Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi

Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi

Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi is a bullet hell shoot-em-up developed by CAVE in 2002. Its primary defining gameplay attributes are its highly complex bullet patterns, its proximity-based chip scoring system, and the lock-on focus shot utilized by the player ships, Tiger Sword and Panzer Jager. It was developed alongside DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou and runs on the same engine, as well as utilizing many of the same sound effects and explosion graphics. Both games are also notable for the switch to pre-rendered 3D models as sprites, giving the games a distinctive (and grittier) look compared to the studio's previous works, DonPachi and DoDonPachi.

Basic Gameplay

Ketsui is a three-button game with two playable ships and five levels. Completing all five levels under certain conditions will trigger a second loop of the game, of which there are two variations - one of which ends in fighting the True Last Boss. The scoring system involves killing enemies up close to increase a multiplier, and lock-on killing enemies to "cash out" the multiplier, awarding points based on the multiplier and the point value of the enemy killed.

Controls

• A (Press): Fires standard shots from the ship and options
• A (Hold): Slows the ship down, fires a laser from the main ship and a lock-on shot from its options
• B: Fires a limited-use bomb, which does large amounts of damage and makes the ship invincible for some time
• C: Auto-fire for the standard shot

Characters

Ketsui contains two playable ships, Tiger Schwert and Panzer Jäger. Tiger Schwert has a wide shot, locks onto enemies faster, and has a slower movement speed. Panzer Jäger has a straight shot, locks onto enemies slower, and has a faster movement speed. Both ships have the same hitbox size.

Resources

Ketsui uses lives to measure player health, and starts the player at two lives. An extra life is granted once at 20,000,000 points, and again at 45,000,000 points. Specific strategies also grant the player additional extra lives (see Ketsui/Extends)

(picture off to the side shows a screenshot with the lives circled. caption: the current number of lives is shown at the top of the screen

The player starts off with three bombs at the beginning of each life. Additional bombs are granted by killing specific enemies. (see Ketsui/Bombs)

(picture off to the side shows a screenshot with the bombs circled. caption: the current number of bombs is shown at the bottom of the screen)

The player will be given three bombs after respawning from death, regardless of how many bombs they had before. Those playing for pure survival are advised to use a bomb if they feel death is unavoidable, in order to maximize how many bombs will be available to them throughout their playthrough.

Items

Ketsui has four different types of items: power up items which increase the strength of the player's shot, bomb items which grant the player an additional bomb, 1up items which grant the player an extra life, and chips which increase the scoring multiplier.

(pictures of the items)

Scoring System

Full details: Ketsui/Scoring

The scoring system works differently during the second loop! see Ketsui/Scoring/Second Loop

Killing enemies awards points. There are two multipliers which can increase the amount of points given, known as the boss multiplier and the enemy multiplier. The boss multiplier is equal to the value of all chips picked up during the stage, and is used when killing the boss, and the enemy multiplier (shown below the boss multiplier) is used when killing enemies with the lock-on shot.

Picking up lots of high-value chips is the key to increasing your multiplier. Killing enemies up close with the standard shot awards higher value chips - up to five, depending on distance. After this, a brief countdown is initiated, shown under the multipliers. During this countdown, killing enemies with the lock-on shot will also award chips, of the same value, regardless of distance, until the countdown runs out.

This cycle - killing with the standard shot to start a countdown, killing enemies with the lock-on shot to cash out the multiplier and gain more chips, and repeating once the countdown runs out - is the primary building block of Ketsui's scoring system.

Advanced Gameplay

Second Loop

Completing all five levels under certain conditions will trigger a second loop of the game. There are two variations of the second loop, called the Omote loop and the Ura loop. During the second loop, the scoring system entirely changes (see Ketsui/Scoring/Second Loop)

The Omote loop is reached upon beating the game with no continues, and with a sum of deaths and bombs used less than or equal to six.

The Ura loop is reached upon beating the game with no continues, with no deaths and no bombs used, and with at least 120,000,000 points. The Ura loop ends with a fight against Doom, the True Last Boss.