Ultra Despair Girls (UP)

There is a ranking system in this game. Thankfully, unlike most games, the ranking system isn’t very deep. There are only three factors that contribute to your rating. You start with 300 points, and you get deducted points for three things, which are detailed below. If you fall below 240-260 points (higher on higher difficulties), you will lose your A ranking.

• Arcade Passes- Throughout the game, there are numerous Monoku-Man machines throughout all of the chapters, anywhere from 4-9 per Chapter. You only need to clear all of the enemies in the room to advance, but there are special challenges in each room which are required to count as a pass for the ranking system. Examples of these are killing all of the enemies with one explosion or in one go. You also have restricted use of truth bullets (you can select them, you’ll just fail if you use crossed off ones). This can go both ways, as sometimes the available bullets are a hint as to what you need to do. If you did it correctly, you’ll get a congratulatory screen, if not the gate will open without the screen. If you fail, you can retry, but this will also impact you in the same negative way, as noted below. Reloading an old save if it’s not too far back is a much better option, more details on that later. You will be deducted 10-30 points for each arcade challenge incomplete, depending on your difficulty level.
• Retries- Each time you die, or otherwise retry from checkpoint, 10-30points will be deducted from your final score, depending on your difficulty level. However, you can utilise save points to ensure that you never get deducted points for retries or for failed arcade challenges, as loading previous saves does not count for this. You can’t save whenever you want, but they are frequent enough that there won’t be too much of a loss if you have to reload. You can also skip cutscenes and dialogue sections with :vitastart: if you don’t want to sit through them again. If you can backtrack to a save point, do so before entering an arcade room (they all have the same door), and reload if you fail the challenge, as redoing 5-10 minutes of gameplay is better than redoing a whole Chapter if you want to shorten down the plat time.
• Hidden Kids- These are one of the collectibles, for more details on them see Hide-And-Seek Champion below. For each one you miss you’ll lose 10-30 points, but if you follow the collectible guide, you’ll only need to worry about Arcades and retries. If you find them, they'll carry over to NG+ and you won't have to find them again.

After the results screen in Chapter 5, if you got all As you’ll get this along with Hopeful.