How do you best play 19?

[Pentastar]

I've been struggling with how the game works, ie the cards the bombs and how it's now 4 button. My only other verses game was 9 pofv   

[Marukos]

I'll share what I learned by just playing(I didn't read the manual):

• "Z" and "shift" behave as you would expect, "Z" for shooting and "shift" for slowing down. You can hold "X" to release your aura and charge your attack, you can use the power you collect(more on how to collect below) to charge up to 4 bars, bar 1 is just a weak special attack and bar 2 is a slightly more powerful version of the same attack, bar 3 releases you EX attack, which will unleash a danmaku on your enemy screen, and bar 4 releases a boss on your enemy screen for him to deal with. And finally "C" is just the bomb key, it will consume all your power, but can save you when you're trapped, try to use it when there are a lot of enemies on screen, so you can get higher combos.
• The ways I noticed to collect power are by shooting down enemies, pacifying beast spirits with your aura, and grazing bullets, but maybe there are more.
• The beast spirits can be reflected to your enemy screen by "pacifying" them using your aura(hold "X") and them shooting at them.
• There's no active cards like in Unconnected Marketeers and 100th Black Market, just passive or equipment cards. Meaning you don't need to think a lot about what cards you have, they will just give you a little bonus like more power or more projectiles.
• You can take 2 hits before losing a life, I will call it a shield, after being hit once you can unleash an EX attack(3 bars) or a boss attack(4 bars) to "recharge" your shield.
• At the climax of the battles there are times when your character will release an EX attack or a boss attack on its own, it doesn't consume bars, but I'm not sure what are the conditions for it happening, but I'm 95% sure that it only happens when you get combos around 100, that's why I recommend trying to use your bombs only when there are a lot of enemies on screen, that's how I got unbelievable combos above 300

Hope that can help you.

[Pentastar]

thanks