- You'll want to spend time thinking about each level's routing to get the Ace ranking. If there's a notably open area or sightline to an enemy in a level, it was almost certainly put there for a reason. Similarly, long platforming segments without any enemies probably have some method of skipping most or all of them.
- Every stage has a secret ranking above Ace for beating the developer time.
- Destroying enemy projectiles will give you a small speed boost.
- You can safely skip every visual novel segment if they're not your thing.
- Collecting a stage's gift usually requires bypassing obstacles without using your soul cards' movement abilities so you can use them to get to the gift.
- If you're having trouble finding a gift in a stage, a small handful of stages instead have sidequest-like Insight hands instead of traditional floating/glowing presents.
- You can immediately detonate a Purify grenade by hitting it with your sword.
- During boss fights, it's usually possible to damage the boss as they transition between areas. It's possible to deal enough damage this way to defeat them before getting to their final phase - and you'll get an achievement for doing this too.
- Mimics and tripwires are almost always placed such that killing them first will cause collateral damage.
- It's possible, but almost never practical, to destroy red destructible barriers with shots instead of movement abilities.