Yars: Recharged

To get this achievement, you need to beat all 30 Mission challenges. Along the way you should get

as well.

I was going to break down every mission and give a strategy, but it turns out that there's not much need for that, because the majority of those can be done just by playing the game normally, so I'll save it for the ones that gave me most work.

One mission in particular that clapped my ass for a good while was mission #22, Hard Boiled. In this mission, there's a Qootile Core surrounded by two very hard to breach "U's" lined with cannons. Once you arrive here, you'll want to start eating away at the walls and destroy those cannons, but this is the wrong strat. What you should do instead is just eat away at the hard shell between sections that starts facing the player. Ignore the cannons, back away when needed, then dig in and keep nibbling. You should be able to destroy at least one hexagon before the level does a complete spin, allowing you to dig in closer to the core and eat away at it's defenses. Once you eat the bomber turret, you should have a straight shot into the core whenever it's facing the Zorlon Cannon. Now it's just a matter of eating the cannons to refill your energy and take your shots.

Mission #11, Tower of Terror, also gave me some work. Explaining how I beat it is a little more complicated than showing, so here's a video:


So what you'll want to do here is attack those laser cannons through the wall and use them to shoot the other cannons, basically. This will make this level a lot easier from then on, and if you're a better shot than me, you can even take out one of those two cannons below. I also experimented with using the laser cannons to take out those cores that shoot in all directions, as they're the ones protecting the walls, but you can only take one out, meaning you'll still have to either go around to take out the other, or spend ages nibbling at the walls.

Mission #17, Megaplex and #18, Sandcrawler: there will be three cores, a big one in the middle and two smaller ones above and below. The issue here is that if you attack the towers, the middle core will go haywire and starting shooting like crazy, as well as spawning bullets from the sides of the screen. So what you'll want to do is, firstly, nibble away at the upper and lower cores' defenses. Once they're unprotected, start nibbling at the middle core's laser cannons, but DO NOT destroy them. Just leave them with less than 25% health. Get back to the Zorlon Cannon and fire at the upper or lower core. If you miss one of your shots, approach a core, recharge and fire again. Once you destroy it, collect the energy from the destroyed turrets and OBLITERATE the middle core. It'll take four shots to destroy it, so you might want to save one shot from a core to destroy the middle core's defenses. While you're navigating around between Zorlon shots, keep shooting at the middle one, then fall back and open fire, using the lower turrets as an aiming aid. If you see you're running out of energy, finish off the other core instead and keep on collecting energy and firing at the middle core. The faster you are at taking it out, the better are your chances of staying alive. Particularly, I just saved my entire health to finish it off without worrying about dodging small bullets between Zorlon shots.

Mission #19, Wingman, is the hardest one in my opinion. In this mission, towers are scattered everywhere, each powering a hexagon of the core's shield. Once you start taking out towers, just like in the earlier levels, the core will start shooting and spawning bullets from outside of the screen. I managed to wipe out all towers and it was hard to even find a place to stand without getting shot, and the core wouldn't stop shooting swirls, so you'd need to only take out the towers needed to make an opening. I tried to map those as well, but it isn't as simple, as it's hard to move around and check the wall every time you destroy a tower. I did manage to make a few openings and get a few shots in, but it's hard to hit the core through such a small, ever slightly moving window, and recharging the Zorlon cannon gets progressively harder as time passes and more towers get wiped out. So here's what I did:

Yup. Didn't know you could hurt the core with missiles either. I got this to work on my third try after spending an entire afternoon trying this level again and again on the "legit" way to do it. Good luck with this one lmao.

Mission #20, Power Wall: surprisingly, this mission isn't as hard as the last ones. To shoot at the core, you need to take out it's shield, which is being kept there by the "shotgun" turrets, which are protected as well. To breach the shotgun turrets, you need to destroy the highest and lowest laser cannons on the wall. Once the level starts, fly towards the bottom of the wall and destroy the laser turret. Some of the shotgun turret's walls will disappear, so you go there and take it out. If you're a good shot, you can pass by the core, recharge the cannon and fire already. Then fly up, take out another laser cannon, then the shotgun core and repeat the process. If you need to recharge the Zorlon cannon, I recommend sticking to the middle of the screen, moving horizontally only to avoid cannon fire and vertically only to avoid swirls.

Beat this final mission and the achievement is yours. Good luck with this, as it's the second hardest achievement in the game as far as I'm concerned.