Incarnation Erased from History - Stage 5 & 6 Inhumane NMNB (not NC)

0:00 Stage 5
6:15 Stage 6

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Been fooling around with this game that came out a week or so ago. It has pretty decent music and cool ideas for patterns, but it's kinda unbalanced. You can think of it as furry Len'en, I guess.

Some of these patterns are quite unreasonable, especially on Inhumane (the Lunatic equivalent), so I didn't bother entertaining the idea of doing NMNBNC.

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In this game, you can pick between 2 playables and 3 partners. (There's also an unlockable third playable, but he's so busted that most boss attacks melt before they get a single bullet off. I wasn't particularly interested in letting the game play itself.) The playable you choose affects your main shot as well as your bomb, while the partner you choose supplies your options and flashbomb.


Flashbombs give you a small amount of iframes, just like Len'en, but you get many more of them (because your grazebox actually, you know, exists) and they're more varied in their abilities - they're not just bullet cancels that vary in shape.

I used Renka + Taito for both runs. This combination is pretty much the damage-rush shot type.
- Renka (that's the girl in black, and your playable character) fires those slow red piercing shots that do high damage.
- Taito (that's the furry guy in the black suit) supplements your main shot with additional missiles.
- Taito's flashbomb is literally a gunshot. When you press C, a reticule will appear over an enemy (I'm not sure how targets are prioritized. Also, if no enemies are on screen, it defaults to dead center); be warned that this reticule will remain there and will NOT track the enemy if it is moving. After a short delay, the reticule explodes, cancelling nearby bullets and dealing a sizeable chunk of damage to anything caught within. This flashbomb is particularly good because it only takes 25 graze to charge up - the other partners' ones cost 60+ graze, so you can't abuse them as much for iframes or damage.

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I really like the stage 5 boss's concepts and theme. Some of the patterns need a little work on the mechanics, and others are a bit... broken, but overall, it has a lot of potential to be a really cool fight.
- If the second spell isn't killed before the charge animation ends, Eiji will swap you with one of the other clones. Most of the pattern is radially symmetric, but the rice rings aren't, and you can get warped into a bullet if the swap happens while you're inside the ring.
- Third spell is clearly a reference to Yabusame's final from EE, with the additional caveat that the two upright screens (corresponding to the lower half of the screen) are mirrored, so your left/right controls are flipped.
- Fourth spell is the only instance of a spell where you have multiple hitboxes I've ever seen that isn't complete dogshit. (Looking at you, Python, with the QPU-alignment spell from that Tenkai script.) This one's purely aimed + static, so find a good route and it should be 100% consistent.

Stage 6, on the other hand, is... yeah...
- Your shot gets powered up after the second, third and fourth spells. You gain two squares after the third spell which function identically to Misumaru's card in UM. Flashbomb recharge rate is boosted after the fourth spell. These buffs, as well as your flashbomb, are disabled during the survival card.
- The first non is complete garbage and I only get past it about 1 in 10 times, on average. The random movement + screenshake and you have an absolute nightmare. Please let me know if there's actually a better way to do this, because I genuinely have no idea. [EDIT: the creator posted the intended method to dodge this attack on his twitter. It still seems pretty inconsistent, so...]
- Yes, the stars move randomly on the third spell. It can be really easy or completely stupid. If you get caught in a tight spot with no flashbomb ready your run is over.
- Fourth non stumped me for a long time, but this seems like the best way to do it. If it isn't killed in time, the boss will summon more giant swords, this time from the top left corner of the screen, and obviously that'll kill you. I have two ways to approach this depending on whether I enter the non with a flashbomb ready or not, but the idea is roughly the same regardless.
- I timeout the final because the third phase is humanly impossible to dodge, and the phases helpfully don't auto-progress with time. It's possible to capture this spell if you pick a different shot combo (there's a flashbomb which just gives you a shield that lasts for quite some time), but your damage suffers so much on the rest of the fight that it's not happening.

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I might consider doing stages 4 and 7 another time (yes, there is a hidden stage 7, accessible if you beat stage 6 on hard/inhumane with 5 lives or more remaining), but I'm done for now. They're pretty ridiculous. (EoSD books but it lasts 3x as long and with higher bullet speed, no thanks)