[Progear/プロギアの嵐] JP Type B-β 1-ALL Ending Level 6 (Score: 11,532,940) [CC Commentary]

I LOVE Progear! That being said, I personally find Progear to be the most frustrating CAVE game I've ever cleared yet. It's less to do with the overall difficulty, which is more lenient considering the amount of lives you possibly can get in a single loop, but more about the wrong reasons the game is difficult. I'll explain later. This version is the Capcom Arcade Stadium version. It works. It's CAVE's first horizontal shmup and they nailed it. You can shoot and you can bomb. It's your usual CAVE formula. But many interviews have stated that they doubt bullet hells work for horizontals. I think it's due to how much they respect what makes hori shmups good. Tight maneuvers, multi-directional scrolling is also much more common in horis than verts, and the more general acceptance of multi-directional assault, which where CAVE brought out the unholy shot type that will scare off many arcade operators... SEARCH OPTION. Search / homing shots are not new in shmups at the time, for example Gleylancer, but usually these are rare power ups or nerfed compared to other shots in exchange of reducing the need to aim especially in the arcades. The game's stage design is made with search focus shot in mind. Yeah, bullet hell that is as multidirectional as proper horis. CAVE sure love shmups so much they'll think that far! This shot type also gets reused in Ketsui. One can consider Progear as Ketsui 0. There is also the bullet cancelling mechanic. Enemies will cancel nearby bullets when they're defeated and it can chain out. It's both key to scoring and for survival, either by pure luck or planned with routing. This might had been planned in a hurry but it sure works in the game's favor! All praises aside, to me the game's achilles heel is this RNG! For enemy formation it's spot on, but on the bosses, boy, they love screwing with you. You must remember many possible patterns and what determines which comes out? Who knows!? I don't think it's by timer, it might be using coordinates or something! It's that unpredictable! Some does telegraph it quite early like the Stage 3 boss and its attack capsule, others you must memorize what to not do after each end of patterns! Of course, play Progear! It's very slightly easier on the CAVE difficulty scale, RNG aside. No, I'm not challenging 2nd loop! Speaking of regional differences, yes, JP is harder. From what I've read the HP count is higher on the JP version. But the US release removed the voice acting, and I don't like that. #stg #shmup #nintendoswitch