While I was in NY this weekend I saw this cab and knew what I had to do. These pads are about as terrible as you'd expect the pads in a freaking museum to be, the down arrow on the right pad didn't even work and I'm lucky to even have passed the song 😭
Hi! I started playing GX around 3 weeks ago, and after playing the Grand Prix for a bit and beating story mode on Normal, decided to give Very Hard a go, and here I am! Here are my thoughts on each stage.
Chapter 1 - Really liked this one! Very fun figuring out the pattern to get all the capsules efficiently, and most of the hard turns were on lap 1, so I didn't have too many last lap fails, (Although I still somehow managed to lose by a margin of 1 capsule like 4 times...). One of the harder missions, but very satisfying, and unlocking Rainbow Phoenix is an awesome reward.
Chapter 2 - Simultaneously one of the easiest and most annoying stages. The boulder patterns for the majority of the stage are pitfully easy to dodge, except for the ones on the last turn where they throw a clusterfuck of boulders at you that I only learned to navigate after several deaths, and since it takes about a minute to get to said last turn, it was quite the time waster. More frustrating/time wasting than difficult.
Chapter 3 - Extremely fun! Not too hard, and since the AI's boost is so strong, you have to have a good lead on them in order to not get overtaken on the final straight, which really encouraged me to learn the track, and how to dive efficiently. Fairly easy and very fun.
Chapter 4 - I lucked out and beat this in about 3 tries, which goes to show how shit this mission is. Feels like complete luck whether you can manage to kill all the racers efficiently, which consequently would've made this a complete pain in the ass if I hadn't gotten so lucky lol
Chapter 5 - This was the first chapter I tried to beat on Very Hard, since I had gotten bored of trying to beat mission 9 on my first story mode playthrough on Normal, so I gave this a try instead. Took me an extremely long time to beat, most likely because I was inexperienced at the time. I still really enjoyed this one though, and finally getting that perfect run was insanely satisfying. Although, the Gamecube Controller's large deadzone oftentimes made the small adjustments this mission requires annoyingly difficult to make, and having to start the mission out with 10 long, boring seconds of non-stop boosting with no turns every attempt held this chapter back from being my favorite.
Chapter 6 - Nothing to say about this one, literally took me 2 attempts. I already learned the track by virtue of beating Normal and Hard difficulties to unlock Very Hard, so by that point I had already mastered this stage. I do find it funny though that, quite fittingly, your reward for beating such an easy chpater is the worst car in the game lmao
Chapter 7 - I was very excited to try this level out after everything I had heard about it. On the one hand, everyone considers this level to be an impossibly difficult challenge, but on the other hand people like Sepi say it's incredibly overrated, and that since the AI supposedly "slows down on the final straight", it's a complete cakewalk. I was eager to test this notion out, so when I got to that final straight for the first time, I boosted like there was no tomorrow and... I lost. Yeah, the AI just never slowed down for me like Sepi said they would, and it took me quite a few attempts before I managed to get a large enough lead going into the final turn to boost to victory. It took me about 2.5 hours to beat, and while it was pretty hard, it never seemed impossible like people say it is. To be honest I think there's a great deal of luck at play when it comes to beating this; since there are so many cars on this narrow track, that can lead to crazy ass interactions like getting knocked super far ahead into 1st, or getting decimated within the first 5 seconds of the race. All in all, a hard race, but not impossible with a bit of luck.
Chapter 8 - Really quite easy especially after chapter 7, after learning where the most problematic mines were, and to avoid them or use them to mineboost, I managed to clear this after about 15 or so attempts. Pretty painless, and very fun to be honest, I think this is a surprisingly fair race considering you're pretty much racing the devil himself, and the track is very fun.
Chapter 9 - Really quite easy, I find that this mission is more of a fight to stay alive than beat the ghost, since I never made it to the finish line and lost, only fell off the course. All it really took was mastering a few turns and the dive towards the end, and I was home free.
All in all, I really enjoyed Very Hard! It's not quite as bad as people make it out to be, and so long as you're determined enough to not give up, even F-Zero newcomers like me can beat it. So yeah! If you for some reason actually read all of this incredibly long rant, please let me know what you thought about it, or how your own playthroughs of Very Hard have gone. See ya!