This article takes a detailed look at the game system and scoring in Cotton 2, and helps the player to get good scores. As a reference, if your score is below 10 million, you can't really say that you have 'completed' this game! (Some Japanese players have attained a score of 30 million, under default settings.) If you can read Japanese, see the file "maniax.txt" on the game CD for more details.
Seal - What really happens during a chain is that, the existing seal expires and the next enemy is sealed. If the existing seal is a big one, it does not expire until it has touched 5 enemies. If the next enemy has too much life, it may not be sealed, in which case the chain ends.
Experience - Maximum level is 5. When you fully fill the Experience bar at level 5, you receive 10000 bonus points, but the Experience bar is emptied.
Pursuit - You get 100 points per hit. Every 10th hit, you receive bonus points in multiples of 1000 (up to 10000). The count resets if you catch the seal. If the seal expires on-screen, a life recovery bubble is released. The life recovery bubble heals your life and awards a little bit of experience (but no points). My opinion is that it is generally more fruitful to concentrate on the chain than to worry about pursuit when your life is full. Life recovery bubbles travel slowly to the right. The more life recovery bubbles you have picked up, the more shots it takes to create further life recovery bubbles.
Chain - Every 10th hit, you receive bonus points in multiples of 10000 (up to 100000). When the chain ends, a bubble appears. The bubble is worth a lot of points and experience: the score value of the bubble is equal to the size of the chain x1000 points, plus the size of pursuit x100 points. The bubble travels towards your current location at a speed correlated with the distance between it and you. Try to make long chains end on-screen, so as to reduce the chance of missing the bubble. (Bubbles formed off-screen often travel very fast.) At the end of the stage, you receive a "technical bonus" of 500 points for each enemy involved in a chain.
Big Seal - For all enemies sealed by a big seal, other than the last one which expires the big seal, the chain count (towards the x10000 bonus every 10th hit) restarts at 1. However, every such seal inherits the full 'bubble value' of the big seal. Thus, if you succeed in sealing a big enemy in a large chain, you can easily get a whole lot of points in a short time by just catching the seal, running it into enemies (don't throw it), and picking up the large bubbles. If you find that you cannot effectively involve big enemies in large chains, it is recommended that you try playing the game at easy difficulty, just to see how this technique works. This technique is especially effective in stage 6, where there are many big enemies, and where it is possible to collect over 4 million points in one stage. A big seal is also an excellent vehicle for a major pursuit.
Spell - In additional to enemies and enemy shots, a spell also destroys crystals and seals; keep this in mind. After stage clear (except stage 7), you get 5000 bonus points for every spell you are holding.
Tea - You get 100 points per cup, plus a bit of life recovery and experience. Some cups are worth 500 points; I have not been able to confirm whether they award life and experience at the same proportion. You get points (but not life recovery) even for shooting the cups. After stage clear, you get 500 bonus points for every cup you picked up. By evading all the cups, you get a 50000~100000 point secret bonus, plus several bubbles. You can still qualify even if you shoot some cups.
Copyright 15 April 1998 Alan KWAN Shiu Ho
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / created 15 Apr 98 / last updated 4 July 98