Gave it another run through stage 7 and still can't get above level 3 in Caravan or Boss Attack mode. Also I did some different branching but the levels all seemed exactly the same, so I guess there aren't dozens of levels?
There's two things that are kind of annoying though IMO (and make me want to break my PSP at times):
1. In almost every shmup I've played, after you die the game ALWAYS gives you enough invincibility at the start of a new life to collect your dropped power ups. But EEE DOES NOT. If you have rank 6 or higher and you die you can circle around and get about 4 before the invicibility wears off. That means if there's tons of stuff on screen and you attempt to go for all six, you'll usually die AGAIN and have your rank crystals spread out even more and they often end up going off-screen by this point.
2. If you die near the side of a level, it's often impossible to get about half of your rank crystals back because of the damn borders.
These added together make it seem like if you're doing really high scoringly good and then you die once...you can easily be completely ****ed and lose all your rank and end up facing the boss with low rank and being unable to beat it. I've had time and time again where I'm having one of my best runs and one shot from something hitting me off-guard kills my whole game and causes a game over. It's almost like it's better to just hide and let time tick down once you have max rank so that you guard your rank with everything you've got so you can beat the boss. >_<
