Practice a bit, get your xp where you can, master a few basic aim shots (such as firing 3 ball or 5 ball at a 45 degree angle... 135 if you're on the right... to get all the bullets to hit one guy and bury him, or bouncing a flare weapon like Air Strike off the far wall to settle on your victim, or using Area Strike below your target on a wall to drag him down)... and with a little luck of the weapon draw at the beginning of a battle and some good aim, you can make anyone... ANYONE... suffer.
I have news for you whiners out there: Having a star (Deluxe) means quite a bit less that is convenient for you to throw a tantrum about. You forget that all players get access to an exceptional battery of weapons right off the bat, from level 1. I'm level 18 with Deluxe and four weapon packs and I still get excited when I get an Area Strike, or Flower, Sniper, Digger, Quake (handy at any level to get yourself or a friend out of a hole), Grenade or three ball. Shortly after you start playing, you get five ball, massive shot and AC-130 (very powerful for it's level). Even the base game is rigged to give you a grand assortment of weapons as you level, up to and including the devastating Nuke and wicked eleven-ball.
Incidentally, going Deluxe and/or buying weapon packs kind of shoots you in the foot. On the one hand, you get access to some sweet weapons. On the other hand, you also get stuck with some dross, AND you're less likely to get the weapons you want when you want them.
Man, screw this game. Almost a year trying off and on and no restaurant. Even worse, I can't remember the last time I hit one of those speed rings, and I can go for several games in a row without hitting a meteor shower, just watchin em whiz by above or below me, so I can't starslide on them. There needs to be at least one or two more in between the further planets. I have no friggin idea where this fabled restaurant you stole from Adams is, but it sure as the devil isn't above Pluto because I've soared ridiculous heights above Pluto looking for it, and no, not in Free Swim.
1/5. I cannot get my player to jump at all unless I'm sitting still. There needs to be a buffer zone between the wheel and the surface where jumping is allowed, because the game is an exercise in frustration when you're hammering on the spacebar repeatedly only to fall in the hole or hit the wall you were desperately trying to avoid.
Really? You can't figure out how to re-enter the water in a physics-based game? You really think if you were flying horizontally at 80 mph and falling at a rate of... say... 120mph (average human terminal velocity, roughly), that you could just point your nose straight down and enter the water smoothly? Sheesh. Sadly, apparently it IS rocket science.
Need money? Fight monsters. If you're completely broke, go to area 1 and fight goblins. As you gain more money, go to better areas to fight stronger monsters and make more money and xp. All it costs is the price of entering the area; since you're not digging, you're not spending more money, so all the cash you get from monsters is just gravy!
Double jump completely quit on me. The game would be okay if it worked. 1/5. Tell me when bugs are fixed and I'll come back, check it out and give it a better ranking if it's any good.
Staying in the upper right corner doesn't really work well. Not only can the missiles hit you, but the bullet lattice he fires, where each point fires three lines of bullets and then moves the whole lattice from side to side, that will eventually come to you and kill you no matter how well tucked into the upper right corner you are.
Took a star away for the sheer difficulty of the last boss. I don't expect the game to be a cakewalk, but I do expect it to be beatable and in a frame of reference similar to the rest of the game (i.e. the last boos is far too hard compared to the rest of the game). Between the inconsistency of the achievements (I'm not going to spend four hours on this game, nor grind out over 24 million upgrade points, but it's easy to get a multiplier of 53 and die 128 times), the lack of a decent weapon selection (bullets should still be viable on the last levels, and the acid is just lame), the lack of innovative design and the disparate difficulty of the last boss, I can't give this more than 2/5.
Just made it to level 49 Cursed Golem, finally got myself killed because the game became trivial. Cursed+Golem = 40 all resists, used Epic and Devastating to make up the lost stats. Concentrated on resist gear and "armor" stat gear and the best raw damage weapon I could find. Ended the game with over 200 "armor" stat and all resists over 110, was practically invincible, I could just run into a room and let the critters hammer on me while I killed them one by one, because they were all hitting me for no elemental damage and maybe 10 at worst physical damage. Blue charging knights do ice damage, grey knights do physical damage and have a fire attack, orbs do physical damage and have an electric attack, the cow skull guys do raw physical damage, the cow skull mages do fire damage and heal other critters. Physical (armor), fire, electric, ice resists... plan for them and they're easy. Keep other resist gear in inventory to swap out just in case. It's not hard.
Resists and armor are key to the game. Worry less about abilities and more about getting these up. With high resists and armor, nothing in the game can damage you much... even bosses and charging critters. Just focus on a high normal damage weapon (or a weapon or set of weapons with nice magic attacks if you're a caster) and work on getting armor with high resists and armor first, then hope for armor with similarly high resists and armor AND abilities/stats later, you'll last longer this way because you'll take MUCH less damage.
Skills are much less important than defenses.
Also, skeletons eventually cap out... after a certain point they're just speed bumps.