>>723773501
Good shmups don't have boring early stages and you can continually optimize them for score as you learn the later stages. This is why DOJ pretty much combines stage 1 and 2 from DDP into a single stage for its opener. Because stage 1 and 2 in DDP were fucking awful. Combined with its deeper scoring system this fixes that and makes it interesting. You can see a similar change going from Mushi to Futari, its impossible to play Futari and be bored at any given moment, its pure distilled fun.