Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi - Ura 2-ALL (Type A) - 432,703,606 Pts

Finally, after almost 2 years of play, here it is. This is far and away the hardest thing I've ever done in a video game, things like my Omote 350M can't even hold a candle to this. 00:00 - 1-1 03:01 - 1-2 06:09 - 1-3 10:04 - 1-4 14:55 - 1-5 20:10 - Loop 1 Final Boss 21:57 - 2-1 24:25 - 2-2 27:29 - 2-3 31:24 - 2-4 36:10 - 2-5 41:27 - Loop 2 Final Boss 42:41 - True Last Boss, Evaccaneer DOOM 44:46 - Ending I have so many things I could say about this game, a lot more than I could fit in the description here or in subtitles, but anyway: The first time I saw this game was Jaimers' 295M Omote run that he did for Calice, back in what feels like early 2024. At the time I'd "tried" (played 1 credit of) a couple of Cave games and kind of hated them lol, I really thought I was more of a dadshmup guy, but something about Ketsui really captured my attention. So when I was just getting into shmups/arcade games around that time, I made a little list on my phone of all the game's that I'd like to clear, mostly realistic goals like a Gradius 1-ALL, DoDonPachi 1-ALL, etc., but I also wrote "Ketsui (Ura loop 2-ALL) (maybe in 10 years)". Just about 2 years after writing that, it feels very strange to have actually done it... and with a much higher score than I could've ever hoped for! I'd like to write a bit about the process of actually going for this clear too, as whilst the game itself is obviously ludicrously difficult, I found the hardest part of it to actually be the mental game (which I feel people don't really tend to talk about with shmups?). Not being able to make a single mistake in the first loop is a LOT harder than it sounds. When I first started playing Ura, I read what PEG and others had said about the loop requirement being the hardest part of the game, how it's just not fun, etc. etc., and thought "how bad could it be?" The issue is that once you get deep into the game on Ura pace, especially in stage 5, you know that a single mistake anywhere will send you all the way back to the start of the game. It kind of reminds me of Getting Over It, or other "rage games” in a way lol It's like playing the entire loop with 0 lives and 0 bombs, so even if you make it to the final pattern you could still screw up just once and be done for (and that has happened to me!). Then once you actually enter Ura, it just gets even worse! You enter the loop loaded up with 6 bombs, and if you die with all those in stock it's like taking 2 deaths at once, so the first few stages of the loop are incredibly scary. Even though they're mechanically not that hard compared to the later stages, you want to play them very safely after all of that effort getting into the loop. My resource route just aims to reach the 2-3 midboss without dying, I'm fine with using every bomb I have as long as it means getting a safe no miss to that midboss. Everything left in the game after the 2-3 midboss is incredibly difficult, so my only goal resource-wise is to use all my bombs before dying. I had some real issues with motivation at points, seems a bit silly to be saying that about a hobby that you do for FUN!!!, but I started to feel like grinding out tons of runs just for them to die in 1-4 or 1-5 was simply a waste of my time. And after my PB the other week, my interest in the game just completely disappeared. I was seriously going to give up, so I just left the game cold turkey for a few weeks. But after thinking about it, I decided to give the game one last go. I'd lost enough muscle memory to where I couldn't really play the game anymore, so I started refreshing my memory, playing a bit of Ura one day, a bit of loop 1 the next, until I managed to get a scrubby Ura practice clear just yesterday, and then somehow THIS today??? But even with all that, I'd say the biggest problem I had with the game overall was just how badly I wanted to clear it lol I found that I got so much more nervous with this game than basically any other game I've played, just because of how much I like it and how much I wanted to clear it. I feel like a big part of why I was able to clear here was because I genuinely didn't believe I could clear! This was my first credit of the day, and I 100% expected to die to something in 1-3, and then go back to practice. When I got to the 1-4 boss I remember thinking that it was nice to be able to get this far, but I wouldn't have any chance to enter Ura, and I was thinking the same all through Ura, it only got real in 2-5. Out of description space, but a bit about the run: I'm really not happy with this loop 1, even though it was my best scoring one ever (somehow), it just felt very sloppy, especially the start of 1-5 where I straight up forgot my route lol. The beginning of Ura also wasn't great, but everything after the 2-3 midboss was just incredible. Highlights include the 2-4 ending, 2-4 boss, and the final bosses. I got scammed out of the 2-3 extend, so this was actually a 6 miss Ura, which I consider VERY good.