Summary

Wanted this one for a while. Took about 14hrs total - 7hrs last August and 7hrs over the last few days.

I dropped this after 7hrs of practice last August because I was finding it too hard and couldn't handle the fast bullets. Runs were super stressful because I felt like I would die out of nowhere, and I needed all my lives for the final boss. Coming back after a bunch of other hard clears it felt much more doable and was able to lock in a very reliable route. In this run I no-missed until the final boss, which is very hard not to die on without a lot of bombs.

I used Judge Spear Slave for the super fast movement speed. I tried Chaser Slave but found it a touch too slow for me.

00:00 1-1: Simple stage. If you destroy the first big tank’s turret and leave it alive, eventually a fairy will spawn and drop an extra bomb - I didn’t bother this run because I wanted to see how the route worked without it. Boss can be no-bombed but I usually bomb once to make it trivial.

01:38 1-2: Easy stage again. If you quick-shot all the medium-sized ships you’ll get an extra bomb, but missed it this run. The boss is not too hard and also can be no-bombed, but again 1 bomb makes it pretty trivial.

03:38 1-3: First real difficulty spike. Needs pretty tight routing to avoid getting sniped by ships or turrets that come from bottom/sides. This is also the only stage where I have planned bomb points, on the two big planes. The route I use here is quite reliable and I rarely die here now. The boss is interesting because like most Raiden Fighters bosses, you can time out its phases which causes the next phase to become significantly weaker. This allows me to kill the final phase with only 1 bomb.

08:18 1-4: Stage needs a bit of routing but isn’t too bad. At 09:02, you get an extra bomb for killing all the turrets - fly over the middle ones to make them raise up sooner so you can kill them quickly. The boss can be done with 1 bomb, but usually I use 2. I think I wasted my second bomb when it was already dead.

10:02 1-5: Similar to stage 4, some basic routing makes the stage very reliable. I use 1 bomb on the boss - I’ve found that you need to time the bomb right after the hatch opens for the final phase, otherwise it won’t die before shooting again (and probably killing you pointblank).

12:04 1-6: I feel like this is the real test of the game and is where I spent most of my practice time. Like stage 3 you need a very tight route and need to kill turrets quickly before they become a problem. Right before doing this run I found that you can just park in the middle and none of the enemies will get a chance to shoot in the first part, which turns it into a little breather section. Not sure if that only works with the option formation I had though. The boss is a real bastard and I usually plan to use three bombs. If you time it right you won’t have to dodge much, but I got it a bit wrong in this run - luckily didn’t get clipped.

16:21 1-7: This stage can seem really hard at first, but with a good route it becomes very reliable and doesn’t require any bombs. I pulled off my route pretty much perfectly this run. The boss is a final non-trivial challenge and is definitely a threat even if you reach it without dying. In this run, I went for a “standard” approach where I just bomb a lot and try to survive as long as possible when out of bombs. This seems safest if you reach it without dying. Alternatively, you can time out the phase at 19:08 after killing the first two turrets, and the final phase will die in two bombs. This means any run that reaches that point is still pretty viable if you have two bombs in stock, but it takes a long time to time out that phase and it can get pretty nerve-wracking.

19:43 2-1: Died pretty quick in loop 2 :(

At first I really struggled with this game due to the fast bullet speed and heavy routing required. It definitely rewards some strategies that aren’t a good idea in other games, like parking in the corner and zipping from edge to edge. Pointblanking is also both a good idea and extremely risky, because if your timing is slightly off you’ll get pointblanked yourself. I think Raiden Fighters 1 in particular suffers from some pacing issues where there are a lot of “dead” sections even late in the game where not much is happening, punctuated by extreme danger. That was actually a big reason I dropped it first time, because of the psychological damage of sitting through trivial sections over and over only to die out of nowhere. Now that I’m less impatient (largely due to playing Touhou I think) it wasn’t as much of an issue this time. Overall though I like Raiden Fighters quite a bit and would be interested in coming back to try clearing with one of the “real” ships haha

Reference runs:

PAN’s stream, which convinced me to play this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqbNQLgtmpc
Good boss bomb strats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX6nKahPr8Q