qwerty741's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jeri II: Tower's End]

i personally don't have any issue with the controls since it's the same layout as WASD except slightly shifted; however i do have an issue with the difficulty.

in the first one although some areas were pretty strict with the timings almost everything was deterministic. you either do the jump exactly as needed or you fail, so it's all on you whether you make it or not.

for this one the sporadic enemy movements make it pretty much impossible to clear each level consistently.
the dark dragon enemies in particular are a pain, for multiple reasons.
using a sword is the best way to stun them, but unless you keep applying it the stun doesn't last nearly as long as needed, especially when you're surrounded (level 17 my beloathed).
even then there's a certain amount of endlag when you use it, but unfortunately their random movement patterns makes it so that sometimes they simply "walk around you" as you're trying to stun them with your sword, and they hit you from the back.
aside from that, i wish they weren't completely black because most of the levels they appear in also have a dark background which makes them difficult to see, adding to the annoyance.

i also can't handle the barrel enemies that you can only defeat by jumping on them.
i understand the idea is that sometimes they're used as moving obstacles that you can't remove and have to plan around, but honestly they're stuck in such narrow passages sometimes it's just not viable.
i ended up being forced to "cheese" some of them by enraging them with a charge shot just so i could dispatch them in a less precarious location on the level (i believe this wasn't possible in the first game?).
additional jank ensues, for obvious reasons.

spent a solid hour and a half playing this but eventually got stuck on critter catcher 2 (level 27) because i cannot figure out any way to get into the room in the bottom left without dying in the process (to clear the pillars to open the path to the exit).

level 17 (50 deaths) and level 26 (31 deaths) were particularly memorable for being overly unfair.
i also kind of dislike level 24 but that's just a me problem with the moving stars.

honestly i don't really have much constructive criticism this time because the game itself is solid, since it's based on the first one (which worked perfectly fine).
however i think the new mechanic ended up being detrimental for this kind of game (which requires extreme precision) due to their randomic patterns.
it ends up making it feel like the level design is lacking

EDIT: i've finally beaten the game. it changes entirely when you realize you can in fact defeat the blue enemies without jumping on them, if you hit them with 2 charged shots (the first one will only enrage them, and they're also immune to your sword).
the level immediately after is extremely painful because you cannot make a mistake due to the white dragon thing constantly chasing you, but at least it's not impossible.
also seems like the leaderboard saves your highest time (worst score) instead of your best one.

i don't even care how scuffed the last level is, i'm never doing that again lol:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlEckjVywFk

StufflingDX responds:

Thanks for the constructive in-depth review!

I'm not the dev, but I'll give my best advice. The patterns are all still static, but the knights/dust bunny guys will change path if you shoot them, always use the sword for consistent elimination! The brown ones also always wrap around edges, so you can accidentally make them a new path to go down if you're not careful.

If you ever find yourself playing this again, my advice for the two levels you struggled most with:

17: This one is tricky and mostly comes down to getting a feel for how they follow you, and making sure they stay grouped together as much as possible. Personally I go the biggest square route possible around the outside, making sure I use the gun and sword as I go to keep each new baddy clumped with their brothers. then go around and get the rest of the stars. It basically makes it one large enemy in concept.

creature catcher: To get in that room, hang out to the left of the bottom spike (safe) and use the swap block to manipulate the vertical robots path so he does a little stall in the top spike. Scooch into the room while he does his stall (move diagonally in for extra speed!)

My advice for the enemies you can only jump on is that the hitbox is generous when you're jumping. For example, in level 4 the one blocking the end path can be killed by just jumping at it despite no room being above it.
And for avoiding them, just always keep in mind diagonal movement is faster when scooting into openings, and hitboxes are smaller than the sprite. don't be afraid to skirt the edges of enemy sprites if necessary.

[Helmet Hood Hat]

couple considerations after beating normal mode.
premise: ended up using items (1 heal, 1 extra turn, 2 revives) but none of them felt really necessary with the exceptions of revives. they were also all used on the same encounter (4-4) which is the main offender of the perceived "high difficulty".

i won't say whether the game is difficult or not, but the penultimate encounter on the last world (6 enemies that endlessly revive unless you defeat them all at once) was definitely a beast of its own; i think the main problem is how different the priorities change between this and the rest of the game.
on every other world your priority is to defeat at least a couple of enemies early, so you aren't overwhelmed by the damage output; you need to balance dealing enough damage to clear some of the board, while not dying in the process.
for the last world it's mostly "try to survive as long as possible and hope you have enough free turns with your mage".

the main problem imo is the abilites distribution. the only way to hit multiple enemies is with the bomb spell; incidentally, the only healing spell is also on the same character.
the knight smite upgrade also heals, but it can't be used effectively on the last world because it deals damage (can't be used freely due to having to manage enemies health), and also doesn't trigger unless it actually hits (and enemies are constantly stacking critical block).
you need to juggle your mage turns to either heal to stay alive, or using bomb to get through all the critical blocks that the enemies keep stacking on themselves.

the only way i found to make some headway was to constantly cycle heal on every character, simply to avoid getting stunned, and when i had most of my health topped off try to drop a bomb to clear some of the critical blocks.
this isn't consistent since the front enemies can dispell your status immunity, making you vulnerable to the back enemies that can stun you on the same turn, even after casting regen.
if your mage gets stunned two turns in a row, you pretty much need to have revives.
if those back enemies aren't trying to stun you, then they'll be stacking critical blocks on the rest of the enemies instead.
ended up spending more time on that single fight than the rest of the game because of how long it dragged on (took about half an hour)

another thing that feels somewhat poorly planned is rogue. attack up is fine, and weaken is great since it's good support both defensively and offensively when upgraded, on top of dealing damage.
however, i got absolutely no use out of jab because planning around bleed is more trouble than it's worth, and given the option i always opt for weaken over jab, if nothing else for the immediate extra damage.
the only reason i considered using jab at all was when i needed to manage enemies hp on the last world, and the damage from weaken was too high to keep them alive; though in the end i didn't use it at all in that instance either, because i was worried about bleed screwing me over.

additionally (dunno if intended or not), enemies critical block also prevents any additional effect from occurring aside from preventing the damage. this means that drawing aggro with pummel, healing with smite, weakening with weaken (and i guess bleed with jab) cannot occur unless you also deal damage with them. which might be somewhat of an issue, depending on how you want to tune the dififculty.

TL;DR i spent the first 3 worlds actively playing the game, then the last world was just.
- mage: cast regen costantly (not for health) so you don't get stunned every other turn (assuming you don't get dispelled).
- rogue: buff knight or weaken to remove crit blocks (or deal extra damage to high hp enemies)
- knight: smite to hopefully stay alive (pummel if the enemy hp is too low so you don't defeat them)

eventually buff mage and bomb to clear the wave. it's less about difficulty and more about the revive mechanic itself being overly polarizing, to the point it changes the gameplay entirely.
i have no idea if the last boss was even supposed to be difficult because after the previous fight my brain stopped thinking, so i literally kept cycling regen on every character every single turn and only used weaken+smite on the main head until it died.

there's no issue with the overall difficulty; the only change i would like to see is to replace the rogue jab attack; instead of a single target that inflicts bleed, have another low-damaging area attack so you don't bottleneck mage.
another thing that could be useful is to have the knight protect move also add status immunity (maybe instead of thorns? idk if it's good i didn't get any protect upgrades) just so you don't need to constantly spam regen every turn to prevent stun.

AlkalinePineapples responds:

I fully agree with everything you said about 4-4. Looking at the level now, I'm actually embarrassed that I let such a horrendous enemy composition slide for this long.
It's exactly as you said: you give them any leeway and the backliners will stack countless Crit Blocks on their allies whilst stacking stuns on you, as the frontliners nullify any way of defending yourself from those stuns.
I feel like the main problem with this game is the lack of proper playtesting. I got like 2 friends to play it and we all had the same strategy of getting Bomb II and popping a haste potion during that wave. I didn't take into account that many others would have different strategies.

Sadly, I'm not a big fan of doing big overhauls after a game's release, so the most I can do with your suggestions is to keep them in mind for a potential "Helmet Hood Hat 2" or something. Hood's poor skillset is just something this game and I have to live with.
What I can do is adjust 4-4, because good lord.

Anyways, didn't expect my game to be able to get this many paragraphs, but thanks!

[Die for the Lich - web demo]

wanted to try out new items from the updates and i almost managed to screw myself over lol.
bedevilled blade is really upsetting to use because you need really high base dice to roll into it in the first place, and even then you're filling your discard with negative dice that barely have an use imo.

i also picked up 2 crow skulls (because bones are fairly strong since you can use them to fix failed rolls), except it ended up spiralling down because you can produce so many bones to the point it fills your entire bag, making it borderline impossible to play anymore due to being almost unable to draw any dice from your bag.
it would be nice if bone tokens worked like ghost dice, as in they expire when they're discarded.

i never understood the use for baba yaga's finger, safety pin and fish hook.
the first one is entirely outclassed by rabbit foot (lucky die is the single best item in the game; this is lucky die as a trinket) and one random reroll won't necessarily save you from a critical fail.
as for the other two, maybe i just don't get the benefit of them?
they pretty much only take up space in your bag, when you could draw more dice or a better item instead.
i understand the idea of not making every item overpowered (which explains why there's 2 types of crystal balls, one being weaker than the other) but honestly whenever i see either one of these, i'd rather skip than take them.

i like the new gambler's die balancing, since the negative chips can still have some use (at the very least, you can use them immediately after the roll that created them to "fix" it, in the worst case scenario), and they were a bit too strong before since you could just stack +tokens on any weapon's critical for massive damage lol.

EDIT: is blood blade supposed to be an extremely rare shop-only item or something? i've done dozens of runs going through as many equipment events as possible and i've seen all kinds of weapons EXCEPT the one i need. not even once

EDIT 2: blood blade IS a shop-only item, but it's not something you can "find".
its appearance is scripted, and the thing you need to "hover to find" is the REQUIREMENT for it to show up.
it's borderline impossible to get it accidentally in normal gameplay because its requirement is completely counter-intuitive to building an effective deck

[Dungeons & Donuts 2]

i've cleared the entire game with 3 stars, from scratch, 4 separate times now. still no perfectionist medal in sight.
clearing the game itself is already a chore between the overly long loading screens, the character not respawning half the time, and the game crashing every other level, so i haven't even been able to try out any other extra requirements that may be necessary for it to work, like getting all donuts in a single sitting, or without dying.
i can't tell if the medal is broken or not, but it sure does not seem to work, so i give up.
it's way too tedious when there's no apparent reason as to why it isn't working as intended

[Puzzling Rush]

i think i've found a strat that makes the game a bit more consistent, for future reference.

for starters, switch your first ability to green (the one that eats tiles and turns them into vampirism tokens).
the other 2 should be non-green (because energy tokens get shared across your abilities when matched, so having different colors guarantees you can build them up faster).
personally i like blue second and red last, reasoning explained later.

then dump all your upgrades into maxing out the vampirism token.
turns out being able to deal damage and heal at the same time, unsurprisingly, is really strong.
the amount you heal scales with the token upgrade, so by maxing it as soon as possible and only focusing on matching green tiles helps with offsetting bad luck if your opponent keeps getting chains for no reason.

after maxing the token, you want to upgrade your green ability by level 2 or 3, because it gives more tokens per activation.
level 3 is fairly costly costly early-game, so i'd recommend keeping it to level 2 up until halfway through the campaign, since you want to trigger it as many times as possible.

personally, i like upgrading my fire ability to level 2 because turning water tiles into fire tiles means you're removing both of them at the same time, which gives lots of potential for more green chains. (level 3 is irrelevant because there's never that many unused water tiles)
it also creates more fire matches which build it back up again real fast. it may even trigger multiple times in a single activation.
if going for this build specifically, upgrading the fire token a bit may be a decent investment, since it helps with multi-casting the ability after a single use.
upgrading grass tokens isn't a priority because energy tokens only appear when getting a 4-tile match or higher, and you want to match them as many times as possible so your opponent doesn't get any; it's unlikely to be in a situation where you can match 4 or more.

the last fight is the only one that isn't completely trivialized by this set-up.
i'm not sure if it's just a difference in base stats, but you don't get much to work with.
the enemy seems to prioritize long matches (4 or more), and if there aren't any it prioritizes damage (swords/fire, since its fire ability adds swords tokens).

this means you don't have to prioritize matching green tokens as soon as possible, and it's actually beneficial to focus on longer chains because the opponents high damage doesn't let you stall for a long time like with other fights.
upgrading the grass token a bit and prioritizing longer matches to get more than one heal was my strategy, but it's still pretty much up to luck

TL;DR vampirism strong. it doubles your hp difference since you both heal and deal damage.
make your first ability green, max out vampirism, and only focus on making green matches (and preventing your enemy from doing the same). nothing else matters.
except on the last fight; that one needs a bit of luck

[Death of a Dungslinger]

controls take a bit of getting used to and sometimes there's a few bugs with respect to clipping into the ground, especially on the colony level.
i also cannot for the life of me figure out how to do any damage to it; it mentions you need to roll up the heads and throw them "somewhere", but throwing them at other bugs, throwing them into lava pools, or even letting them being hit by the sunlight doesn't seem to do anything. i'm kind of lost tbh.

the chester level (in its entirety) is absolutely maddening. i honestly don't know how i even beat the race portion myself because i was pretty much next to him, and the first time i was in that same position i lost. feels more like a 50/50 so i'm glad you're not required to do it all over again for the boss fight.

had trouble at first trying to hit him at all in the first phase because he keeps moving around erratically but after toning down the camera a bit it's more consistent.
however i'm having a lot of trouble with the last phase under 100hp. the ice spikes especially seem to sprout out from pretty much any direction (even behind you) seemingly out of nowhere, and dodging doesn't actually seem to give you any kind of invincibility aside from simply "jumping away quickly" from your previous position.
the random snowballs from the audience also don't help because you can easily dodge them, except if you dodge into spikes you still get hit, and once you're juggled you can keep taking damage multiple times in a row, without even being able to touch the ground.
i honestly can't find any room to roll up a single attack without having to emergency dodge immediately after, much less to line up a shot

EDIT: found a bug on the colony level. apparently you can re-trigger an already defeated anthill by rolling a sand ball with a head on top of it, and it depletes the hp bar.
however, the stage still doesn't end until you actually defeat all 6 separate anthills, regardless of the hp bar. so the "boss" health is technically irrelevant on that stage.

also the game sometimes won't lock the mouse to the game window, which makes the fights impossible. seems like it has different glitches depending on which browser it's played on?

bokononyossarian responds:

Thank you for this very thoughtful review! For the colony, you need to drop the ant head balls into the anthills themselves.

[Tankmas ADVENTure 2024]

now that gachapons are a thing, in hindsight, i could have seen a mechanic where you could get coins for playing minigames at the arcade, and you get stickers out of the gachapon machine.
though that assumes the minigames are in a playable state that doesn't murder your pc (though it sounds like that's a me problem).
it's been a long month but can't wait to see how it all ends.

EDIT: for some reason the cinema isn't showing any of the movies anymore? it's just a black screen for me (though it still lags just the same as before when you get close to the screen lol)

squidly responds:

I wanted to put collectible coins around the map sooooo bad

[Back to Alien Party]

adding this for anyone trying to grind money in the future.
turns out there's a bug you can exploit (at least while playing the game using ruffle):

if you spend money in the shop, try to play again, then close the page while it's still loading, the next time you continue the game (after your run) and get to the shop, you'll keep the upgrades you bought, and get refunded for the money you spent on them (on top of keeping the money for the current run).

this means once you get about 2000 coins total, you can simply spend them all, play game, close the window, then continue and only use one boost so you fall immediately, to get your money back and buy out all the upgrades you need.

[PunchTheFreakOut!!]

updating my entire review because i went through a couple of the gimmicks with the creator and it's a lot, so i'm just listing my final findings and trimming out unnecessary information:

- fight 1: D-ray
turns out this fight is both the easiest (if you know what you're doing) and the hardest (because it's hard to telegraph unlike the other 2).
the TL;DR is that it's a gimmick fight, which can be ended as soon as phase 1.
for starters, he'll try to hit you with really quick jabs which can't be "reacted" to; you need to dodge them already knowing they'll be coming your way.
once you dodge he'll be open to be hit in the face 6 times before going into recovery, then he'll try hitting you again. dodge again and hit him another 6 times and he'll switch his pattern to left charge-up punches, which can be countered by a left punch (which will give you a star).
if you counter his first one, then use an uppercut on his second one, the fight ends immediately, which should get you obliterator, as well as most of the non-character specific achievements.

if you don't feel like cheesing it, here's how to go through all his 3 phases.
first phase is the same as before, except you can't uppercut him.
once he starts doing charge-up punches, just keep countering them and he'll go down. if you land all 4 you're good, but if you accidentally miss one he'll also do some right charge-up punches. it's not really a problem since even if you don't predict them you can keep mashing left punch so he blocks it, until he switches over; it's just something to keep in mind.

on phase two, immediately start jabbing him until he blocks. if you try to dodge him (or not), he's programmed to perfectly counter you (either with a charge-up if you dodge, or a quick jab if you don't). once he blocks your attacks, he'll start going for charge-up punches just like on phase 1, except the window to counter them is more narrow. again, you can git gud, or you can just keep using left punch until it actually lands.

phase 3 is a bit confusing since he will both use quick punches and charge-up ones, and i haven't exactly figured out the pattern; he'll also immediately lay you down if you accidentally hit him while he's guarding, so you can't mash through his defenses like before.
however, there is another pattern to exploit:
if you do an empty dodge (as in, just dodge without predicting anything), he'll put up his guard (covers all 4 attack angles) and then put down one arm revealing one of his eyes. punch-up accordingly when he does to break his guard and deal damage.
eventually you should be able to take him down. or you can just gimmick him on phase 1, idk.

- fight 3: Jason Mike
yes i'm skipping 2 because, while straightforward, turns out it's way more nuanced than initially surmised.
as for fight 3, it's understandably hard but each phase is perfectly telegraphed, regardless of what you do:
on phase 1, he attacks left, right, middle, right, uppercut, then loops.
on phase 2, he attacks right, middle, left, middle, uppercut, middle, then loops.
on phase 3, he attacks with uppercut, middle, left, right, then loops.

you can either counter or dodge each one of his attacks.
to counter them, use low-left punch on his left attack, and low-right punch on the other 3.
to dodge them, dodge in any direction except where he's attacking from (duck or right for left attack, duck or left for right attack, left or right for middle attack).
uppercut can only be dodged by ducking; you also need to dodge way earlier than other attacks, and if you fail you get downed immediately.

countering gives you stars to perform uppercuts, but you can't deal additional damage.
dodging gives you an opening to deal 2 punches, or 6 when he's panicked.
speaking of panic: when you attack or dodge without getting hit by him for a while, he'll become "demoralized" and start attacking faster. while demoralized, all his attacks will come out faster, and you can't counter his uppercut (you can counter his middle but it's barely possible. you can counter his side attacks, but you'll get more mileage out of dodging them).

they can all still be dodged (although it's harder), and you should because it will give you more chances to deal damage. it's pretty much required to learn how to dodge his attacks while he's panicked because to get obliterator you need to defeat him as quickly as possible without getting hit. additionally, if you beat phase 2 without getting downed yourself, he'll go down without entering phase 3.

pediatrician is really difficult and should be attempted as its own objective. you need to beat him without putting him in a panicked state, and that involves getting hit on purpose while also dealing as much damage as you can, before timer runs out (yes timer is the real problem for this one).
i haven't exactly figured out how the value until he's demoralized is accounted for (sometimes he'll get scared as soon as you land an uppercut, other times he won't), but i do have more or less a strategy to offer.
for starters, you don't want to counter anything (so no uppercuts); the strat is dodge, do two punches, rinse and repeat until he goes down.

as for how i did it, for phase one you dodge his whole first cycle, then get hit by his left punch.
then loop this until you go down first, then keep going until you hit phase 2.
on phase 2, same as before. dodge (and hit) all his attacks except his left punch. once again, you should go down before him, but you should be able to get to his last phase with your last life.
on phase 3, dodge (and attack) until his first left punch. get yourself hit from that one, then on the next cycle dodge it instead (and deal damage), then get yourself hit on the next one.
basically the idea is to attack through 2 of his cycles instead of one for the last phase.
if done correctly, you should down him before he downs you, with a few seconds left on the clock.

the reason i'm using the left punch as reference on all 3 phases is because his side punches are the ones that deal the least damage, and it's also easier to telegraph what to do by keeping the reference point consistent between the phases.

- fight 2: Labria
ok, so this one's the most difficult. and i'm only saying that because i still can't figure out how to get obliterator on it.
the whole gimmick is simple: he'll do a tell before he attacks, you dodge, then punch him (up to) 6 times to deal damage before he recovers his stance.
if you attack him at any point while he has his guard up, you'll be downed immediately.
basically you have to really think before you decide to punch him.

he only has 2 attacks, right punch and left punch. you can dodge his right punch with any direction, and you can dodge his left punch with either side dodge (except ducking).
his first phase is straight-forward. dodge after his tell, deal damage, repeat until phase 2.
you have to do an up-punch once he misses is attack because a low punch will still be blocked, so my advice is to just mash up-punch 6 times when you have your window to maximize damage (only the first one must be an up-punch, but there's no reason to attack low).
while he always regains his stance after 6 hits, if you're too slow with your attacks he may recover before you land them all and down you (because you hit through his defense), so if you're worried you mashed too slow, just take it easy and wait for his next attack.

on phase 2, he'll start mixing in feints. his right feint can be countered with specifically an up-right punch, while his left feint can be countered with specifically a low-left punch. additionally, you can uppercut his right feint but you can't uppercut his left feint (you will be downed if you try to).
starting phase 2, he'll do a left punch, then a right feint.
if you don't hit his feints, his phase 2 loop is left attack, right feint, right attack.
if you do hit his first right feint, the phase 2 loop ends up being all feints. it's 2 right feints, followed by a left one (he takes a bit of time to go into his left feint; you can only counter him while he's crouched with his stomach exposed).

phase 3 is more of the same, so even if i don't list the exact pattern, the easiest way to consistently beat him is to simply dodge every tell (feint or not) and attack when he's not feinting.
you can also counter his feints if you want, but it's unnecessary (you can go for Courtesy achievement)
he only has these 4 attack patterns, so defeating him isn't the hard part.

now here comes the gimmick: turns out, if you counter EXACTLY 10 of his feints, your uppercuts will become able to down him immediately once landed.
that means starting on phase 2, once you land 10 feint counters, if you instead do an uppercut, he'll go down immediately.
the same applies on phase 3 (he starts with a left feint, which you can't counter otherwise it'll be 11) so just wait for an opening and uppercut him again to end the fight immediately.

there's another issue here; apparently there's some way to end the fight on phase 2, except i cannot figure out the exact trigger for it. while trying to down him as fast as possible with the previous strat, i ended up knocking him out on phase 2 if i did the 10 feint counters as soon as i had the chance, followed by an uppercut (didn't even get to phase 3).
but this only got me a B rank.
this also happens when going all the way to phase 3. as long as i counter his feints and don't get hit, i keep getting B rank at best.
if i don't exploit feints, or somehow get hit while countering them, i can get up to A, but never obliterator.

this is really the only reason why i left the Labria fight break-down for last, as i have yet to figure out a winning strategy to get obliterator. will update this when i do

EDIT: finally found the breakthrough! turns out i ENTIRELY MISSED that his regular attacks (not just his feints) can be countered in the same way.
the timing is way stricter so you're better off just predicting what he's going to attack with and then act accordingly. right punch is countered the same as right feint (up-right), left punch is countered the same as left feint (low-left).

his phase 1 loop is right, left, right, right, left, left, then loops.
the idea is to counter his first cycle, the counter the remaining four to get to 10 counters.
when he's about to start his next left punch, dodge, punch him (in the face, or you'll be downed), and immediately uppercut.
he'll go down and phase 2 is pretty much the same: dodge, punch high, uppercut.
he should go down immediately and the fight ends there on phase 2 with obliterator rank

[Touhou Fake Invitation]

i'm not complaining because it's still possible thanks to infinite continues, but i feel like pacifist mode is the perfect example of a challenge that isn't fun.

i'm not good at bullet hells by any stretch of the imagination, but i did manage to beat the main game with every character without continues (with a lot of bombs lol).
i completely forgot continue was a mechanic until i tried pacifist, and then i had to use 4 of them, and half of them on the last stage alone because the last few kirky spells are just "random bullshit go!" lmao. definitely not the way games like these are intended to be played, for sure.

also i swear at some point it said somewhere that pacifist was supposed to have spells last half as long specifically to balance out not being able to shoot or bomb, but i guess i must have imagined it because i can't find it stated anywhere;
also the whole time a spell was going on i couldn't stop thinking "when is this going to end?!?", so they definitely aren't.

i really like the idea behind the 10 challenges even though i'm extremely bad at those. i'm especially terrible at ones where bullets seem to have a mind of their own even though they have a proper trajectory (it's just hard to visualize), like challenge 2.
i'm currently missing challenges 2, 5 and 10, so i'm halfway there but honestly idk.
so far it felt like it's 40% dodging, 40% get an easy pattern (because somehow, they aren't consistent), 20% actually get lucky and not die from bullets you have no business having dodged.

only complaint is the game takes an ungodly amount of time to load, every time.
btw, how are the stars in the top right accounted for? like, how many are there for how much progress? i currently have 2

EDIT: my bad, i've been using terms improperly. when i said "last spellcard" i meant specifically "scars of war" (and to an extent non-spell 4, and falling sky).
i'm really bad at that, and that's the last one you HAVE to dodge that isn't just for extra points.

as for the halved timer for pacifist mode, i was looking for it in-game when i wrote that, so i guess i read about it in the description and then simply forgot;
though if halving them means "bringing them closer to the time in the main game", then i'm not sure how they're halved. wouldn't they have be halved compared to their appearence in the main game mode?

i really like this game, and it's unforunate that i can't explain exactly what makes it good compared to other similar concepts. it just is
-------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: progress report: finally beaten challenge 10, though it's pretty much up to luck.
the bottom line is, it's possible to dodge the main pattern, and if you know what you're doing it's actually way more forgiving than most other challenges.
unfortunately, there is simply no way to predict how the randomly spinning bullets that remain on screen will move, so the strat is literally to ignore them and accept that you either dodge the main pattern and win, or die trying because you accidentally hit one.

as for challenges 2 and 5, idk if i can beat them.
challenge 2 is too random to form any kind of plan, and challenge 5 is way too dense.
it's like falling sky on crack, and i'm already bad at that one; best i've done so far is reach the 19-ish timer mark, and i've seen that exactly at that point it gets like 3 times worse, somehow.
legit wondering if it's even possible

EDIT: i somehow beat challenge 5.
turns out the gimmick of the last 20 seconds is, it looks scary but the gap doesn't move so if you land it correctly you win; though the hard part is surviving up until that point and actually finding the gap.
i guess now it's time to bash my head against challenge 2 and get lucky

EDIT: i did it! 3-stars achieved.
i had so many retries at challenge 2, it says i've played reimu more than all the other characters combined lol

VGE-SV responds:

I mentioned that the time of spells is halfed at the description of the game at "Author Comments". It does actually half the time of every spell and non-spell, bringing the time you have to survive closer to that of playing the main game mode. However, Kirky's last attack doesn't count as a spellcard. It is a challenge that gives you bonus score depending on how many times you get hit before the time ends. The attack changes as the time passes so I can't half that.

As for the stars,

★ = Have beathen the main game
★ ★ = Have beathen the main game and the extra stage
★ ★ ★ = Have beathen the main game, the extra stage and unlocked all the achievements

If you have 3stars you can say you have completed everything in the game.