Definitely seems to be a matter of keep replaying until you get good at dealing with the patterns of attack that are thrown your way and as you improve scores seem to jump up rather quickly.
Gynoug is the first Shmup I’ve completed without using continues so really happy with the result, hopefully the skills gained transfer easily to other Shmups.
The hardest thing for me to learn was to stop staying at the left hand side of the screen, thinking that was safer whereas trying to stay more in the center allows for much better maneuverability for avoidance.
I also found once I started to hit later stages that having too many speed power ups was hugely detrimental to my ability to finely dodge bullets and so in Gynoug I stopped collecting speed up power ups (which max after 8) at around 3 collections and that helped greatly.