Raiden 4 Overkill and Caladrius getting PS3 release

[ACSeraph]

That's probly the price after taxes.

I ordered the physical version so I've got to wait an extra day unfortunately. I'll post some impressions tomorrow though after I get my first clears done. God I hope the new scoring system is better than AC...

[ArmoredCore]

Decided to buy a 5000 yen card to cover the difference i have left and just started downloading. I also see an 8-bit bgm DLC. Is this new to ps3 version?

[NeoStrayCat]

Decided to buy a 5000 yen card to cover the difference i have left and just started downloading. I also see an 8-bit bgm DLC. Is this new to ps3 version?

Nope, that was also DLC for the 360 version as well, that, and the DLC characters Sophia and Lilith are paid (on 360 ver.) but included (PS3 ver.) in Blaze.

[Bonus!]

I wish they had been a bit more generous and included the 8bit soundtrack, too. I do appreciate that they included the characters that were previously paid DLC.

[ArmoredCore]

Really enjoying caladrius much more than Raiden 4. Anyone translate the trophies yet? Trying to earn some. The menus are in english at least

[Guardians Knight]

Just to confirm, Raiden 4 isn't getting a full retail release nut only available to download?

[Bonus!]

There is no physical release for Raiden IV on PS3 planned.

[ACSeraph]

Where dafuq is my game Amazon!? A bit disappointed I couldn't play tonight, hope everyone is enjoying it so far. Post dem day 1 scores!

[ArmoredCore]

Having trouble unlocking galleries, cant read the requirements lol.

[BulletMagnet]

Where dafuq is my game Amazon!?

NCSX just sent my copy out today, apparently, so chances are I won't get it until after Labor Day; IIRC someone else said Play-Asia was slow getting their copy out too. Guess we'll just hafta be patient, heh.

[ArmoredCore]

Damn didnt realise higher difficulty consumes mana much faster.

[ACSeraph]

: Let's do this!

[adversity1]

Definitely looking forward to your impressions.

[ACSeraph]

Just cleared Original mode. Whoa.

I would have paid $70 for this and nothing else. This is everything I had wanted from AC and never recieved. It's the original deep scoring system and difficult patterns but with a major character rebalance (further balanced from AC in fact) and a small tweak to stage 6 to make it less bullshit (killable bits). It's basically the perfect version of Caladrius.

Haven't tried the other modes yet, but I'll post the findings when I do. The only gripe I have so far is that there are still no replay saves/uploads. That's really unfortunate because it makes it a lot harder to learn high level techniques without that resource. Don't care though, the game itself is godly.

[Guardians Knight]

Just ordered my Caladrius! Some guy in hongkong is selling them on ebay for £40 which seems reasonable - cheaper than playasia and amazon anyways!

[ACSeraph]

So, Evolution mode. Haven't made an honest attempt at clearing it yet, but my optimism turned out to be correct, the scoring system is quite good and a huge improvement over AC.

At first glance, it doesn't seem so different from the original scoring system. As usual the magic shots build the multiplier while the normal shot does not, though at a much higher rate than before (as in AC). Unlike AC the multiplier does not cap, so you have a lot of incentive to maximize everything to perfection. If it ended there though it would basically just be Vanilla with bigger digits. The real interesting point is "Evolution".

Remember the shitty burst ability from Vanilla that would fuck over your entire run if you pressed the wrong button combination? Well now that has been changed to Evolution. If you have over 50% remaining in every shot type, pressing the special button will put you in Evolution mode. In this mode your weapon power level is boosted to ludicrous levels. The mode lasts exactly 6 seconds regardless of how much shot energy you had when it began, and unlike before it doesn't drain the shot power, rather for those 6 seconds you are free to use them in their powered up form. Kills made with the shots add to the multiplier at the normal rate, but the gold gems dropped by enemies are changed to red gems and award significantly more points. At the end of the mode your MP is drained to zero and magic weapons are locked out of recharging for a couple of seconds, then begin recharging as normal.

At first glance you might think the trade off isn't worth it, since having your weapons knocked down to zero makes it very difficult to keep building the multiplier. However, the key seems to be using it often and timing it to end right before the hidden mana recharge towers. If you collect the MP immediately upon revealing it (by say, riding point blanking it) all your weapons are instantly charged to 100%. So in theory, you should be routing so that you have enough MP to Evolve about 7-8 seconds before reaching each mana tower. Easier said than done, and it will require some pretty extensive rerouting on my part, but there is definitely a lot of depth here. Additionally, your MP is always recharged to 100% prior to each boss fight, so the final 6 seconds of each stage should be spent in Evolution. It's probably obvious, but the bosses should be killed while in Evolution also.

ST will be coming eventually, but you can make some good progress just with this info for now. If anyone has any questions about the game let me know and I'll give you any advice I can.

[amdiggywhut]

Anybody able to indicate how it looks on a CRT (full-screen or black bars, etc.)?

[cfx]

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[Bonus!]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the game, ACSeraph! I'll put in an order soon.

[Aquas]

Anybody able to indicate how it looks on a CRT (full-screen or black bars, etc.)?

If you mean a straight Tube-tv, I don't like how it looks that much. But, it's passable for play.

[professor ganson]

Nice, ACSeraph. Thanks for the insightful impressions. Will put the game on my list.

[BulletMagnet]

NCS managed to get my copy to me before the holiday, and Seraph covered a lot of the important stuff...so now it's my turn for the fluff!

- Confirmed region-free!

- There's an optional install of 361 MB; I can't say how much of an effect it has on gameplay, but I can say that the opening movie stuttered a bit before the install was done.

- All six characters from the original and two new ones are indeed available right from the start, though it appears that the "weapon edit" still needs to be unlocked (as does "Boss Rush" mode). There's also apparently some manner of DLC, as has been discussed before, but I don't know what it might be...at least some of it will probably be music, as there's a "sound pack" setting in the Options menu.

- As in the 360 edition, both story segments and "shame breaks" can be toned down or turned off, though the corresponding images won't unlock in the gallery if you skip them. No idea if there's a trophy for that, heh.

- There's a "tutorial" menu option which shows a basics movie for each of the three modes as well as still images displaying each character's special shots; if you don't speak Japanese you'll obviously be better-served getting in-depth info here, but it's not bad as a quick reference.

- It appears that Double Play mode is here for all the masochists out there. "No Damage" mode is still here too, for practice.

- Doesn't appear to be an option to disable score uploading, which is a bit annoying as I have to refuse a prompt to sign into PSN after every Game Over.

- Speaking of refusing, the game seems to utilize the "Western" X-Confirm/O-Cancel setup in the menus for some reason, even though it displays circle as the "proceed" button during dialogue...maybe the game senses the console's region? Not a big deal either way, but it caught me off guard a bit.

- Is it my imagination, or do Elemental attacks not drain quite as fast as they did in the original? I'd hafta boot up the 360 port to be sure...

- Haven't gotten too far in any mode, but as Seraph noted in a separate thread Arcade has at least one bonus stage snuck in between 2 and 3, where apparently you have to maintain a certain kill ratio to "pass" (not sure what the penalty is if you don't). And yeah, the between-stage artwork is different there too. Not sure how the special attack works here though...

- I'm playing on an LCD, so I can't comment on how the game looks on a CRT.

- The Devil Wears Shimapan.

Overall it's much the same as the "original" version, but with a bunch of extra stuff and some tweaks for the better - off the cuff this definitely seems like the version to spring for if you're interested in playing Caladrius.

[ACSeraph]

Good info

- Is it my imagination, or do Elemental attacks not drain quite as fast as they did in the original? I'd hafta boot up the 360 port to be sure...

It is not. All modes now feature the AC character balance changes, and one of the changes was faster Mana recharge, Speed and damage output has also been changed for some characters.

A more superficial question: I would assume the option is still there to turn off the cut-in character animations. But does it also have an option for the arcade version's art? I'm kind of guessing no since the website didn't show that even for AC mode.

AC mode is basically exactly the same as it is on the actual All.Net machine. The Cut-ins, shame breaks, and no miss bonus are all the toned down versions from AC. The only difference is that strangely, Lilith's character artwork is not the edited version from AC, which is really too bad because she looks a lot cooler in that version.

I was hoping there would be an option to use the AC art in other modes, but there isn't. It's too bad considering AC is by far the shittiest mode, so most people won't be playing it much anyhow.

[cfx]

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[ACSeraph]

So, I've moved into primarily playing Evolution mode now. Love the new stage, visually it looks really good, and has a lot of opportunity for high scores. Anyhow made a few more discoveries that help with scoring if anyone is interested.

Specifically I've be rerouting the bosses, in order to trigger shame breaks while in Evolution for maximum payout. This can get difficult on the later bosses to get a break on all 3 phases. Anyhow the first important thing I noticed is you don't have to actually kill the bosses in Evolution to get the payouts, as long as you are in Evolution when the gems spawn you get red gems. Similarly if you kill the boss in Evolution but it ends prior to the gems spawning, the gems will be the normal gold ones. So one potential option is activating your Evo the moment the "Break" message appears on screen. An exception is the third break, the moment the boss dies you are locked from entering evolution, so the kill hit does have to be in break mode.

Now as far as why the delayed activation is useful. Normally you would think that being in Evolution prior to the kill makes more sense since you can take advantage of the damage output, but actually by delaying it on certain later bosses you can get the gems from the first phase and use the now active evolution to speed kill the second phase and collect both bonuses from a single evolution. For example, if you kill Graham (5th boss) phase two, and activate your Evolution the moment "Break" appears you can bomb and point blank with the upgraded shots to speed kill the third form for two bonuses. If you Evolve in the middle of phase two you have to wait for 50% recharge during phase 3, which is kind of like asking to be murdered.

Anyhow, at a basic level you want to get a phases HP down 50%, then Evolve, speed kill and and collect the bonus, For the following phase you have to use normal shot waiting for evolution to charge, make sure you don't kill it and Evolve again. But as I said, later in the game this is problematic, so learn what phases are speed killable via the delay trick and take advantage of it. Remember tat bombs can be used to aid you in this trick (as in the Graham example from before, you need that extra damage so that you kill him before Evolution ends)

Also small tidbit, I thought the multiplier had no cap but it does, it's just difficult to reach it. The cap is now 20.00.

Enjoy

[Pretas]

This is obviously common knowledge to anyone who played the 360 version, but Caladrius (the bird) is all kinds of overpowered for survival play. It's equivalent to using the Judge Spear/Slave/Fairy in Raiden Fighters. I had to simply refuse to use it after giving it a try.

The game is similar to Raiden IV in that the first two stages are rather easy, while the third presents a considerable difficulty spike.

Since I don't consider the scoring particularly enthralling, I appreciate that Hard and Very Hard mode have completely rearranged bullet patterns, rather than just increasing bullet speed and density. They put a lot of effort into something not many people will see.

[Mero]

This is obviously common knowledge to anyone who played the 360 version, but Caladrius (the bird) is all kinds of overpowered for survival play. I

In the vanilla 360 version the regular shot for all characters bar Caladrius was as weak as hell, he was the only one (not including DLC characters) who had any decent shot power really. Shame he's not that great for scoring.

[ACSeraph]

This is obviously common knowledge to anyone who played the 360 version, but Caladrius (the bird) is all kinds of overpowered for survival play. It's equivalent to using the Judge Spear/Slave/Fairy in Raiden Fighters. I had to simply refuse to use it after giving it a try.

The game is similar to Raiden IV in that the first two stages are rather easy, while the third presents a considerable difficulty spike.

Since I don't consider the scoring particularly enthralling, I appreciate that Hard and Very Hard mode have completely rearranged bullet patterns, rather than just increasing bullet speed and density. They put a lot of effort into something not many people will see.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's Judge Spear level easy, as it certainly isn't a free clear and is a good starting point for beginners, but yeah it's definitely the easiest survival oriented main shot type. The truly broken character would have to be Sophia, due to her shield.

I'm a bit surprised you don't like the scoring, as it's one of my absolute favorites (obviously). I will say though, more so than usual scoring is important to survival in Caladrius, because it is how you get additional bombs and indirectly affects your weapon levels which are pretty necessary later in the game. You can ignore certain aspects of it of course, the most important being the no-miss requirement for god tier scores. In fact dying makes the game slightly easier, and has no affect on your weapon levels so I wouldn't worry about it if you aren't pursuing competitive scores. But you at least need to learn to utilize your magic weapons effectively as much as possible, especially if you are going for a default clear.

Also I agree, lots of love went into Very Hard mode. One of these days I'd like to get a clear in it.

[Bonus!]

I just saw the latest Mediacreate charts on NeoGAF:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=887873

Caladrius at #40. This might have been it for physical releases on PS3.

[antron]

Sorry if this has been asked, but... Does Caladrius support 4:3 aspect ratio this time? I just tried it the other day on the 360 and, wow, facepalm.