ESP Ra.De. Arcade 1CC with Commentary - Yusuke, 15,284,340 (FbNeo)

Version without commentary:    • ESP Ra.De. Arcade 1CC  - Yusuke, 15,2...  

After 75+ hours of practice, I'm happy to be able to share my Arcade 1CC of Esp. Ra. De. with Yusuke, recorded using Retroarch/FBNeo.

This game gave me considerable trouble, moreso than any other shmup that I've played so far. The biggest obstacles are the bosses, which have significant RNG factors that make consistency very difficult to achieve. Izuna (stage 3 boss), Pleiades (stage 4 boss), and Ares/Garra can be very nasty to you with bad luck, which can make runs a very frustrating experience. All of the bosses past Stage 3 also have intense microdoging sections with few tricks to help make them easier. It feels like a skill test at some point as you are just barely surviving each onslaught.

Due to this, I actually switched from my Switch version of Esp. Ra. De. Psi to Retroarch/FBNeo because of the stark difference in input lag between the two. The Switch version has 4 frames of native input lag, and I was also using a PS4 to Switch converter for my arcade stick, which brought the total up to 5 frames. I'm not sure of the input lag for the shmuparch build I'm using, but I would guess it's at most 2 frames with runahead. This is a significant difference, and made the boss battles drastically easier (I'm not joking, this actually mattered a lot for me). Due to this, I had to record the run in real time rather than rely on a replay, so apologies for the crappy quality.

ESP Ra.De. is also quite unforgiving when it comes to deaths. Due to the way the power-up system works, dying at a bad spot will further penalize you by forcing you to bomb through the next part to regain full power. If you risk it and don't bomb, you may incur chain deaths. Since the bomb meter is the most important resource in this game, a chain death basically results in an immediate reset. You really, really need all of the resources you can stock for the Ares/Garra fight, and that means minimizing any and all mistakes all the way up to the final boss. It's honestly kind of brutal. Garra is brutal, brutal, brutal.

Speaking of the bomb system, it's really important to take advantage of the bomb recharges, which occur whenever you reach a certain threshold of gathered items. I make it a point to extend the limit as much as possible, so I have the longest bomb recharge I can obtain by the difficult parts of Stage 5.

In the future, I would like to make a more in-depth tutorial for the 1cc, aimed at newer players, which steps through all parts of the game. It's really difficult to point them out in real-time when doing commentary like this, and there are a lot of strategies I couldn't mention which really help. Of course, I'm definitely still a novice myself, but I think there is value in a guide that is "for noobs, made by noobs" that could make clearing this difficult game more approachable, especially given its accessibility and the quality of the port. I'll try to set aside some time for that in the future.

Thanks for watching!