The cancelled Rayging Blue II, a good game that faded away, all begins when section S, during their days under the "Freams" name, decided to release a sequel for Rayging Blue Try-Alpha. The development of this game started in October 10, 2005, showing us another nice-looking doujin shmup, when the development for Stage 3 was revealed that was the moment when the crap hit the fans. For unknown reasons, Freams cancelled the game two months later, saying that the development ended and they were working on Rayging Blue's Platoon (which later became Rayging Blue's Conflict Warred), so let's review this cancelled game, don't expect too much since this thing is just a 2 Stages short game.
Gameplay: 8/10
As far it was before cancellation, the gameplay looked promising, first you can select two ships with their own attacks: The Buezel with it's Rolling Lasers and it's "Brynhild Mode", along with a "sword" attack that i don't know how to use it, or the Revolte with Bullet Destroying explosions, and a "Dashing" move when you quickly press one of the directional keys, both ships have an "Alpha Strike" that was a charge shot strong enough for destroy some enemies, this attack charges automatically when you're not shooting. Another cool thing about this game is the "Bullet Scratching", like in Raiden Fighters and Raiden III, you can get some points when you scratch a bullet or a laser beam, that was a nice feature in this game.
Once you select your game you'll get a "Briefing" where you can see mugshots of the characters along with text, telling you the plot of the game and the "Mission objectives" of the stage, then you'll be in the game.
One of the improvements over Rayging Blue Try-Alpha was the Shield points, yeah now you have a life bar, so you can take more hits before you die and lose one life, the only problem is the damage is random, sometimes you can lose 8,000 of your 9,999 points or just lose 3,000 in one shot. you have three lives and since this was a demo there's no continues because the game is just two stages long. Stage one is a Low Altitude flight over the city of Point Zero, while the second stage is a fight over the ocean and out of a "Sky Tower", the stages are too short so you can "beat" this game in approximately 8 or 10 minutes.
Some enemies can take a lot of hits before you can destroy them so you need to know what attacks are more effective than your regular shots, for example in Stage 1 there's some "Sub-bosses" that could take your time, and that means lose more enemies for blow and get Color Points for level up your ship and refill your shields immediately, and yes, there's more sub-bosses battles in the game.
Like in Try-Alpha and Conflict Warred you'll get some "Interruptions" when the boss appears, it's a little bit annoying, but it's a tolerable thing.
There's a Try-ning mode where you can select this stages, but what's the point to that since the game was a demo?
I recently found two hidden modes: "Side Story" and "Aoi True", select the "Game Start" and press right. But since this is a demo we will never have an idea of how they'll look like, because the hidden modes are identical to the normal game.
Graphics: 8/10
I'll talk about the character design, it's just beautiful, from the three RGB games released by Freams/section S, this game probably has the best design if we talk about the pilots, as for the mechanical design, it really differs of all what we saw on Try-Alpha, the ship design lacks some detailing on the airframe design. There's some enemies from Overray Dash, another game made by Freams. The boss design is almost identical to the first two bosses in Try-Alpha, Stage 3 would have a Mobile Suit like boss, but sadly the cancellation of the game pulled the plug.
It's kinda annoying the pilot mugshot that blocks part of the screen, i guess they were trying to do something in the style of U.N. Squadron, but if they wanted to do it like that, they could place it between the score and hi-score, in the upper part of the screen where it doesn't block your visibility.
As for the stage design, it was 50% complete, but it has some details like the 3D buildings in stage 1, and the splashing water effect in stage 2, so basically the game would have more effects when the whole thing would be 100% finished, too bad that the game didn't saw the light and perished in the middle of the way.
Music: 8/10
The music is really upbeat, kinda like in the style of Psyvariar 2 and Trizeal, the "coolest" track of the whole game is the character select screen, although is a re-arrangement from the "Character select" track from Try-Alpha, it's very catchy and the rest of the music was an absolute ear-candy, it was a cool idea to add a different song for each ship in Stage 1, Aoi/Buezel had a violin theme while Akane/Revolte has a cute-em-up like one, the music department could have a 10, but there's one little problem that takes the points out: Most of the times the music have "scratches" like a damaged vinyl disc being played, this flaw only happens in the title screen, and the 2 stages, that was a really annoying thing in the game.
Pro's
- The Music is an ear-candy
- Beautiful character design
- Bullet Scratching like in Raiden Fighters
Con's
- The game is just two stages long.
- The Music "Scratches" during gameplay.
- In-game interruptions.
- The stages are too short.
Curiosities
- This was the last Rayging Blue game made by section S under the "Freams" name.
- The bosses "Resurrection" and "Decrement" are remakes of "Sigma Summension" and "Increment", the bosses from Rayging Blue Try-Alpha, there was plans for make a boss called "Resonate".
- The third boss was a Mobile Suit like robot called Cyclops, it's pilot was Maoh Yuchouka, Sion Yuchouka's younger sister.
Conclusions
Over all, we've got "The sequel that would not be", i just can't believe they cancelled it, the game had potential, but they drop the material to the trash can and moved on to the next game, i only hope that section S decide to complete this one day, i would recommend this game just for the music, otherwise let it pass because this game wouldn't entertain you for too long.
And for end this review here's a little bonus (Click on Aoi ^^)
Rayging Blue II's Final Score: 8/10