Espgaluda II

Espgaluda II (エスプガルーダII) is a bullet hell shoot'em up originally released by Cave in the arcades in 2005 as a sequel to Espgaluda. An Xbox 360 release, titled Espgaluda II Black Label, was released in 2010 in Japan.

Espgaluda II Main Section
(Info here regarding Arcade, Black Label and Arrange modes.)

Espgaluda II 'Omake Mode' as a Shmup training tool
In the home ports of Espgaluda II*, clearing the main game (including Novice Mode, and credit feeding is OK) unlocks "Omake Mode" which translates to "Bonus Mode".

On the face of it, Omake Mode is a fun and easy mode of the game to mess around with for a short time.

However when approached correctly this mode provides an unparalleled Shmup training tool for players of any experience.

Using a few simple strategies, players are able to practice and observe all of the patterns from Espgaluda II- acknowledged to be some of the most difficult of any Cave games- at the slower speed of 'Kakusei'.

(*home ports are on Xbox 360 and Nintendo Switch as at Feb 2022)

Basics of Omake Mode for Training
The player character is surrounded by an invisible circle within which any bullets will turn red. Let's refer to this as the 'Red Zone'. Any bullets in the Red Zone will be cancelled into Items (green gems and/or gold) when ANY enemy is destroyed. It does not matter which enemy shot the bullets. Any enemy destroyed will have all of the on-screen bullets that it fired cancelled into Items, regardless of whether they are in the Red Zone around the player.

The Kakusei gem count has a maximum value of 500. When entering Kakusei mode, all bullets within the Red Zone will be cancelled into Items. When exiting Kakusei mode MANUALLY (ie with gem count above zero) all bullets within the Red Zone will be cancelled into Items.

Defeating any section of a boss life bar while NOT in Kakusei will cancel the on-screen bullets into GEMS.

There is no bomb button in Omake mode. Instead, any time the player is hit by a bullet, the Guard Barrier will be activated, and will continue to be 'held down' until the player hits the Kakusei button which ends it, or until the barrier gauge runs out. At that point the normal 'beam attack' of the Guard Barrier is fired. While the player character is surrounded by the Guard Barrier, any bullets within the small visible circle of the Guard Barrier are cancelled into Items, starting with Gems and proceeding to Gold when Gems reach 500. When the Gold counter reaches 1000, the Guard Barrier Gauge will be refilled by around 40%. If the gold counter reaches 1000 while the Guard Barrier Gauge is full, the player character will be surrounded by a special frame and all items collected will have 1000 added to their point value.

Kakusei Training in Omake
Because of the frequency with which bullets are cancelled into Items in Omake Mode, the Gem counter will easily and quickly reach the maximum of 500 during the stage. Because of the length of time that 500 Gems will let the player remain in Kakusei, 500 is more than enough to last through the attacks of any larger enemy, and enough to last through most single sections of any Boss life bar.

The player is therefore invited to proceed through the most difficult attacks in the game in full Kakusei mode, to practice and observe the patterns in slow motion.

There are 3 simple methods that enable the player to extend the amount of time they spend in Kakusei, allowing them to see out almost the entirety of any Boss encounter in full slow motion.


 * 1) Shifting out of Kakusei in order to finish off any Boss life bar section will immediately refill the Gem gauge to 500, due to the amount of bullets cancelled plus some from the Boss sprite. Obviously this is not without risk as the bullets will speed up, but done carefully it should be relatively safe.


 * 2) During any given pattern while in Kakusei, if the player feels that they are about to be hit and expend Guard Barrier Gauge, they can manually cancel out of Kakusei and quickly back in. This will cancel all bullets in the Red Zone twice, and provide a safety buffer without expending Guard Barrier Gauge. Doing this does accelerate the rate that the Gem count falls, but done sparingly it should not make a huge difference.


 * 3) When Gems have run out, the player can deliberately hit a bullet to activate the Guard Barrier and then charge through enemy bullets while invincible so that they are cancelled back to Gems. Done during a particularly dense pattern, and especially at point-blank above a Boss sprite, this will refill the Gems almost instantly. The player then has a choice of whether to cancel out of Guard Barrier and continue in Kakusei, or expend Guard Barrier to pump up the large Item Counter at the top of the screen which is important for scoring in Omake Mode.

Scoring in Omake
Scoring in Omake has some value in use as a training mode, as it will help to reach the Extends which in turn provide more Guard Barrier Gauge.

Scoring is very simple: The value of the large Item Counter at the top of the screen will be added to every item picked up WHILE GEMS ARE AT 500. In other words, it acts as an incentive not to go into Kakusei where possible.

As the counter is re-set every stage, it makes sense to use the Guard Barrier on some large enemies early in the stage, to cancel their dense attacks into Item value. The player can then proceed with Gems at 500 and collect the Item Counter point value for every item received.

Espgaluda II Other Sections
(Other info here)