You really need to play Mecha Ritz

[MX7]

Found it! What starting rank are people using? Currently on 200. Awesome game but takes getting used to clearing it every time...

[EmperorIng]

Questions about this game after my steam purchase:

1) first time playing (red ship), I made it to the little girl and her many different forms (kicking all of their asses). Is this the TLB? Amazing that I 1CC'd on my very first try!

2) Second time I played the yellow ship and had some differences: I could choose 1 stage after the first; the rest played out normally. Are there other stage paths, and how do I trigger them? Is it dependent on ship selection?

3) I killed the teddy bear as the yellow ship, but it killed me after its death (I still had lives in stock). It said I had the "and mankind killed by a teddybear" ending and all that - is this intentional or did I fuck up?

4) Does speed-killing up rank, and is rank tied to firepower? It's not immediately clear to me.

[Shepardus]

1) first time playing (red ship), I made it to the little girl and her many different forms (kicking all of their asses). Is this the TLB? Amazing that I 1CC'd on my very first try!

Yes, that is the TLB. As long as the timer in the bottom-right doesn't hit 0 before the final stage, you'll get the TLB.

2) Second time I played the yellow ship and had some differences: I could choose 1 stage after the first; the rest played out normally. Are there other stage paths, and how do I trigger them? Is it dependent on ship selection?

There's a stage choice for stages 2-5. You might have to unlock the branches, I don't remember. There's a number of unlockables in the game, from starting rank to ship choices to bullet colors and more, and they're all unlocked simply by playing the game a bunch. Things unlock quickly at the beginning but it slows down later. I've heard but haven't verified that it's dependent on how many games you've started regardless of how far you get in each of them. Speaking of ship selection, there's an alternate variation of each of the six ships you see in the ship selection screen - I missed that for a while since there's no indication when you've unlocked the alternate types, you just become able to scroll past the first six ships or up/down.

3) I killed the teddy bear as the yellow ship, but it killed me after its death (I still had lives in stock). It said I had the "and mankind killed by a teddybear" ending and all that - is this intentional or did I fuck up?

I think that's just the non-TLB ending. Never got that ending myself, though, except on my first playthrough of the freeware version which wasn't translated.

4) Does speed-killing up rank, and is rank tied to firepower? It's not immediately clear to me.

Getting the time bonuses on bosses and minibosses increases rank, but I don't think speed-kills increase rank otherwise. In the original freeware version of the game, rank was directly tied to firepower - the higher your rank, the greater your firepower. In Steel Rondo, rank still affects firepower but there are other factors at play and I'm unclear on exactly how it works.

[Squire Grooktook]

A blind 1cc is not uncommon. The games difficulty is designed to always string you along, adapting to your level of game knowledge and skill. Seeing the game go nuts as you push it harder is the most visceral reward for mastery.

[EmperorIng]

Thanks for all the info. I still can't help that something went wrong during the teddy bear boss, considering I still had a life in my stock when I died (after depleting its health).

I hope some of the unlockables are fairly obvious in terms of how-to. It's a very well-made game (much more so than Gekidan Machina), with a nice buffet (cafe?) of minibosses and bullet patterns. The deleting bullets is a nice concession towards players of lesser skill (like me I guess!). My rank got as high as 200, but a string of deaths towards the end of the game kept it in the 30-70 range.

[Squire Grooktook]

Thank you for your incredible work Kane ^_^

[Leandro]

Just bought this game and The ost on Steam.

Played 2 credits and cleared it twice, but faced the Teddy bear on both occasions.

Used the green and yellow ship. Good game.

[blackoak]

I've been wanting to play Mecha Ritz again, and got it working on Steam with my PS4 controller... but I'm not seeing an autofire button option anywhere. I realize the game is built around the tap/hold mechanic, but my poor arthritic old-man-hands could use the autofire. Any idea how one would rig something like this up? I figured there'd be a software solution of some sort.

[blossom]

I use Antimicro so the same key is mapped on two buttons of my arcade stick, then external auto on one of them. Not really sure how you'd set up autofire via script or something like that, though.

[floralcateyes]

Based on BareKnuckleRoo's script here, I've used this AutoHotkey script with MR:SR, and it works well enough:

Spoiler

#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

*c::
While GetKeyState("c","P")
{
Send {a down}
Sleep 10
Send {a up}
Sleep 30
}
return

The first half of the script is there by default whenever I make a new ahk file, so I guess it's not strictly necessary. The second half is the autofire script proper: "a" is my primary fire button while "c" is my autofire. Dunno how well it plays with controllers though, as I play on keyboard...

[Special World]

Can't wait till this bad boi drops on Switch. I know they announced it a while back, but I haven't heard anything since. Fingers crossed very hard.

[floralcateyes]

I didn't even know it was coming to the Switch; yet another reason to get one. MR:SR is the game that got me into shmups in the first place, and I love it to bits.

One often overlooked aspect of the game (which hopefully the Switch release can "correct"?) is its potential for speedruns. I personally found trying to get faster times to be more enjoyable than trying to get high scores. My main goal for when I was playing the game everyday was to get a sub-20 time with ships 5 and 11. Wandered off after getting a ~19-minute run with ship 5, though that was with a starting rank of 50 and a weird choice of stages iirc (can't remember if I was able to do the same with 11). Bit of a shame that there's still only one entry for the game on speedrun.com.

[XoPachi]

This game's sound effects are fucking hilarious.
Also this song is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkfDym0EV04

[Zeether]

Is it just me or is purple ship really OP? On higher rank the bullet scrape subweapon makes it seem to be nearly invincible and there's a Youtube video of someone getting 20mil with it.

Also it seems like an update broke the boss warning messages as they are all in Chinese now no matter what language you pick.

[blossom]

I posted this in another thread. I feel like the grazing ship probably has the best chance to take advantage of this formula, breaking 20 million is likely a matter of figuring out which ship could reach 4x magnification bonus, if that's even possible.

[Lethe]

For anyone who hasn't made/found one yet, here's a different AHK autofire script that allows Cave-style firing - you don't need to let go of rapid fire to go in and out of focus. (The more basic one was prone to getting stuck, so you'd have to release one key before being able to do the other)

Code: Select all

Setkeydelay -1,-1
*c::
while GetKeyState("c","P")
	{
	if GetKeyState("z","P")
		{
		SendEvent {z down}
		}
	else
		{
		SendEvent {z down}
		Sleep 50
		SendEvent {z up}
		Sleep 10
		}
	}
return

*a::c ;remaps skip key to A

I was hoping autofire was gonna make Mecha 09 playable against high rank B Veloce but it doesn't help very much...

[CStarFlare]

So Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is out for Switch. Anyone played it? Are there any differences from the PC edition or is it a straight port?

[clippa]

Will be interesting to see if they've added autofire options.
edit: Are you not mixing it up with dezatopia? I can't see it on the UK, US or japanese eshops. Latest I heard they're still looking at an april release for mecha ritz.

[CStarFlare]

I might be. I’ve been seeing a lot of Mecha Ritz switch posts on twitter so I just assumed it was out.

[WarpedByTheNHK]

I just started playing this game and I already am completely enamored with it. The game feels frantic in all the right ways, and I love how much you are expected to zip around the screen. However, I did notice that I was getting some fps drops during certain patterns (especially the final boss). My computer is definitely not a "gaming computer" but it still easily meets the required specs, so I am disappointed to see this. Does anyone know if the speed the game runs at is connected to the frame rate? Or does it still run at normal speed even if it drops to 45 fps? If the game speed is tied directly to the frame rate I might just have to wait to play this game until I upgrade to a better machine haha.

Edit: Ok, I looked more closely at one of my replays and I noticed that the timer definitely slows down during attacks that cause major fps drops, so it appears the game speed is indeed connected to the frame rate. I did however notice a setting in the config called "timersync". Does anyone know what that is and how it might effect performance? I really want to game to run at a consistent speed before I get too serious with it.

[Leandro]

Also it seems like an update broke the boss warning messages as they are all in Chinese now no matter what language you pick.

Yeah I came back to this game after playing 2 credits back in 2017 and now these messages are all in chinese.

[WarpedByTheNHK]

I tested to see if turning off timersync would improve performance, and it helped far more than I could've even imagined. For the vast majority of the game my fps seems perfectly locked at 60, even during most patterns that caused drops before. I wish I knew what negative side effects turning timersync off caused, but I suspect it is worth it for the much better performance.

Also, I find it significantly easier to increase my rank from 100-130 than I do from 80-100 for some reason. It was extremely easy to end the game at around rank 135 after making it past 100 for the first time, which is strange because I used to drop from 85 to sub 40 when fighting the final boss lol. I guess I might as well start at at least rank 90 if I want to have an easier time achieving my goals.

[Lethe]

Timersync off unlocks the framerate so you must be using vsync or GPU frame limiting to keep it from going over 60. Probably should make sure it's the latter to avoid input lag. (Not to say turning timersync off is wrong if it helps performance)

And yeah, generally *80-*90 rank is the hardest part. The effects of rank are staggered e.g. the scroll speed/bullet speed of rank 100 is about the same as rank 50 but with harder patterns, whereas 90 is much faster. It's illustrated in the readme.

[WarpedByTheNHK]

Timersync off unlocks the framerate so you must be using vsync or GPU frame limiting to keep it from going over 60. Probably should make sure it's the latter to avoid input lag. (Not to say turning timersync off is wrong if it helps performance)

And yeah, generally *80-*90 rank is the hardest part. The effects of rank are staggered e.g. the scroll speed/bullet speed of rank 100 is about the same as rank 50 but with harder patterns, whereas 90 is much faster. It's illustrated in the readme.

Oh, the game doesn't have a vsync setting so I might unfortunately have it on. I turned vsync off globally on the Nvidia control panel, but I am concerned since it still seems to be capped at 60 and doesn't have screen tearing. Something appears to be limiting it, so it seems like Nvidia might be lying to me?

[Lethe]

Are you running in windowed mode? Recent versions of Windows force vsync to be on in windowed programs and AFAIK there's no way to get rid of it besides using fullscreen.

[MathU]

Jesus Christ what a horrible operating system.

[WarpedByTheNHK]

Are you running in windowed mode? Recent versions of Windows force vsync to be on in windowed programs and AFAIK there's no way to get rid of it besides using fullscreen.

No, I was aware of that fact so I always play games fullscreen. Are you 100% certain of what TimerSync does? When you turn it off does your game go over 60 fps?

Oh, and also is there any way to use the other 8 ships in practice mode? It is kind of a shame to have to exclusively do full game runs when you want to play the other ships.

[trap15]

Setting timer off turns on vsync and uses that for speed control. Setting it on turns off vsync and uses an internal timer.

If you force vsync off in your driver config, timer off will run at uncontrolled speed.

[WarpedByTheNHK]

Setting timer off turns on vsync and uses that for speed control. Setting it on turns off vsync and uses an internal timer.

If you force vsync off in your driver config, timer off will run at uncontrolled speed.

Your post prompted me to compare the two options again side by side and it is so obvious now that Vsync turned on when I turned off timersync. When I was testing to see if turning off timersync improved performance, I actually just used a replay to test it (since the final boss puts the most load on the machine), so I only noticed the improved performance instead of the input lag. No wonder I suddenly started bombing too late after Timersync off. I had seriously started to believe that the bomb on that ship was just slightly delayed in its activation lol. The only strange thing is that changing my universal settings in the Nvidia control panel didn't actually manage to properly turn vsync off for this game. Oh well.

Thanks a lot for the help everybody, I was certainly wrong about the fact that turning off Timersync was worth it for the performance boost. I guess I really will sadly just have to wait until I upgrade my machine before I dig into the game much further. I enjoy the game far too much to play it with a worse computer than it deserves.

[BulletMagnet]

Via Shmups Twitter: a "2.0" version of Steel Rondo is coming next year, and if you own the PC version it's a free upgrade.