I always wanted to try the strategic spin-off of R-Type, but being a strategic game I never attempted to play the JPN version, being afraid of losing something between the sea of kanji that would have filled the game.
Fortunately enough Atlus know how to please me and they even released a demo of the game.
Instead on relying on square tiles, RTC uses hexes allowing players to move their units diagonally. The demo doesn't allow to assign different pilots to the ships you're provided but it should be an option of the final version, so I think that units will gain experience, level up and such if they survive the current mission.
The structure is quite standard, you move your units and when you're finished you pass your turn to the enemy, the Bido forces. Different units have different movement profiles and weapons (though everyone has the standard vulcan laser) plus hit points and fuel reserve.
Ships from the R-9 series (the demo feature the Arrowhead, War Head, Grace Note, Night Owl, Bomber and Achilles variants as friendly units - Bido ships like the Amphibian are featured as enemies) are actually formations of that ship class (I guess it represent a single player and its lives
) and each ship represent an hit point; a formation can have a maximum of 5 ships/hit points and can be repaired by capital ships, service crafts or docking bays - a feature that is absolutely useful as just like in the original game you have an handful of units against a much larger army led by a much angrier foe.
Larger crafts (like capital ships or bosses) have hit points and they don't lose any combat effectivness until destroyed.
POW armors can replenish your ammo and fuel supplies, but they cannot provide you Force devices (nor they can be destroyed by friendly fire, if not by wave cannons). In fact, Force devices are quite rare and are an incredibly strong asset in your fleet and you must treasure them: they cannot be repaired and provide all ship the heavy weapons they need to face the aliens.
It's nice to see that different kind of ships can use different kind of Force devices and each Force device grants different lasers: for example Force-As give arrowheads the standard lasers found in R-Type while Force-Ds give the ability to block incoming missile attacks. They can also ram the enemies for massive damage but they aren't invincible as in the shoot'em'ups.
Some ships also have special abilities, including special weapons: the Warhead can "desynch", giving it a movement boost at the expense of extra fuel per turn, the Bomber has a giant nuclear missile and each ship type has a different wave cannon, though all of them damage everything on their path, including friendly units. Ouch. Haven't really understood why the Achilles can't transform at will, but at least it can liberate docking bays in its bipedal form.
Graphics are extremely nice, though battle animations are too slow, even slower than Fire Emblem's own and they take a few seconds to load - from the MMS, I hope load times from the UMD are the same or the game will drag even longer. In fact, once I saw how battles go I disabled them from the option menu, without them the game is much more enjoyable has there aren't pauses between movements.
Unfortunately, the game mechanics borrow from the shoot'em'up, so the rhythm is rather slow; this worked well for the original game, but as a strategy game, it feels too cumbersome.
Ships need fuel and although they would just float on the map when they ran dry, having POWs and service crafts running around to replenish them is a chore, especially because most maps have choke points that limit mobility and the number of crafts that can pass through.
Not to mention that these points are usually guarded by Gaints and other units equipped with wave cannons.
Add an incredibly thick fog of war, relatively low movement rates for all ships and you get a game where some turns are spent trying to find the enemy.
AWACSs help, but they are incredibly fragile and once gone you're basically blind and you don't want to have your fighter run into ambushes because the ambusher gets a free attack phase, even during the opponent's turn.
However, the demo is kind enough to let you recover from some errors without having to begin the mission again, and the full version will have a quicksave feature (or that's what the menu hints), so I suspect that the game will hammer your forces without mercy in the later missions.
The demo features a training mission, a mission that seems to be set in R-Type II's second stage with a naval destroyer as you flagship and then the first R-Type stage, with an old acquittance as final boss.
It's nice to see Irem doing something different for the R-Type franchise and actually giving some tactical sense to the huge number of ships found in R-Type Final, but I fear that as a strategic game R-Type Command won't be a great game, but just some sort of bait for fans of R-Type and strategy games.
Fortunately enough Atlus know how to please me and they even released a demo of the game.
Instead on relying on square tiles, RTC uses hexes allowing players to move their units diagonally. The demo doesn't allow to assign different pilots to the ships you're provided but it should be an option of the final version, so I think that units will gain experience, level up and such if they survive the current mission.
The structure is quite standard, you move your units and when you're finished you pass your turn to the enemy, the Bido forces. Different units have different movement profiles and weapons (though everyone has the standard vulcan laser) plus hit points and fuel reserve.
Ships from the R-9 series (the demo feature the Arrowhead, War Head, Grace Note, Night Owl, Bomber and Achilles variants as friendly units - Bido ships like the Amphibian are featured as enemies) are actually formations of that ship class (I guess it represent a single player and its lives
) and each ship represent an hit point; a formation can have a maximum of 5 ships/hit points and can be repaired by capital ships, service crafts or docking bays - a feature that is absolutely useful as just like in the original game you have an handful of units against a much larger army led by a much angrier foe.Larger crafts (like capital ships or bosses) have hit points and they don't lose any combat effectivness until destroyed.
POW armors can replenish your ammo and fuel supplies, but they cannot provide you Force devices (nor they can be destroyed by friendly fire, if not by wave cannons). In fact, Force devices are quite rare and are an incredibly strong asset in your fleet and you must treasure them: they cannot be repaired and provide all ship the heavy weapons they need to face the aliens.
It's nice to see that different kind of ships can use different kind of Force devices and each Force device grants different lasers: for example Force-As give arrowheads the standard lasers found in R-Type while Force-Ds give the ability to block incoming missile attacks. They can also ram the enemies for massive damage but they aren't invincible as in the shoot'em'ups.
Some ships also have special abilities, including special weapons: the Warhead can "desynch", giving it a movement boost at the expense of extra fuel per turn, the Bomber has a giant nuclear missile and each ship type has a different wave cannon, though all of them damage everything on their path, including friendly units. Ouch. Haven't really understood why the Achilles can't transform at will, but at least it can liberate docking bays in its bipedal form.
Graphics are extremely nice, though battle animations are too slow, even slower than Fire Emblem's own and they take a few seconds to load - from the MMS, I hope load times from the UMD are the same or the game will drag even longer. In fact, once I saw how battles go I disabled them from the option menu, without them the game is much more enjoyable has there aren't pauses between movements.
Unfortunately, the game mechanics borrow from the shoot'em'up, so the rhythm is rather slow; this worked well for the original game, but as a strategy game, it feels too cumbersome.
Ships need fuel and although they would just float on the map when they ran dry, having POWs and service crafts running around to replenish them is a chore, especially because most maps have choke points that limit mobility and the number of crafts that can pass through.
Not to mention that these points are usually guarded by Gaints and other units equipped with wave cannons.
Add an incredibly thick fog of war, relatively low movement rates for all ships and you get a game where some turns are spent trying to find the enemy.
AWACSs help, but they are incredibly fragile and once gone you're basically blind and you don't want to have your fighter run into ambushes because the ambusher gets a free attack phase, even during the opponent's turn.
However, the demo is kind enough to let you recover from some errors without having to begin the mission again, and the full version will have a quicksave feature (or that's what the menu hints), so I suspect that the game will hammer your forces without mercy in the later missions.
The demo features a training mission, a mission that seems to be set in R-Type II's second stage with a naval destroyer as you flagship and then the first R-Type stage, with an old acquittance as final boss.
It's nice to see Irem doing something different for the R-Type franchise and actually giving some tactical sense to the huge number of ships found in R-Type Final, but I fear that as a strategic game R-Type Command won't be a great game, but just some sort of bait for fans of R-Type and strategy games.
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