This is the most comprehensive breakdown of boss fight design I've seen. I find bosses fascinating and enjoyed designing a few in Levelhead, but I find that a majority of players dislike them, preferring the memorization of scripted "tennis match" bosses that can't be sped up. It sounds antithetical to all these arguments about what constitutes a good boss fight, but it's nevertheless what I observed and it cost my motivation for making them.
@@Erumore one of your subnautica videos was recommended to me. Then I saw your channel, and started binging the outer wilds videos and hollow knight videos. Such well edited, insightful and high effort content. You should be very proud.
Comments like this really make my day, so thank you! Knowing that people enjoy and get value from my videos makes them worth the effort. Stay tuned and there will be plenty more where that came from!
Dude this video is seriously impressive, great work. I found you from your Subnautica video and just watched all the way through this one. You definitely deserve a bigger audience, and I hope you get one. Also, I too do not like when a boss forces me to wait around for a while before I can do anything. This really made me want to play Hollow Knight *again* (for like, the fifth time?) though. I think another 100% run and a proper attempt at Godmaster may be on the cards for me some day, it's the one thing I have never finished in the game, other than the ultra-hard steel difficulty, whatever it was called.
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed the whole video - it was my first attempt at making one and it ended up being very, very long. There's a lot to say about Hollow Knight though, and I'm still eagerly awaiting Silksong (and the eventual video I'm sure to make on it)! I really appreciate the comment and the kind words :)
Thanks for the comment! Yep, it certainly took a while to make this, but I hope my passion for the game comes through and you find something interesting to think about! I have other videos in mind for other games too, so feel free to subscribe if you want to see more down the line!
Very good video, gave me a lot of food for thought. The beginning section made me understand a bit more some of the conplaints towards the Godmaster DLC. Some reviewers said that it made the game as a whole slightly less enjoyable, which I always found INSANE (it's free and optional, what more do you want?). But now I believe they just aren't as intrinsically motivated by the game as I was, and since it was their "job" to complete it, failure was just frustration for them, tainting their memories of the game or something (while for me Godmaster is what turned HK from a very good game into my favorite game). I do agree with a lot of your takes, but I rank bosses differently. The most important thing imo is if they get me into "flow" or not. If my hands are shaking after the fight, it's a good boss. So while Pure Vessel and Sisters of Battle are my 2 favorites, NK Grimm, Abs Rad and fucking Markoth were still great for me.
I agree that NKG makes for a really good boss the first time you beat him, and the 'call and response' nature of his fight is easy to understand but difficult to master. Once you have mastered it, however, it becomes incredibly tedious to fight him because there's so much waiting around for his next move. It puts a sharp skill ceiling on the fight, because even if you're the best player in the world, there is a maximum number of hits you can land between his moves. Above a certain skill level, the boss doesn't allow you to express it. (I know there are a few tricks like damaging him during the bullet hell move, but still I think this holds true.) AbsRad and Markoth can both be enjoyable when you can have a back-and-forth struggle and heal yourself in between attacks. When you're playing Radiant mode and die in one hit, however, the randomness of their attacks is just endlessly frustrating. This is why I was able to beat AbsRad several times in a row on a lower difficulty, but it took me countless hours to finally beat the one-hit-kill version. I'm probably just repeating stuff I already said in the video so I'll stop there. I'm glad you enjoyed it and here's hoping that the bosses in Silksong will have a similar amount of depth and complexity!
@@Erumore that's all understandable. NKG gives similar enjoyment to PV on the first win, but PV maintains the enjoyment at win 10, while NKG starts falling off. Abs rad gave me my biggest rush when I beat it on radiant, but it took around 8-10h and I'll never try it again 😅 base difficulty is best for it. I'll have to disagree on Markoth tho, but it's fine, it seems very few ppl like it. Much less the radiant version. It's just that the constant movement and the simple moves keeps my brain engaged as much as a Mantis Lords. If silksong does a floorless fight with Hornets more developed moveset, I believe it will be in everyone's favorites. 🙏 thx again for the vid
Just found your channel the other day, your videos are really good and I see the amount of time and effort you put into em. I hope you continue to produce more stuff like this and your Elden Ring video, your perspective on games is pretty interesting, and as a lover of long-winded content, these long rambles about games are exactly my jam.
Thank you, I really appreciate the comment and it makes my day to hear that people are enjoying my channel. Hard to believe it's been over a year since I made this video. Rest assured there will be plenty more where this came from.
@@Erumore Of course man. I'm always interested to see where a small channel like myself will go when they make genuinely good stuff. Hopefully I can get back on my content production horse again soon, stuff like this definitely inspires me to talk more of my thoughts on games I've spent way too much time on xD
Soooo well put about the input/output dance. Incredibly well put in general, and what an undertaking this must've been. This was such a pleasure to watch. Thank you. Just came across your videos and I've been binge watching. Great content. Hope you're well, bud.
Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it and I'm glad that people are still enjoying this two years later. It makes my day to hear that the videos on my channel are considered worthy of binge-watching. Stay tuned for many more!
Thanks for the comment, I hope you enjoyed the video and found it interesting! It's only been a day since I released the video and I've been happy with the response so far. I have plans for other videos so if you do subscribe then it won't go to waste!
This is a very interesting video! I usually consider the bosses in the context of the game, not the godmasters dlc, mostly because I still haven't beat pantheon 3 because Zote is a Bitch and God Tamer keeps destroying me. And also because I am less good at the game, my experience was very different. Especially your point about Soul Warrior being similar but easier to the Mantis Lords was very strange at me at first, because I remembered it very differently. I tried mantis lords once, and died very quickly, and had to walk all the way back from the mantis bench (and died again repeatedly because mantises enemies are Hard and I always forget to jump lol). Then I met Quirrel, who told me "please upgrade your nail or you will get very frustrated" which I did, but when I tried to return to the mantis lords the city gate was locked, and while I found the sneaky passage to pass the gate, I needed desolating dive to get through. Because of that, I was forced to go through the soul sanctum before I got to try it again, and I had to beat the soul warrior first, which trained me into being able to beat Mantis Lords.
Thanks for the comment and I'm very glad to hear you found the video interesting! You're absolutely right, fighting the bosses in the context of the normal game is totally different to fighting them in Godhome. I definitely would have never noticed the similarities between some of the bosses if I had only played the base game! I also found the regular mantis enemies quite difficult as well, I think because you first meet them when you don't have many movement upgrades, and their attacks are really fast and wide. That's a very interesting point about Soul Warrior training you for your return to the Mantis Lords, I never thought of that! Good luck with the pantheon; my advice for Zote is to always defeat the smaller enemies as soon as he spawns them, and to try pogoing when Zote is doing his sword attack for lots of damage. For God Tamer, pogoing on top of the beast can be a good strategy because it can't do any upward attacks, just be careful of the rider.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said, except for your Absolute Radiance criticism. I don't know if it's because of my insistance on being aggressive but I've managed to learn and overcome phase 2 while relentlessly chasing the boss down and avoiding all attacks in the process. I think phase 1 is a perfect playground for learning to close the gap as fast and as precise as possible that can then be implemented into phase 2 (or at least most of it). I do agree that the off-screen orb attack in phase 2 can be terrible if you're chasing her down, but I've also learned to wait for the first one, then advance forward since they spawn in fixed intervals so more often than not I manage to get to her before she finishes the attack. The gamble when she is on top of you and ready to either do a sword burst or a light burst is imo completely diminished by using a desolate dive/descending dark on the spot. So the boss actually rewards aggressive play if you're willing to adopt to its weird quirks and I can tell you, it can be fairly consistent. It's my second favourite boss in the game for these reasons (right after the Pure Vessel). Though, I have to say, the climb is horrible either way and it's something I can't do consistantly for the life of me, although in theory you should jump out and time your shade cloak to the wall with the beam to avoid every possible instance. Anyway, sorry about that. I loved the video. Actually came here to this 3 y old video after finishing your ToTK video and I'm glad I did. This is easily the best hk boss analysis video I've seen.
It's been a few years since I played Absolute Radiance, so it's possible that I would have a different experience if I did it again today. Using the invincibility from the dive move to negate the danger of staying close to her is a good idea - if I had thought of that I might have had an easier time and been less negative about the random elements. I still have to give it to the Mantis Lords for the best boss though. Thanks for the comment, it's much appreciated. I'm glad to see someone getting enjoyment out of this old video - I hope you can find some other things on my channel to interest you as well.
@@Erumore yeah, in general, opinion of AbsRad has evolved quite a bit over the years as people are now beating insane modded versions (like any Radiance). As for your videos, I'm really interested in your take on Sekiro and Elden Ring
Nice video, I have also thought for a long time that good boss fights are dynamic instead of static, where the player can stay active and express themselves at all times. Skilled players should be able to beat a boss much faster than novice players (and maybe a TAS should be able to beat a boss much faster than an expert human, haha). I think this is the core idea to good boss design, yet barely anybody talks about it, which is rather sad. Boss fights should also have personality and their own story and a reason to exist in the game world. I think many games by Treasure, such as Alien Soldier, Radiant Silvergun, Sin & Punishment for the N64 and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii have very good boss design. One note on the pillar phase in Cuphead's Djimmi the Great: I'm not saying it's a super well done phase, but the faces on the pillars are part of the health pool of the following phase. You can shoot a bit at a face, then finish it off with a mini-bomb for an "overkill". If you do this for all faces, the HP of the next phase will be greatly reduced. In that sense there is skill and strategy involved in the phase.
That's a very interesting fact about the Cuphead boss - I had no idea about that. Even if there is more strategy involved than I thought, however, it's still true that the pillar phase lasts a certain length of time and there's nothing the player can do to speed it up - they can only speed up the following phase by 'overkilling' the pillars. Team Cherry showed far more appreciation for giving bosses personality and a reason to exist in the world than the average developer, and it's one of the reasons Silksong is one of my most anticipated games. Thanks for the comment and I'm glad people are still enjoying this video!
@@Erumore No problem! One thing I wanted to ask is if you have experience or interest in the design of shmup games? I have seen an interesting trend where many western gamers and content creators that I know have gotten into japanese genres that have been considered extremely niche due to their difficulty like Cave shmups. I think games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight and Sekiro can be quite good gateway games for shmups and other run 'n guns. Personally I have been introduced to shmups by The Electric Underground, his youtube channel is great. He has a ton of experience with shmups and fighting games and I like his theories about gameplay density for example. I don't have a lot of experience with shmups yet because of how impenetrable they are, but I bought the recent rereleases of DoDonPachi: Blissful Death and Ketsui for the PS4 from Japan, and I intend to sink my teeth into them this year. Once you know that shmups are supposed to be cleared with 1 credit, and you are encouraged to come up with your own routes and strategies (and scoring once you're good enough, also save states are encouraged for practice of different sections), it becomes much easier to get into them. It's very similar to practicing bosses in Radiant Mode in Hollow Knight and S-Ranks in Cuphead, though even more skill-intensive.
@@Erumore No problem! One thing I wanted to ask is if you have experience or interest in the design of shmup games? I have seen an interesting trend where many western gamers and content creators that I know have gotten into japanese genres that have been considered extremely niche due to their difficulty like Cave shmups. I think games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight and Sekiro can be quite good gateway games for shmups and other run 'n guns. Personally I have been introduced to shmups by The Electric Underground, his youtube channel is great. He has a ton of experience with shmups and fighting games and I like his theories about gameplay density for example. I don't have a lot of experience with shmups yet because of how impenetrable they are, but I bought the recent rereleases of DoDonPachi: Dai-Ou-Jou and Ketsui for the PS4 from Japan, and I intend to sink my teeth into them this year. Once you know that shmups are supposed to be cleared with 1 credit, and you are encouraged to come up with your own routes and strategies (and scoring once you're good enough, also save states are encouraged for practice of different sections), getting into them becomes much easier. It's very similar to practicing bosses in Radiant Mode in Hollow Knight and S-Ranks in Cuphead, though even more skill-intensive.
36:30 "Mango Lords" shows pineapples. Very nice.
This is the most comprehensive breakdown of boss fight design I've seen.
I find bosses fascinating and enjoyed designing a few in Levelhead, but I find that a majority of players dislike them, preferring the memorization of scripted "tennis match" bosses that can't be sped up. It sounds antithetical to all these arguments about what constitutes a good boss fight, but it's nevertheless what I observed and it cost my motivation for making them.
The way you keep calling the mantis lords by different plural names each time is pure gold.
Thanks for the comment! I'm glad to see there are still people enjoying this old video.
@@Erumore one of your subnautica videos was recommended to me. Then I saw your channel, and started binging the outer wilds videos and hollow knight videos. Such well edited, insightful and high effort content. You should be very proud.
Comments like this really make my day, so thank you! Knowing that people enjoy and get value from my videos makes them worth the effort. Stay tuned and there will be plenty more where that came from!
I'm so glad you didn't forget about Obblobbles. I will now like and subscribe.
Dude this video is seriously impressive, great work. I found you from your Subnautica video and just watched all the way through this one. You definitely deserve a bigger audience, and I hope you get one.
Also, I too do not like when a boss forces me to wait around for a while before I can do anything. This really made me want to play Hollow Knight *again* (for like, the fifth time?) though. I think another 100% run and a proper attempt at Godmaster may be on the cards for me some day, it's the one thing I have never finished in the game, other than the ultra-hard steel difficulty, whatever it was called.
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed the whole video - it was my first attempt at making one and it ended up being very, very long. There's a lot to say about Hollow Knight though, and I'm still eagerly awaiting Silksong (and the eventual video I'm sure to make on it)!
I really appreciate the comment and the kind words :)
Wow, the amount of work in this
This deserves more views
Thanks for the comment! Yep, it certainly took a while to make this, but I hope my passion for the game comes through and you find something interesting to think about! I have other videos in mind for other games too, so feel free to subscribe if you want to see more down the line!
Very good video, gave me a lot of food for thought.
The beginning section made me understand a bit more some of the conplaints towards the Godmaster DLC. Some reviewers said that it made the game as a whole slightly less enjoyable, which I always found INSANE (it's free and optional, what more do you want?).
But now I believe they just aren't as intrinsically motivated by the game as I was, and since it was their "job" to complete it, failure was just frustration for them, tainting their memories of the game or something (while for me Godmaster is what turned HK from a very good game into my favorite game).
I do agree with a lot of your takes, but I rank bosses differently. The most important thing imo is if they get me into "flow" or not. If my hands are shaking after the fight, it's a good boss. So while Pure Vessel and Sisters of Battle are my 2 favorites, NK Grimm, Abs Rad and fucking Markoth were still great for me.
I agree that NKG makes for a really good boss the first time you beat him, and the 'call and response' nature of his fight is easy to understand but difficult to master. Once you have mastered it, however, it becomes incredibly tedious to fight him because there's so much waiting around for his next move. It puts a sharp skill ceiling on the fight, because even if you're the best player in the world, there is a maximum number of hits you can land between his moves. Above a certain skill level, the boss doesn't allow you to express it. (I know there are a few tricks like damaging him during the bullet hell move, but still I think this holds true.)
AbsRad and Markoth can both be enjoyable when you can have a back-and-forth struggle and heal yourself in between attacks. When you're playing Radiant mode and die in one hit, however, the randomness of their attacks is just endlessly frustrating. This is why I was able to beat AbsRad several times in a row on a lower difficulty, but it took me countless hours to finally beat the one-hit-kill version.
I'm probably just repeating stuff I already said in the video so I'll stop there. I'm glad you enjoyed it and here's hoping that the bosses in Silksong will have a similar amount of depth and complexity!
@@Erumore that's all understandable.
NKG gives similar enjoyment to PV on the first win, but PV maintains the enjoyment at win 10, while NKG starts falling off.
Abs rad gave me my biggest rush when I beat it on radiant, but it took around 8-10h and I'll never try it again 😅 base difficulty is best for it.
I'll have to disagree on Markoth tho, but it's fine, it seems very few ppl like it. Much less the radiant version. It's just that the constant movement and the simple moves keeps my brain engaged as much as a Mantis Lords.
If silksong does a floorless fight with Hornets more developed moveset, I believe it will be in everyone's favorites.
🙏 thx again for the vid
An entire channel full of long form videos going into details about some absolute great games? I guess I'll be eating good for a long time!
Enjoy! I hope you find plenty to interest you.
Just found your channel the other day, your videos are really good and I see the amount of time and effort you put into em. I hope you continue to produce more stuff like this and your Elden Ring video, your perspective on games is pretty interesting, and as a lover of long-winded content, these long rambles about games are exactly my jam.
Thank you, I really appreciate the comment and it makes my day to hear that people are enjoying my channel. Hard to believe it's been over a year since I made this video. Rest assured there will be plenty more where this came from.
@@Erumore Of course man. I'm always interested to see where a small channel like myself will go when they make genuinely good stuff. Hopefully I can get back on my content production horse again soon, stuff like this definitely inspires me to talk more of my thoughts on games I've spent way too much time on xD
Came here from your reddit post! Very much enjoyed your well thought out dissection of the bosses 😊 Thanks for the effort you put into this!
Thank you for the comment and the kind words! I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed the video. Here's hoping Silksong lives up to the hype!
Another absolute bamger. The amount of thought and care you put into your analyses puts most other essayists to shame
Thank you! Always a pleasant surprise to get a comment on an older video. I hope you find plenty more to interest you on my channel.
bruh, you need more subscribers! awesome videos!
Soooo well put about the input/output dance. Incredibly well put in general, and what an undertaking this must've been. This was such a pleasure to watch. Thank you.
Just came across your videos and I've been binge watching. Great content. Hope you're well, bud.
Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it and I'm glad that people are still enjoying this two years later. It makes my day to hear that the videos on my channel are considered worthy of binge-watching. Stay tuned for many more!
"How do I get out of this?" Drop down and bait Chill Penguin into charging you.
Deserves way more views and subscribers.
Thanks for the comment, I hope you enjoyed the video and found it interesting! It's only been a day since I released the video and I've been happy with the response so far. I have plans for other videos so if you do subscribe then it won't go to waste!
This is a very interesting video! I usually consider the bosses in the context of the game, not the godmasters dlc, mostly because I still haven't beat pantheon 3 because Zote is a Bitch and God Tamer keeps destroying me. And also because I am less good at the game, my experience was very different.
Especially your point about Soul Warrior being similar but easier to the Mantis Lords was very strange at me at first, because I remembered it very differently. I tried mantis lords once, and died very quickly, and had to walk all the way back from the mantis bench (and died again repeatedly because mantises enemies are Hard and I always forget to jump lol). Then I met Quirrel, who told me "please upgrade your nail or you will get very frustrated" which I did, but when I tried to return to the mantis lords the city gate was locked, and while I found the sneaky passage to pass the gate, I needed desolating dive to get through.
Because of that, I was forced to go through the soul sanctum before I got to try it again, and I had to beat the soul warrior first, which trained me into being able to beat Mantis Lords.
Thanks for the comment and I'm very glad to hear you found the video interesting! You're absolutely right, fighting the bosses in the context of the normal game is totally different to fighting them in Godhome. I definitely would have never noticed the similarities between some of the bosses if I had only played the base game! I also found the regular mantis enemies quite difficult as well, I think because you first meet them when you don't have many movement upgrades, and their attacks are really fast and wide. That's a very interesting point about Soul Warrior training you for your return to the Mantis Lords, I never thought of that!
Good luck with the pantheon; my advice for Zote is to always defeat the smaller enemies as soon as he spawns them, and to try pogoing when Zote is doing his sword attack for lots of damage. For God Tamer, pogoing on top of the beast can be a good strategy because it can't do any upward attacks, just be careful of the rider.
I love this video
Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment! Here's hoping the wait for Silksong isn't too much longer.
I had no idea about the false knight wall.... fuck me
I agree with pretty much everything you've said, except for your Absolute Radiance criticism. I don't know if it's because of my insistance on being aggressive but I've managed to learn and overcome phase 2 while relentlessly chasing the boss down and avoiding all attacks in the process. I think phase 1 is a perfect playground for learning to close the gap as fast and as precise as possible that can then be implemented into phase 2 (or at least most of it). I do agree that the off-screen orb attack in phase 2 can be terrible if you're chasing her down, but I've also learned to wait for the first one, then advance forward since they spawn in fixed intervals so more often than not I manage to get to her before she finishes the attack. The gamble when she is on top of you and ready to either do a sword burst or a light burst is imo completely diminished by using a desolate dive/descending dark on the spot. So the boss actually rewards aggressive play if you're willing to adopt to its weird quirks and I can tell you, it can be fairly consistent. It's my second favourite boss in the game for these reasons (right after the Pure Vessel). Though, I have to say, the climb is horrible either way and it's something I can't do consistantly for the life of me, although in theory you should jump out and time your shade cloak to the wall with the beam to avoid every possible instance.
Anyway, sorry about that. I loved the video. Actually came here to this 3 y old video after finishing your ToTK video and I'm glad I did. This is easily the best hk boss analysis video I've seen.
It's been a few years since I played Absolute Radiance, so it's possible that I would have a different experience if I did it again today. Using the invincibility from the dive move to negate the danger of staying close to her is a good idea - if I had thought of that I might have had an easier time and been less negative about the random elements. I still have to give it to the Mantis Lords for the best boss though.
Thanks for the comment, it's much appreciated. I'm glad to see someone getting enjoyment out of this old video - I hope you can find some other things on my channel to interest you as well.
@@Erumore yeah, in general, opinion of AbsRad has evolved quite a bit over the years as people are now beating insane modded versions (like any Radiance). As for your videos, I'm really interested in your take on Sekiro and Elden Ring
Damn I hate when a good movie ends
Nice video, I have also thought for a long time that good boss fights are dynamic instead of static, where the player can stay active and express themselves at all times. Skilled players should be able to beat a boss much faster than novice players (and maybe a TAS should be able to beat a boss much faster than an expert human, haha). I think this is the core idea to good boss design, yet barely anybody talks about it, which is rather sad. Boss fights should also have personality and their own story and a reason to exist in the game world. I think many games by Treasure, such as Alien Soldier, Radiant Silvergun, Sin & Punishment for the N64 and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii have very good boss design.
One note on the pillar phase in Cuphead's Djimmi the Great: I'm not saying it's a super well done phase, but the faces on the pillars are part of the health pool of the following phase. You can shoot a bit at a face, then finish it off with a mini-bomb for an "overkill". If you do this for all faces, the HP of the next phase will be greatly reduced. In that sense there is skill and strategy involved in the phase.
That's a very interesting fact about the Cuphead boss - I had no idea about that. Even if there is more strategy involved than I thought, however, it's still true that the pillar phase lasts a certain length of time and there's nothing the player can do to speed it up - they can only speed up the following phase by 'overkilling' the pillars.
Team Cherry showed far more appreciation for giving bosses personality and a reason to exist in the world than the average developer, and it's one of the reasons Silksong is one of my most anticipated games.
Thanks for the comment and I'm glad people are still enjoying this video!
@@Erumore No problem! One thing I wanted to ask is if you have experience or interest in the design of shmup games? I have seen an interesting trend where many western gamers and content creators that I know have gotten into japanese genres that have been considered extremely niche due to their difficulty like Cave shmups. I think games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight and Sekiro can be quite good gateway games for shmups and other run 'n guns. Personally I have been introduced to shmups by The Electric Underground, his youtube channel is great. He has a ton of experience with shmups and fighting games and I like his theories about gameplay density for example.
I don't have a lot of experience with shmups yet because of how impenetrable they are, but I bought the recent rereleases of DoDonPachi: Blissful Death and Ketsui for the PS4 from Japan, and I intend to sink my teeth into them this year. Once you know that shmups are supposed to be cleared with 1 credit, and you are encouraged to come up with your own routes and strategies (and scoring once you're good enough, also save states are encouraged for practice of different sections), it becomes much easier to get into them. It's very similar to practicing bosses in Radiant Mode in Hollow Knight and S-Ranks in Cuphead, though even more skill-intensive.
@@Erumore No problem! One thing I wanted to ask is if you have experience or interest in the design of shmup games? I have seen an interesting trend where many western gamers and content creators that I know have gotten into japanese genres that have been considered extremely niche due to their difficulty like Cave shmups. I think games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight and Sekiro can be quite good gateway games for shmups and other run 'n guns. Personally I have been introduced to shmups by The Electric Underground, his youtube channel is great. He has a ton of experience with shmups and fighting games and I like his theories about gameplay density for example.
I don't have a lot of experience with shmups yet because of how impenetrable they are, but I bought the recent rereleases of DoDonPachi: Dai-Ou-Jou and Ketsui for the PS4 from Japan, and I intend to sink my teeth into them this year. Once you know that shmups are supposed to be cleared with 1 credit, and you are encouraged to come up with your own routes and strategies (and scoring once you're good enough, also save states are encouraged for practice of different sections), getting into them becomes much easier. It's very similar to practicing bosses in Radiant Mode in Hollow Knight and S-Ranks in Cuphead, though even more skill-intensive.