Eden's Aegis

Eden's Aegis

General Information
Eden's Aegis is the 6th game by x.x Game Room, is [Free to Play|Free To Play] and the 2nd installment in the Eden's Edge series. Like the developer's other games, it is a 2D shmup with heavy inspiration from CAVE's development and game design style. Eden's Aegis combines many ideas from a variety of games such as Mushihimesama, Espgaluda/ ESP_Ra.De., and the Touhou series by ZUN (or a magical girl + fantasy sort of style in general). It is available for Windows PCs and is compatible with Windows 10.

The game has 4 difficulty modes and a total of 4 characters to choose from (2 needing to be unlocked via clearing the game multiple times), each with unique shot types and abilities. The key mechanic in Eden's Aegis is a special attack unique to each character known as the Edge Shot. By consuming a meter (that refills after a short time), the player can unleash an additional volley of bullets at enemies, dealing extra damage. Enemies hit by the Edge Shot will turn blue for a short time, and killing an enemy in this state will convert all bullets fired by it into score items. Utilizing this ability skillfully is crucial to success. Nanathy and Maple's Edge Shots can also be cancelled by pressing the button again while active, allowing the meter to start refilling before it empties fully.

The game was officially released to itch.io on January 6th, 2010, however development of the game dates back as far as June 30th, 2008, according to the update notes provided in the game's Read_Me.txt file. The current version of the game is version 1.11, having been updated some time after version 1.10, which is dated in the same file at May 5th, 2010 (ver.1.11 is not noted/dated in the changelog).

Reviews of the game on its store page are positive, with players generally regarding it as a fun STG to play.

Controls
Note: Pausing during a run at any point will disable high score and replay saving!

Items
Scoring revolves around chaining by collecting score items. Defeating enemies as they are hit with your special shot will cause them to cancel all of their bullets on screen, converting the bullets into score items. This will also cause all items dropped by the enemy to be collected automatically instead of them falling down the screen.

Each score item collected will increase the Item Counter by 1 (regardless of size), but it will start to decrease if the too much time passes until the next item is collected. Triggering Auto-Guard (this game's version of autobombs) will reduce the counter to 2/3 of its current value and losing a life will reset it completely, so taking as few hits as possible is ideal for scoring. However, using a bomb manually will convert all onscreen bullets into small score items. Although no other score items will appear while the bomb is active, bombs may still be used to increase the counter more quickly - particularly late in the game.

Extends
There is also an additional 1-UP item on Stage 4 during the mid-boss, on the right side of the screen. Attacking it with your special shot will release it.

Survival
The game is relatively beginner friendly for survival play! Using the settings Guard ON, Wait ON will help greatly with achieving an All Clear. Guard ON will allow you to take extra hits, at the cost of only 1 bomb each. This effectively quadruples your starting lives without having to worry about manually bombing preemptively when in danger. Likewise, Wait ON will cause slowdown to occur when there are many bullets on the screen, which can make dodging dense patterns easier as well.

Holding Shot + Special can ensure a stream of increased constant damage overall, which can also aid in survival play. Once comfortable with a stage layout, you can also time using your special shot on large enemies, or during particularly difficult sections, in order to also get bullet cancels to clear the screen. Most bullet patterns are either aimed or static, so tap dodging will get you far.

Likewise, focusing on lightly scoring and playing for No Miss during the early stages can ensure you reach both score extends, giving you additional resources to work with. With Auto-Guard, you should have plenty of resources to clear the game with. Using Bombs to deal with difficult stage sections or end boss patterns faster (instead of relying on multiple Auto-Guard protections) can also be helpful.

Scoring
Scoring the game is a bit more complex, but your goal should be to create as many large bullet cancels as possible, without dropping your item chain too much.

Score Items

Score items come in two sizes in Eden's Aegis: small and large. Large items are dropped by killed enemies, and small items appear from bullets cancelled via bombing and killing enemies while they're blue (or killing them with the Edge Shot directly). Small items always magnet towards the player, but large ones will only do so if the enemy was killed while it was blue.

Note that some large enemies will cancel all bullets onscreen when killed. If one of these is destroyed with the Edge Shot, all onscreen bullets will turn into score items and not just the ones fired by that enemy.

Small items award 100 points when collected, and large items award 300 points. Each item collected also increases the Item Counter by 1, which is the main scoring purpose of these items.

Item Counter

The Item Counter is the counter visible in the top left corner of the screen that counts up as you collect score items, and decreases rapidly when not collecting items after a short period of time (similar to DoDonPachi's Hit Counter). While killing enemies quickly is preferable for survival, for scoring, keeping enemies alive for longer and then killing them with the Edge Shot will actually allow you to collect much more items than if you were to defeat them normally. Additionally, any enemy defeated in this manner will also have their items auto-collect to you, from anywhere on the screen.

For every enemy killed, an additional score bonus is awarded (on top of the enemy's base value) based on the Item Counter:

Additionally, defeating bosses quickly is important too, so utilizing your Shot and Special to deal extra damage quicker is vital. The Item Counter decreases slower during boss fights, but you still want to reach each phase transition as fast as possible, and collect a bullet cancel from those as well using the Edge Shot.

Clear Bonus

At the end of each stage, several bonuses are awarded: Clear Bonus: (stage number) x 100,000 Shield Bonus: Starts at 50,000 + (stage number) x 50,000 each stage, reduced by 1/4 of its starting value for each hit taken in the current stage. Taking 4 hits or more will result in a Shield Bonus of 0. Item Bonus: 300 x (number of large score items collected) + 100 x (number of small score items collected) Notably, the number of collected items only resets upon using a continue instead of losing a life. Additionally, 3 million points are awarded for every remaining life at the end of the game.

Trivia/Other

 * To instantly unlock every character and every stage in practice mode, create a blank text file in the game's directory and name it "yutori.txt".

References and Contributors
Eden's Aegis itch.io page: https://xxgameroom.itch.io/edens-aegis

x.x GameRoom's (Developer's) itch.io Page of all their works: https://xxgameroom.itch.io/

Contributors: Xeirla kobito