I am stuck on this one. None of my weapons ever hit it, from any angle, but simply pass right through. In addition, after a ship gets destroyed, I keep getting smashed by the demon, caught in it's death ray, and blasted by the missiles before I can ever start moving the ship or fire my weapon. This frequently happens a dozen times in a row, wasting far too much time being unable to even try doing anything.

Is there any advice I can get on dealing with this? Or is it seriously as impossible as my hundreds of failures make it seem?

Thanks.

If this is the same one I had a lot of trouble with, then yes it's a beast. It is invulnerable while shooting the death ray, moves around quickly sometimes smashing right into you, and you have to stay out of the death ray while constantly dodging the missiles. If your ship is destroyed, the respawn cycle seems perfectly timed to keep killing you over and over until the &*#(% escapes.

Luckily, the missiles are released in a steady rhythm about 1 second apart, so I could dodge them pretty well by moving to a new position and holding there for about 1 second. It was rarely the missiles that got me.

I loaded up all 4 slots with max-upgraded Double Cannon, pointed the outer ones both sideways, pointed one inner one straight ahead, and the last one I think at 45 degrees. So I had a pretty good field of fire coming out of my ship at all times, especially to each side which is where I found the demon most of time when it was vulnerable. Staying out of the giant head's way was still a matter of chance. Think you have room to dodge around him? You probably don't.

Yeah, it was always that one slamming into me that got me. It was completely impossible to beat that one or progress further. It's the reason I quit playing it, uninstalled the game, and forgot it even existed until this reply.

I can confirm that this Demon's size extends PAST the visual representation on screen, something that is especially noticeable where it's 'neck' is. I've been playing this with Level 5 Double Cannons (two aimed in at opposing 30-degree angles on the inside and two aimed in line with the outer-edge of the wing on the outside).

What fucks me is that this is really, really obvious but in addition to the chaotic nature of the movements, nauseatingly massive size and the sheer volume of pellets it fires we're screwed. But like Billy Mays used to say, 'but wait, there's more!' Difficulty level does NOT affect bosses. That's right, think that you will drop the difficulty level to 'screw you guys, I'm going home' levels? Nope, not happening. It only makes the rest of the enemies easier. This means that we are all fucked when it comes to this Demon.

I started with it on Expert, then dropped it to Hard, then Challenging and then finally Beginner.

I haven't been this mad when playing a video game in a long time. It's one of those things where you sit back and go...'so, wait a minute, who was doing QA here?' and you realise that it was either no one or not enough people. This is as polite as I can be about the situation because...just...damn, man, you know?

Update

Beat the boss on my 6th attempt. Turning the outside Double Cannons to fire horizontally with the ship, as you suggested, was a big help. It didn't address the great bulk of the design issues, but it was certainly a big help. Or perhaps luck was in my favour with the chaotic movement? Or perhaps both? Whatever the case is, I'm just glad it's over.

I'm reminded by this title, this encounter, that when games have legitimately terrible issues there is no refunds for 'bad gameplay' and the only real response is 'support the devs'. I'm bitter for a reason.

Agreed, this was nearly a game-breaker for me, like the zappy kelp in the old TMNT game. Button-mashing is not my forte. The testers seem to have overlooked this boss fight (or gotten impossibly lucky), and left difficulty scaling unimplemented here. A patch would be swell. I still had a hell of a good time with this game, and when I got a new PC I followed instructions for preserving your progress, but haven't installed the game again to see if it worked.

This game, to me, has two huge issues and one glaring bug:

Issue #1
The existence of the Page 4 Demon at all, given how it functions and especially the 4-3 version.

Issue #2
The real lack of weapon variety given the number of enemies, flight patterns, speed with which they move and bullets they shoot. Some difficulties become cake (Hard, for me, at this point), yet Expert sees too strong, too fast and too many shots fired at my ship, viz. a difficulty spike instead of a jump. The only weapons that seem to me to be meaningful are the Double Cannons.

This can be because of my playstyle, music collection (a lot of prog rock/metal and black metal) or a less personal but still genuine issue of a lack of imagination. I don't need to have 8 copies of something like Rocket Pack. Whatever the case, the player ultimately will run into uninspiring and unchallenging play and, when they seek to increase the difficulty level, will likely find that it's now awkwardly high and there are no new weapons with which to meet the challenge.

Bug
The player will, randomly, be unable to gain any Inspiration or Kudos. This will happen irrespective of weapon levels (maxed or not), difficulty multiplier (relative difficulty to ship power), difficulty played on or whether or not the song is new and, therefore, it should be impossible to not get Inspiration or Kudos for reaching point targets. Even song length is irrelevant. This is a long-standing issue and EmptyClip doesn't seem to know how to fix it.

Issue #1 is inarguably a potential game-breaker, it all comes down to whether or not a given player is stubborn enough to work through bad design. Issue #2 speaks to a lack of inspired design, viz. great focus on how the game interacts with the player but not with how the player interacts with the game. And the Bug just breaks things down. This game has tremendous unrealised potential but, on the whole, it's something that can't really be played for stretches of time in the same way that I'm sure any number of players would love. Things just get too stale or they don't work.

I was so frustrated with the game after beating the 4-3 Demon that, in a fit of pure idiocy, I uninstalled the title. I'm going to be playing it to all of the RUSH albums. Geddy's gonna get me through it! XD

I'm now back to where Demon 4 should be showing up, effectively 4-1.

What I find particularly striking is just how random the acquisition of anything is in this game and how little is actually needed or even viable, given the game's mechaincs. For example, at just under 3 hours I acquired the Invincible power-up where, last time, I had it within 2 hours. Last time I had 6 Double Cannons at this point in the game and, now, I have just 2: this means that my chosen play-style is not available to me.

And in all of it it's just absolutely remarkable that damage is entirely random save for being hit in the face by a Demon's body. Sometimes one pellet will destroy the ship and sometimes it will be up to three, the same goes for hitting a ship of any variety and all of this when at 'full health'.

It's unfortunate that the developers seem to have spent no real time focusing on how the player interacts with this game. From minor things like being unable to play an album from the starting track to the ending track, being able to see the song times before choosing a song, and being unable to move an equipped ship part from one spot to another, to major issues like the existence of Demon 4, the lack fo variety in weapons and how random they are, Inspiration/Kudos issues and the absurdly small playing space given the game mehcanics...I don't see how anyone can say meaningful QA happened here.

I'll be glad to have finished it, uninstalled it and, as happens more and more, have another example of just how grossly developers err when it comes to game desgin from the perspective of a critical player. I wouldn't say making video games is easy, but...well, when a player with even a small level of skill is paying attention it's obvious what is wrong when it's wrong.

All very good points. I kept the one installation for a long time, until getting a new PC, so I didn't run into the problem of not having enough double-cannons for example. The difference to an intricately designed shmup like Tyrian is apparent, which has no variety after the nth time but still great replay value. The devs perhaps bit off more than they could chew developing the graphics and the translation of music to unique levels, and left some mechanics unpolished. Like manuscripts, games are never finished by the creators, just abandoned at some state between "releasable" and "perfect." But I think we are getting off the original topic, that cursed music-eating demon!

I'm mainly a FPS-guy and attempting to play Stargunner on Normal was a very humbling experience. SHUMPs are not my genre but I can definitely appreciate how they work, the same with the crazier 'bullet-hell' sub-genre. Part of how they work is by forcing extreme pattern recognition and memory, making you work to learn how to play before you learn how to play. That's not my sort of style but I respect the convention, kind of like Demon's Souls in that regard. I'm going to be going after Stargunner on Easy before the year is up and I think I'll give Tyrian a shot, too.

5-3 was a particular bugbear, too, and just like 4-3 it seems to me that how the player interacts with the game just wasn't on the table. What else can a player do in this environment but be very cynical? The whole 'the pubs are evil, man, support the devs!' is just a nauseous statement when it's clear just how complicit they are in the whole state of affairs and even if, generally, from a passive position. I took out 5-3 with the exact same set-up I took out every other boss once I was able to get Double Cannons, however I fixed all the weapons into a frontal cone.

By the time I got to 5-1 I was so disheartened that I simply selected a track then went to do something else, letting the game go through whatever it needed to go through until I eventually found the 5-1, 5-2 and 5-3 Demons. Only then did I come back to play and finish the game. It was remarkably disheartening and, while not the worst game I've played (Final Fantasy and Resident Evil take the cake there, so far), I do think this is the game that's the most disrespectful of my time.

The Demons even went away after beating the game and were, ultimately, of no real purpose. The same goes for what could have been a thought-provoking narrative about the importance of music to human life. I uninstalled the game and didn't look back. And if only the way the music worked actually worked this may have been balanced by that amazing feat but, again, it just didn't.

And now I'm playing the Hammerwatch expansion and, just like with the original campaign, getting my hair blown back by how simple, rich, challenging and rewarding that simple game is to play. It's all just fucking nutty, destructa. Where it's not completely disheartening or infuriating, this beloved hobby of ours is just fucking nutty.

Agreed...perhaps that's why I have close to 300 games in my catalog but haven't played anything besides HOMM3 this year. :D