them to stop firing) shortens as rank increases. At default range, it's likely to be around 1/2 to 1 1/4 ship lengths.

Some good posts on Shmups forums:

Ibara strategy

More Ibara Info