I can manage the game as-is (and story mode is almost perfect by-itself), but I feel some tweaks would make the arcade mode feel more legitimate as a competitive scoring game if patching is a thing your team is willing to do:
- Lost powerups at least bounce off the screen borders 3-4 times before escaping. Most power recollection is easy as long as you have blue bar remaining. It's a really bad break if you take a hit near the screen edge.
- A small invincibility period after taking a hit. Hitting the wrong terrain or cluster ends the timer instantly. As there are no extra lives, it gets silly for such a long game that some player errors are far more costly than others.
- Eliminate luck from powerup drops (if applicable). I think the medal drops don't look random, but the other powerups do look random. I know rarity of red powerups increases as players have more of them, but if there is truly a system of luck in the powerup drops, this does break the scoring system. Edit: I think I've learned more about the red powerups. There's seems to be a cap by stage and I maintaining a very high kill ratio seems to get you the reds you need to be able to beat a boss.
- Eliminate blocked shots on a boss fight (make every hit on a boss at least slightly damage something) or have a more generous timer in hard mode. I feel the time system and specific accuracy requirements for attacking boss segments conflict with each other. I can no miss my play but still run out of time just because I couldn't destroy a specific boss section fast enough. It doesn't feel totally my fault when I'm forced out of position dodging bullet patterns.
- Customizable controls. A,B,X setting works, but it isn't ideal. Many arcade sticks and alternate d-pads have different button configurations.
- Player speed tweaks. Sine Mora has this Dangun Feveron issue where high player speed is required to get around the playfield to keep the timer and scoring up, but a slower movement speed is ideal to tap through fast, dense bullet patterns. A 4th button to cut player movement speed in half while shooting or looking into adopting Cave's player movement mechanics would be appreciated.
- Increase bullet and terrain border visibility. The devs have every right to mock players on here for bitching about bullet contrast while still voting Garegga as one of the top STGs of all time. Still, being able to see the tight patterns better is still a thing I would like addressed, especially with the missiles. I also have a habit of running into terrain when I think it's not a wall. The garbage cloud area is another messy spot.
