Ketsui (ケツイ) - Ura 2-ALL 337 Million (Panzer Jager)

My first 2-ALL clear of the Special Round (aka Ura loop) of CAVE's Ketsui (ケツイ). Played on original arcade PCB. Ura loop requirement is: no deaths, no bombs, and score 120+ million points.

00:00 - Stage 1
02:32 - Stage 2
05:38 - Stage 3
09:26 - Stage 4
14:13 - Stage 5
21:10 - Welcome To Special Round
21:23 - 2-1
23:47 - 2-2
27:05 - 2-3
30:53 - 2-4
35:57 - 2-5
42:32 - True Last Boss DOOM
44:44 - Ending & Credits

At long last I finally cleared the Ura loop in Ketsui! This journey started all the way back in 2017 when I began playing and got my first 1-ALL with Tiger Schwert. 3 years later in 2020, I got my first Omote 2-ALL, and pretty much considered that to be the end of the road for me with the game.

The Ura loop just seemed impossible to me, not only to clear it but just to get to it was a massive hurdle. Eventually I was able to clear the Ura loop in practice (via MAME) by skipping the first loop, but kind of lost interest again because of the absolutely maddening no miss, no bomb requirement for just to enter the loop.

At some point I decided to change ships over to Panzer Jager because the game was getting kind of stale and that pretty much renewed my interest and quest for the Ura loop. Panzer plays quite different and really lets you do some crazy dodges with it's high speed. The main drawback of course is it's slower lock on, but that can be mitigated to a certain extent by good routing.

Just getting to the Ura loop is a massive pain as a single death anywhere is an instant game over and restart. The later levels and bosses, especially in stage 4 & 5, can have very nasty RNG patterns at times and it's also not uncommon to take hits deep into the second half of stage 5. I thought about quitting many times due to the ridiculous loop requirements but I'm also really stubborn, so I kept at it.

My first Ura entrance was back in January of 2023, and I have been playing it pretty consistently from that point. I think it took me 7 or 8 Ura entrances before I got this clear. And since my ura entrance rate is quite low, that adds up to A LOT of attempts.

While I was aiming for a score around 350 million and fell a bit short, I'm still pretty happy just to have this one done. Maybe I will come back for a higher score or try clearing with Tiger, who knows.