R-Type Final really sucks

[Klabauter8]

I can't really convince anyone of the appeal of simply shooting enemies for points, but I can tell you that saying something like "scoring mechanics never were a strength of these games" shits on decades of video game design for the sake of CAVE.

Lmao. As if Cave were the first people who made decent scoring systems. Sounds to me like you are just a Cave fanboy. I personally don't even like Cave scoring that much. Way too complicated and convoluted. Rayforce for example is a great game to play for score. Simple and straight forward, but still mor ethan just "milk X and Y checkpoint".

[Klabauter8]

I was definitely not in any way, shape, or form, even trying to imply anything that even sounds like that.

That aside, I'm pleased to see the "1CCs are a personal challenge" narrative (that's what you really wanted to say), because it explains the above confusion and the sheer hostility on your part. Good day.

Think whatever you want, you snobbish cunt. You are just the typical senior member who acts like "can't tell me anything, noob".
You implied I was lying, trying to ruin the game for people, and can't even reply to me like a normal person, because you are a snobbish dickhead too far up his own ass. Have a good day too you cunt.

[Special World]

Not to jump on two people yelling at each other over the internet, but to me it sounded like "scoring mechanics were never the strength of these games" was specifically about the R-Type series (which imo is both true and fair) rather than shmups taken as a whole.

There are plenty of shmups with great scoring systems (and great shmups without great scoring systems) but I really wouldn't count any R-Type as one of them. Not that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of R-Type games, but the score tally in R-Type has always struck me as something similar to the score tally in Megaman 1.

Either way, I think you guys should take a couple deep breaths, walk away from your computer, and play some Darius Gaiden.

[Despatche]

Hey, I'm exiting this. I really have no idea what that guy's on about, nor am I interested. Not anymore, anyway.

Well, I took it to mean R-Type as a series. I'm saying that it's not really true or fair at all, because "scoring mechanics" as most people use that term is entirely dependent on how CAVE does things and how any other game ever made stacks up to what CAVE puts out. The comparison to the first Mega Man, a game where the score counter literally never matters and there was literally zero thought put into the choice to have it in the game, is exactly what I'm talking about. None of the R-Types are like that, and even vaguely suggesting that they are is exactly what I'm talking about.

It's the age-old suggestion that so-called "survival"-based scoring games are quite literally pointless, because they simply aren't CAVE's games. Hearing that over and over again, year after agonizing year, gets old eventually. Just about every single kind of conversation you can have here is so fundamentally centered around a single developer by the name of CAVE, and it makes discussion of a very large and very old genre with hundreds of talented developers extremely difficult.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Somehow I don't think it's that simple, or they wouldn't have bothered with the whole IR thing.

You can try it out for yourself. Just don't shoot your force into the first phase of the last boss, and just kill the garbage flying around infinitely by staying on the left side. They all still give points. It's pretty bad. They probably had no time for polish I guess and forgot about this.

Can you confirm this? I have a feeling from one of the old discussions it was said that this isn't possible forever and something eventually gets you.

[Despatche]

Yeah, that was my thought. Delta and Final are pretty good about timeouts in my experience. Developers really started to care about that sort of thing in the PS1/Saturn era.

I'm assuming this is stage F-A? It might just be a really long timeout. Might even be difficulty dependent, too. Changing the difficulty changes all sorts of little things in this game, but without changing the game so fundamentally.

[EmperorIng]

It's a shame that the posts/replies from last night were lost due to some MYSQL error (maybe a restore of an earlier version was done to circumvent this?).

I think the important thing was that the final boss on FA does NOT allow infinite milking; IIRC Sly tested and found it times out after 45 minutes (!!!!) of milking.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Best 45 minutes of my life. Anyway, there's a theoretical 1mil+ of milking per life F-A route. My old hi score was only 774,746 F-C route.

[Plasmo]

It's the age-old suggestion that so-called "survival"-based scoring games are quite literally pointless, because they simply aren't CAVE's games. Hearing that over and over again, year after agonizing year, gets old eventually. Just about every single kind of conversation you can have here is so fundamentally centered around a single developer by the name of CAVE, and it makes discussion of a very large and very old genre with hundreds of talented developers extremely difficult.

I think the original point (before it turned to completely unnecessary insults, which certainly didn't help the string of arguments) was valid and had nothing to do with CAVE or even 'survival shooters'. If you play a game for score and there is a checkpoint that you can milk infinitely (or for 45 minutes apparently), then it is just not a lot of fun. R Type and R Type II on the other hand, can be played for score properly, since they do not suffer from this problem. R Type Final seems to be a whole different issue though.

And it doesn't make playing the game for score better, if you personally decide not to go for the seemingly endless milking parts. Normally, any exploit a game has to offer, the player will make use of. This is just how the arcade mentality works and how world records are set. This is the common ground, any competitive STG player agrees on. If you want to set a new world record in R Type II, you simply gotta go for the double KO milking on the last boss. There is no separate category 'no miss' in Arcadia/JHA and not on this forum either. R Type Final is simply not a good game in regards to competitive scoreplay. That being said, you can still enjoy the game on a more casual level, but I honestly cannot imagine any more serious, score-centered player to spend a lot of time with this title, due to it's obvious shortcomings in terms of design.

This is not "oldschool shooters vs. sophisticated (or call it 'convoluted' if you like) scoring mechanics", but simply "R Type Final sucks when played for score".

[Sumez]

Man, I have hardly played R-Type Final since it came out, but in my memory it's one of the best "casual shmups" out there. My approach to shooting games has changed a lot since then, but I recall having a lot of fun with it.

[Despatche]

This is not "oldschool shooters vs. sophisticated (or call it 'convoluted' if you like) scoring mechanics", but simply "R Type Final sucks when played for score".

Unfortunately, that's not the case. For one, that doesn't take nearly as many words to say. But seriously, when the claim got extended to R-Type in general, and when someone felt they could chime in with the Mega Man 1 comparison, you've got yet another example of "oldschool vs CAVE" in action.

The rest of your post says an awful lot of things about R-Type (the series) that are either misleading or plain untrue. For example, what you say about Final (based entirely on recent posts in this thread and probably not on personal experience by the way) applies to most of the other games in the series because of things like giving extends where Final does not, and the issue with Final only applies to a very specific route in the first place. And pointing out what Arcadia does helps nothing because everyone has always been frustrated with the odd holes Arcadia has traditionally had; no miss for an R-Type game is not at all different from splitting for autofire in most cases. Combine the two: Arcadia always split for Darius routes, so anyone worried about what Arcadia does should be worried about splitting for Final routes. Suddenly this "scoring exploit" that was literally discovered yesterday seems like a big joke and not something to actually take seriously.

Look, do players have agency or not?

Actually, you know, maybe they don't, maybe it's all a moot point. If there had been a thread back in 2005 or whenever, there would have been scores. There wasn't, so there probably never will be any scores, as people play these games less than they ever did, and there are less and less people who care about these forums. All the splits, or lack of splits, aren't going to change this either.

Here are the facts: people call Final a "casual" game because of some really strange perceptions that mostly apply to Delta, a game that people do not find casual, or to other R-Type games. No, Final is not 100% as good as Delta, but that's not interesting or important. What is important is that there is very obvious effort put into making the game not suck, just like Delta, and it's disrespectful to just write the game off as mindless casual fun because of some junk perceptions. If Delta is an A game, which it is by the way, then Final is an A- at worst.

Now if people are willing to also write off Delta as casual, that'd be great, actually! I can just laugh at them and joke that they're at least consistent with their nonsense.

[Austin]

If Delta is an A game, which it is by the way, then Final is an A- at worst.

Or, maybe a C-.

[qmish]

Even if someone posts about fact that he likes Final, people feel need to step in and say that "game is bad".

Geez.

I dont talk about this thread, just an observation from other shmup places.

Anyway i always read this thread title as "final finally sucks" instead of "really sucks"

[Shepardus]

I see it as people having different scales when judging what "sucks" and what doesn't - if you put a bunch of games next to each other, some are going to say that they're all pretty great and range from a 90% to 100%, while others will stretch that range from 0% to 100% because those same games are their baseline.

[Martinov]

I don't know if I posted years ago in this thread, but my opinion of Final has changed significantly. 14 years ago I bought it and hated it for its slow pace, empty stage segments and general fugly veneer and promptly sold it. Recently, however, I decided to buy Delta and Final again, and I've found myself really enjoying Final the second time round. I think it's a game you have to approach with low expectations ... it's far from a bad game, it just isn't a great game! I can forgive the flaws now and see it as a pleasant accompaniment to the superb Delta.

[Despatche]

Unacceptable. Final is a great game, it's just not quite as great as Delta. That is an actually fair assessment.

Here's the thing: there are soooo many posts that have that "Delta is a A but Final is a C, have low expectations" thread running through them, and it's dumb. Seeing that time and time again suggests that people haven't really played either game. And, would you know it, this is the shmups genre, where people don't really know genre standards and don't really know how to play their beloved games.

Crazy people like me start doing the research and crunching the numbers. We used to have "R-Type sucks and is bad design", but it seems people are less willing to say that these days. "Final sucks" never really let up though. There are multiple threads like this and they are multiple pages.

I'm not just going on about my personal opinion here. Final deserves to be held to a higher standard than people hold it to right now. It's not that far off from Delta at all, and it's significantly better than games like III. That's another quirk: the people who "have low expectations" for Final tend to think that III is one of the best shmups on a console, and that's even more depressing than the Delta comparisons.

[Bananamatic]

It's shit

[Klabauter8]

That being said, you can still enjoy the game on a more casual level, but I honestly cannot imagine any more serious, score-centered player to spend a lot of time with this title, due to it's obvious shortcomings in terms of design.

There are very good players who spend lots of time with the game (しぶや for example). The replayability of Final does not lay in the scoring, it lays in the countless ships the game has which also alter the way you have to play much. It's just not a game for people who only care about their e-peen and want to brag with impressive scores, or people who care about their arcade hipster cred. Those people usually stick to Cave.

I personally find Final actually better than Delta, but to each their own. Also, people call the game casual, but actually it can get incredibly difficult with weaker ships.

[Klabauter8]

That being said, you can still enjoy the game on a more casual level, but I honestly cannot imagine any more serious, score-centered player to spend a lot of time with this title, due to it's obvious shortcomings in terms of design.

Also, I find it quite hillarious that you impute this game shortcomings in terms of design, while playing utter crap like Pink Sweets, which is totally unoriginal. Just because people can't jerk off to their scores in this game, doesn't mean it has no replayability. Irem was still a company which improved on more important stuff than just score multipliers, bullet counts, and waifu bait, like Cave did it.

Edit: Although actually people can play this game for score too. It just involves a lot of mindless boss milking. But since you are a Pink Sweets fan, this actually should be no issue for you

[Shepardus]

That being said, you can still enjoy the game on a more casual level, but I honestly cannot imagine any more serious, score-centered player to spend a lot of time with this title, due to it's obvious shortcomings in terms of design.

Just because people can't jerk off to their scores in this game, doesn't mean it has no replayability.

Wouldn't that be an issue for a, allow me to quote, "score-centered player"?

Agree that "not score-centered" ≠ "casual" if that's what you're going for, though.

[Klabauter8]

Wouldn't that be an issue for a, allow me to quote, "score-centered player"?

Agree that "not score-centered" ≠ "casual" if that's what you're going for, though.

I would count myself as a "more serious, score-centered player". And I still like Final and already spend lots of time with it.
Sure, if you mean by this only players who play for world records or something, then the game is probably uninteresting for them, but if you only play these games for records, then you are probably quite stupid anyway.

[Plasmo]

That being said, you can still enjoy the game on a more casual level, but I honestly cannot imagine any more serious, score-centered player to spend a lot of time with this title, due to it's obvious shortcomings in terms of design.

Also, I find it quite hillarious that you impute this game shortcomings in terms of design, while playing utter crap like Pink Sweets, which is totally unoriginal. Just because people can't jerk off to their scores in this game, doesn't mean it has no replayability. Irem was still a company which improved on more important stuff than just score multipliers, bullet counts, and waifu bait, like Cave did it.

Edit: Although actually people can play this game for score too. It just involves a lot of mindless boss milking. But since you are a Pink Sweets fan, this actually should be no issue for you

First and foremost, I can't help myself but notice how aggressive every single post of yours is. What's the matter? We are just exchanging our opinions on the shared hobby we have. Chill out dude.

Pink Sweets is my guilty pleasure. I know very well about its shortcomings in terms of design. The game overall is way too long, but funnily enough, it's still shorter than R Type Final with that milking it seems. I also specifically said, that I am certain that you can enjoy R Type Final for many different reasons, but scoring certainly is not one of them. I don't think there is a single one enjoying 45 minutes of milking. Not even Despatche. It is just bad game design period.

I like the more oldschool approach of shmups a lot and the R Type series in general is fantastic! However, Final is on last place in my ranking, even when only played for the clear. Compared to e.g. R Type 3, it just looks very bland to me. Unpopular opinion: I don't like R Type Delta. Shoot me.

[Klabauter8]

First and foremost, I can't help myself but notice how aggressive every single post of yours is. What's the matter? We are just exchanging our opinions on the shared hobby we have. Chill out dude.

I am totally relaxed. I am just very direct and don't beat around the bush when expressing my thoughts.

I don't think there is a single one enjoying 45 minutes of milking. Not even Despatche. It is just bad game design period.

I actually disagree that the 45 minute milking is bad game design. When you take a look at where the game comes from, from an era where score play was either about checkpoint milking, or hours long multilooping, then I actually think this 45 minute boss milking is a genius idea.

A thing I like about this game is the atmosphere. It has a very meditative atmosphere, and especially the endboss on the F-A route is like this. Sure, when you expect action-packed gameplay non-stop, then you will dislike this, but when you approach the game from a more meditative view, then 45 minute boss milking there seems reasonable. Have you ever listened to the track for the final boss? I could easily meditate to this 45 minutes or more. This genre has a very meditative aspect anyway, so why not just do a 45 minute boss milking for change? I like this idea actually and it fits perfectly to the game.

Just imagine you do this 45 minute milking 2 times in a row, and then after it you die by the forces from the boss... I find this idea great and very original.
And when people don't like it, then they can just use an alternative route.

[Shepardus]

I don't think there is a single one enjoying 45 minutes of milking.

There's always someone.

[Plasmo]

I don't think there is a single one enjoying 45 minutes of milking.

There's always someone.

I actually disagree that the 45 minute milking is bad game design. When you take a look at where the game comes from, from an era where score play was either about checkpoint milking, or hours long multilooping, then I actually think this 45 minute boss milking is a genius idea.

I guess Shepardus is right then. Color me surprised... 45 minute long milking is a 'genius idea' for some people.

Just one small correction on Klabauter's post. R Type Final came out in 2003 and that's roughly 10 years after STGs with multiloops and checkpoint milking were popular and considered to be the norm. By the early 2000s, the genre had already gone into a very different (and in my opinion much more interesting) direction. I'm not a fan of excessive milking and neither of multiloops. Even a second loop is something I do not enjoy if it is not significantly different.

[Sumez]

You could say 45 minutes of milking is bad design, or for some reason you apparently might try to argue that it's good design.

However, I'd say there's a really good chance it's not by design. It's just an oversight, no reason to dwell on it.

[Klabauter8]

I guess Shepardus is right then. Color me surprised... 45 minute long milking is a 'genius idea' for some people.

It is genius when you look at the context. It just fits to the game, due to its calm, and meditative style, and it's very different and something nobody else has ever done. On paper alone the idea sounds horrible, but to this game it actually perfectly fits. That's why I find it genius.
Fact is, shmups are very meditative anyway. They are about willpower, and sometimes getting into a "trance-like" state. Restarting a 30 minute long game for hundreds of hours also doesn't sound like fun for most people.

Just one small correction on Klabauter's post. R Type Final came out in 2003 and that's roughly 10 years after STGs with multiloops and checkpoint milking were popular and considered to be the norm.

I was referring to the R-Type franchise as a whole there. The game obviously tried to stick to its roots and didn't want any drastic changes in the core gameplay. Just like Gradius V didn't implement any new fancy scoring systems, because it was Gradius and doesn't need stuff like this.

[Squire Grooktook]

I actually think this 45 minute boss milking is a genius idea.

I'm legitimately frightened.

[Plasmo]

I guess Shepardus is right then. Color me surprised... 45 minute long milking is a 'genius idea' for some people.

It is genius when you look at the context. It just fits to the game, due to its calm, and meditative style, and it's very different and something nobody else has ever done. On paper alone the idea sounds horrible, but to this game it actually perfectly fits. That's why I find it genius.

Countless other games feature insanely long milks, sometimes even infinite ones. It's not original in any way. But maybe in other titles it wouldn't fit as much as it does for you in R Type Final?

So would you consider the following meditative or bad game design?

https://youtu.be/NIrKlWpnCYQ

Tekkaman Blade also has a very eerie atmosphere, that could fit so that maybe some people enjoy the infinite checkpoint here? It's an interesting thought at least.

[Special World]

Conversations on this forum get incredibly tiring because people on both side of the argument default to the most extreme form of their argument, and don't accept that other users can have an opinion that deviates remotely from their own opinion (now in its most extreme form because somebody challenged it).

It's like playing Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. You get to a new demon lord and they say something you can sort of agree with, and say yeah, alright, I wanna join you! Then they keep talking and you're like "whoa whoa whoa back this shit up buddy!" For example:

"The strong in society are always pushing the weak around! Society is fundamentally an unjust place! Something needs to be done!" Yeah alright dude, I'm listening.
"Therefore we should corral all the strong members of society, break their wills, and have them carry the weak on their backs or be struck down where they stand!" Whoa dude what? Back that shit up.

"R-Type Final is actually a pretty good game. It's got some cool atmosphere and the ship selection allows for a lot of replay value and different styles of play." Yeah dude I hear you I played this game a lot back in the day it was pretty fun to mess around with all the ships and that last level is dope.
"If you don't like R-Type Final you're a stupid dumb moron. This shit isn't even up for debate. If you think the scoring isn't good you're a total Cave fanboy. If you say you enjoy it for survival and not scoring you're a total Cave fanboy. 45 minute basic bitch milks aren't a scoring issue, because this game is so. good."

If you wanna link me to your youtube page where you have a collection of Ullillilia-style 3-hour milking videos because you have extreme anxiety and one thing that helps you recharge yourself is endlessly milking shmup bosses, then fine. If you talk about life while doing it, have a relaxing voice, and have some good insights, I would actually *love* to follow that page.

If you're saying that you find an obvious oversight like an incredibly easy 45-minute boss milk to be "meditative" or "not a problem for scoring" on some sort of theoretical level, then yeah, I'm going to call that out as ridiculous because that's a view that 99.9% of the shmups community does not agree with, including myself, and I believe you'd agree to the same if you were arguing honestly. Many people can be fine with a 45-minute boss milk--they're just going to be fine with it in a game that they perceive is a fun survival shmup, rather than a scoring shmup. --Which is a perfectly fine thing for a shmup to be--

Jesus. If you're going to argue, please argue from the heart. Please argue kindly. Please attack arguments, not people. Please don't become entrenched in an abstract position. Please do not draw battle lines. It's incredibly tiring, boring, and a very artificial way to keep topics bumped.