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R-Type Final 2 [PS4/XB1/NSW]

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    R-Type Final 2 [PS4/XB1/NSW]

    It's starting to arrive with folks now, and although I've not played it for long I did at least fire it up briefly last night. The PS4 version has a whopper of a patch already, so take the time to pop the disc in before, or you'll end up playing it unpatched like me.



    There's a lot been put into the presentation, with cut scenes, a little intro before you blast off and so on, and in general a lot of consideration to the interface and general design as you boot up. It's got that same kind of spacey, chilled out, melancholic feel to it as in Final.

    In game things look good - it looks pretty modern, and there's plenty of visual effects to the differing shots. It's still very much R-Type though; early enemy wave patterns being charge shot fodder, quickly finding yourself inside, the screen slowly scrolling through a base, and a tight passageway to then cram yourself into while enemies continue to spawn from the top and bottom. Not much else to say beyond this point, but looking forward to spending some more time with it.

    Very glad it's here, and for once a Kickstarter project has actually got physical goods to people before street date!
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    #2
    Waiting for amazon to send off my switch copy looking forward to trying it out. I went with switch as I’m trying to keep all shooters in one place seems switch is getting so many of them and with the screen been perfect for Tate it’s a perfect place for them even if it’s not always the optimal version.

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      #3
      I don't know whether to start this, Rolling Gunner, Raiden IV, or other incoming games.

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        #4
        My Xbox copy is on its way. Interesting to see it running on Series X.

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          #5
          So does the Series X version have any next-gen spunk or anything different from other versions? Why no PS5?

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            #6
            Originally posted by hudson View Post
            So does the Series X version have any next-gen spunk or anything different from other versions? Why no PS5?
            I’ve been trying to get info on the Series versions and can’t find anything. Hoping DF will do a comparison video

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              #7
              Pretty good this game is, graphics are very nice with great explosions and sense of shots having impact which i do not feel in many shooters, love the way when you charge up your shot the lighting changes on the stage wall s

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                #8
                Switch version seem to suffer from frame skipping, frame drops and long loading times (for being a shmup) between deaths, so I went with PS5 on this one. Wanted to keep shmups on my Switch like importaku, but Garegga and Ketsui are PS4 exclusives anyway. The Xbox One port supposedly isn’t very good either, even on Series X

                Granzella aren't exactly tech wizards and Disaster Report 4 was also pretty poorly optimized for Switch, so no real surprise that they struggled with this one as well
                Last edited by Nico87; 01-05-2021, 15:33.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Nico87 View Post
                  Granzella aren't exactly tech wizards and Disaster Report 4 was also pretty poorly optimized for Switch, so no real surprise that they struggled with this one as well
                  Never experienced frame drops up to level 4, framerate seems constant but you can see some resolution drops here and there, though it's not as visible as in other titles. This is Granzella's best optimised title, but I'd say that's mostly due to Unreal. It's way more fluid than Final 1 and Delta, but from what I've seen it doesn't really push level or enemy design that much...I'm focusing on Rolling Gunner now, but I really hope that level 3 is not this R-Type's giant battleship/thing level, because it's very underwhelming.

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                    #10
                    Having problems trying to beat the second level boss on normal. Reflexes are not what they used to be
                    Lighting is impressive but there are some muddy textures in there even on the Series X.
                    Soundtrack is pumping with good sound effects. Haven't managed to unlock any new ships only extra credits.
                    Last edited by BIG EDD; 01-05-2021, 17:23.

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                      #11
                      I am finding this pretty dull - boring almost. I’m on the one x and whilst the resolution is good there are shuttering scrolling backgrounds and enemy’s and it feels laggy to me. The first few bosses look they were programmed in a lunch hour and it all seems pretty unpolished. Oh dear.

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                        #12
                        OK, I've been able to spend some more time with the game, going through it twice.
                        First, evertone should have two password-locked ships in the Museum, and if you want to unlock them...

                        Ship no. 3 is "loveandpeace"; ships no.24 is "granzella".



                        Now, about the game...the first five stages a Boring. Capital B. And frankly not that well designed. More than any other R-Type, I feel that dying once puts you at a disadvantage against the oncoming enemies, and some checkpoints are placed so near difficult waves with a POW Armor flying in right in the middle of it. I think the middle point of stage 3 and during the first half of stage 4 are the worst offenders. On the other hand, bosses are way too easy and unimaginative.

                        There are a couple of good ideas, like stage 7, but it's nowhere near past R-Types; I find stage 3 particularly underwhelming, it should be the climactic battle against a giant battleship but the battleship feels like a quarter the size of any other previous giant enemy.
                        The first playthrough is frankly boring, but soldiering through it does unlock some nice things...like customising the title of the game, you can go "R-Type Final II", or use different fonts for the words, or go "Final Final Final".

                        I've also found my first split,

                        before the fifth boss: there's an enemy that drop coloured orbs upon destruction, and during the first playthrough I didn't touch them not knowing what they were. On the second, I touched the orange orb and new level 6, and this time it was an interesting level, with fast vertical scrolling and cannon sliding along the stage's walls firing reflectiv bullets. it was fun! But the boss died so quickly that I probably skipped some of its phase.


                        Then, level 7...

                        your ship gets changed into the Bydo R-9 and you go against your own people (similar to what happens in RTF1 and R-Type Tactics) in a pretty majestic fleet battle. Another fun stage, and I thought that would unlock the ship you were forcibly morphed into, but instead no



                        The second playthrough renewed my interest in the game, although reaching the split I've found takes a bit too much time.

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                          #13
                          I’m struggling with this one. I want to love it but not feeling it. Doesn’t feel right playing. I use craft speed 3 and it still feels weird. Sometimes there is so many effects onscreen that you miss a bullet and kills you leaving you wondering what the hell hit you.

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                            #14
                            Spent some time on it this evening. Echoing what others have said really. There are ocassionally some nice ideas, but overall it's kinda dull. The stage and boss designs aren't very exciting. The lighting effects a quite pretty, but I sometimes wish I could turn them all off to make the gameplay a little clearer. Hit detection is very unforgiving (several times I've felt like I died when I wasn't actually hit). There feels to be something a bit odd about the movement as well that I can't quite put my finger on, it's like it isn't consistent somehow. Given I wasn't very impressed with the demo I'm starting to wish I hadn't instantly gone and bought the full game!

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                              #15
                              I'm done with the game. I've tried soldiering on for a little bit to unlock as many ships as possible but I've found myself playing sloppily, doing stupid mistakes and in general not particularly anticipating starting a new playthrough or even a stage in score attack mode.

                              A few days ago I unlocked all but one enemy in the gallery, hinting that I saw all available stages, and a quick search confirmed this; I think the missing enemy is a variant of the first boss, but I don't really have the strenght to continue playing to uncover how to see it.
                              I think there are three major problems with R-Type Final 2.
                              First, it takes a lot of grinding to unlock ships. A full playthrough usually grants enough resources to unlock two-three ships, although more powerful crafts will gobble up more resources. I have around 20 ships now, and most of them are variants I know I won't use, like the flamethrower ship, the recce R-9s, or other ships which I already tried in Final 1. Only that in Final 1 unlocking certain ships required you to play a little with their previous variant, instead here it's just dry resource grinding.

                              Second, there aren't many stages. The first five stages are fixed, stages six and seven have three variations based on a token collected just before the fifth boss. There are four of these tokens, and currently one of them apparently does nothing. Maybe more stages will be added at a later date via a patch, like some ships are already hinted at, but you can see every location within 10 hours, which seriously limits how much you want to play through the same places with 99 (or more) ships.

                              Third, stage and boss design is hardly interesting. I've found that detaching the Force device is way more destructive than having it attached; there's almost no reason to use the beam if not for a couple of stages, and rearward use of the Force device mostly comes into play against bosses. Stages are on the short side, and some of them have nice ideas, but some checkpoint placements are right next to difficult waves with a POW Armor right in the middle of them, giving you very little offensive and defensive capabilties.
                              Boss are the worst part, most of them go down quick, which is not unusual for R-Type, but they have one or two attack patterns and none is really that intense (maybe with the exception of one). One of the later bosses in particular made me say "shoot the core" out loud: it's not quite like a Big Core from Gradiis, but the idea surely is similar. Of all the bosses here I can think of two that I like, and one of them is more of an endurance round against multiple enemies.

                              On Switch another thing that kills the momentum are the longish loading times between deaths, even if you die at the first bullet not even ten seconds from the checkpoint. Framerate is stable and resolution is kept constant most of the times, but artistically R-Type Final 2 is a very plain game. Again, one or two stages look fine but some of the crazy stuff the series started doing since Delta (like two people humping in the background) are absent, and despite the elaborate intro sequence, there's very little fluff, and I'm not quite sure I'd understand some endings if I didn't play Delta, Final 1, or even Tactics.

                              I would have gladly taken a "normal" R-Type, with six to eight stages and maybe 3 or 4 ships, each stage and ship finely balanced to create a good shooter, instead of a lukewarm and half-cooked rehash of hundreds of ships and an handful of stages. R-Type Final 2 is not bad, but it's boring. And unfortunately for it, Raiden IV x Mikado Remix and Rolling Gunner Overpower came out the same week (in Japan, at least), which further highlights its many shortcomings.

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