Maidens of a Hollow Dream (虚夢の乙女 v109) - MHN-HARD 1cc 78,463,849

So I was playing DU3 and then remembered Kyomu no Otome, which is a shmup I played for a few months back in 2015. I liked the game a lot so I decided to revisit it to see if I still like it and while I'm at it I wanted to get another 1cc of the highest difficulty in the game. MHN is short for Miroku mo Hadashi de Nigedasu, as it's described in game. I believe it means something like 'Even the buddha would run away barefooted', but that take with a grain of salt because my Japanese is awful! MHN is not a difficulty which is unlocked by default, it seems you have to spend a certain amount in the shop to unlock it. I managed to get it after spamming purchases for extra continues. This difficulty really doesn't mess around, it's super mean! the firing rate of all enemies is like 3 or 4 times faster than on VERY-HARD and all non-popcorn enemies spawn suicide bullets when you kill them. If it weren't for the regenerating health bars and leveling up, this would've been insanely difficult to clear. Really though, even with the health bars, I still just barely managed to survive each stage. Every stage had at least 1 moment where I was 1 hit away from dying! I think I would actually like it a bit more if the health-bars weren't so lenient, because then I would be forced to learn the game a bit more. But anyways, let me explain the scoring system once more. Hitting an enemy will make a magical circle grow around them, when you kill an enemy all the bullets inside the circle gets turned into gems. The gems fill the hyper-gauges, you can have up to 3 hyper-gauges at the same time and you can use all 3 of them at the same time. The more hypers you use at the same time, the more enemies will be multiplied when you kill them and the damage you do is also increased for every hyper you use. Using 1 hyper gives you a x2 multiplier, using 2 gives x8 and using 3 gives x32. So in terms of scoring it's always the most important to save up 3 hypers before you start using them. The main thing to optimize is the speed at which you fill the gauges and also the locations at which you use the hypers. Different types of enemies have different base values, so that's a very important thing to take note of when you're deciding where/when you want to use your hypers. Another thing to look out for is when to use what character. The main unfocused shot of both characters build the magic circles quicker than their focused shots and the unfocused shot of the blue-haired girl (栗山 麻菜藻) is much better for it than the unfocused shot of the red-hair girl (志貴崎 ロミ). The interesting thing here is learning to use and switch between both characters whenever you need to, both for scoring and survival purposes. Oh yeah, I also found some issues You can safespot the entire stage 2 mid-boss by moving above the mid-boss by either moving there before going into the fight or teleporting to it during the battle. There's a safespot during the stage 2 boss final pattern, if you've destroyed the legs you can sit on the bosses' head for 3 waves and then move out the way in time for the rushing attack. If you use 3 of your hypers too slowly after each other, it's possible to have a x8 multiplier for a while instead of getting x32 right away Stage 1: 00:01 - Boss: 06:47 Stage 2: 09:08 - Boss: 15:10 Stage 3: 17:37 - Boss: 23:54 Stage 4: 25:19 - Boss: 32:28 - Boss 2: 34:30 I actually cleared MHN-HARD once way back in 2015, but that was for version v104 of the game. I was never able to record a replay of it because I updated to v105 and it made the replay desync. That clear was especially interesting to me because in v104 there wasn't a focused mode yet, you had to move through the whole game while being unfocused. It was absolute madness. And one more thing, this video contains girls wearing lewd outfits and some light yuri stuff. Only manly men are allowed to watch it! Lastly, last year I found out that Akiragoya had put this game on dlsite, so I was thinking that I can finally buy the game in a way that I actually want to, and so I did! If you're interested in trying out the game, do check it out sometime~. This game is really unlike anything else I've played, so it'll probably be an interesting experience for you as well.