PS2 Ibara Impressions

Bingo · Post by **Bingo** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:06 pm

Wow this game is playing with me like a puppy plays with a dead mouse. Now I'm a pretty bad shmupper compared to board standards but still...Must be my lack of Raizing experience. But you know what? I love it, and more than I expected. The destruction and debris create an inferno, and so far I haven't found bullet visbility to be a problem. I'm also digging the soundtrack, fits the game perfectly.

Didn't get the booklet thingy from PA. Doesn't mean much though, I didn't preorder that early.

TerminasluT · Post by **TerminasluT** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:01 pm

To anyone who preordered from NCSX, did any of you guys got there orders shipped already? I was hoping to get it before this weekend

.

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:29 pm

Every shop I went to in Tokyo has the game with the booklet. I have not seen any games without the booklet yet. This may very well mean that it is not a limited edition, in which case PA could be stashing them to sell on ebay later.

My conspiracy theory may be full of shit of course. I just don't like HK import shops, even though it has to be said that PA is one of the better ones.

Bingo · Post by **Bingo** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:07 pm

Yeah I just read on gamewatch that the booklet should be included with the entire first printing run. They're stashing them alright, anything Cave == sell to suckers it seems. Fuck 'em.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:24 pm

Aww, fuck. First YesAsia. Now Play-Asia is at it too?

Post by **Dave_K.** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:27 pm

Will the booklet come with the NCSX orders? Still waiting for mine.

it290 · Post by **it290** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:52 pm

I dunno, I ordered the new Samurai Spirits from PA very recently, and they sent me both bonus items, even though I only preordered like 3 days before the release date. I doubt they'd be hoarding just because it's a Cave game.

egret · Post by **egret** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:03 pm

Ganelon wrote:Aww, fuck. First YesAsia. Now Play-Asia is at it too?

Who didn't get the booklet from Y-A? I thought this small 16-page folder was inside the case

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:45 pm

Dave_K. wrote:Will the booklet come with the NCSX orders?

Yes. http://www.ncsx.com/2006/022006/ibara.htm

Valgar · Post by **Valgar** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:47 pm

The Rank meter in Normal mode (during practice) is useless. When dying it will go down maybe 1/16th of the bar. It is impossible to actually see it increase from independent actions on screen.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:12 pm

Valgar wrote:The Rank meter in Normal mode (during practice) is useless. When dying it will go down maybe 1/16th of the bar. It is impossible to actually see it increase from independent actions on screen.

Then my prediction on its usefullness was true.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 8&start=30

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:49 pm

It's different in Arrange/Black Label though, where the rank is almost like the rings in Progear, and the rose icons being the jewels.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:33 pm

Yeah, in arrange it goes up in chunks from collecting items. Like there are parts where if you have maxed medals, you can go from 0 to maximum rank in about 2 seconds.

I'm having a tough time breaking 30 million in arrange. I've done it once, but usually I hit a wall on the 5th boss and lose my remaining lives in stage 6 with about 25m. Also I think I'll make a strategy/info thread for arrange later.

angrycoder · Post by **angrycoder** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:26 pm

Anyone notice that the name of level 3 is "Endress Train" (pops up in the pop right of the screen). That cracked me up. Excerrent!

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:01 pm

Yes, Endress Train is hilarity every time I see it.

Just beat arrange mode with 33m (my first 1cc lol), there seems to be no 2nd loop, unless there is a way to activate it. If it's only 1 loop, I think Black Label may be the easiest Cave shooter to date, at least in terms of just completing it. One thing that could've made it harder is Cave-style score extends (2 total plus a collectable 1up), instead of extends every 10m with a collectable 1up.

Post by **system11** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:04 am

Well, I wasn't initially having much fun with this one, it's brutally difficult even by Garegga standards - pointblack firing of dense patterns at a ship with a bix hitbox, fairly severe rank and so on. However as someone wisely said - what do you expect from a Raizing game?

I'm getting used to it a bit more now - soundtrack rocks, now that I've found out you can select ship types, I've settled on Type B because it's nice and slow (I find a slower ship MUCH easier to fly through storms with).

My only genuine complaint left with the game now is some of the bullets are very hard to see. Example - the blue spinny bullet spreads the lvl 2 boss fires at the end. It's a pattern similar to one in Mushihimesama, but where that one wasn't too hard to navigate, this one is nearly impossible because the bullets are so damn hard to make out against the grey background. I'm amazed that got through playtesting. If they'd used green or red, there would be no problem. It's actually recognised that the human eye is less sensitive to blues. DOJ gets away with it by having them REALLY blue against a neutral or opposing background. Light blue on grey with animating edges is a recipe for misery. The purple ones are highly visible. Sloppy.

EDIT: Here's a page that explains why (scroll down to blue cone part):
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... ne.html#c2

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:32 am

Valgar wrote:The Rank meter in Normal mode (during practice) is useless. When dying it will go down maybe 1/16th of the bar. It is impossible to actually see it increase from independent actions on screen.

That does sound icky, but it might actually suggest something else, if I visualize it correctly...lemme see if I can explain it decently. Garegga's rank, to the best of our knowledge, would supposedly increase to a certain point and then "roll over" to the next level of difficulty; once it had done that, you could never bring the difficulty any lower than that, no matter how many times you died, missed medals, etc. Thus, the trick would be to purposely lower rank right before it "rolled over," to keep the difficulty from advancing.

Since Ibara's rank is supposedly similar to Garegga's, I figured the same idea would prevail; thus, the announcement of the "rank-o-meter" excited me, because I figured that now we'd finally be able to pinpoint exactly when the "roll over" would occur and react accordingly, whereas in Garegga you'd pretty much have to guess. From the screenshots, I figured that once the meter had filled up completely, it'd "roll over" and then begin filling again; however, judging by what Valgar said, apparently the rank meter in Ibara doesn't track the rank for the present "level," but instead a single "universal" rank, which doesn't seem to be separated into "levels" at all.

As such, this seems to suggest that there is no such "roll over" in Ibara's rank system, and thus no "point of no return" as far as the rank increase goes. This might affect play styles and strategies some, as now suiciding in relatively rapid succession, for instance, might actually be of some use here, while in Garegga it could only take you so far before you reached the "point of no return" and they'd barely help you at all.

Anyone else follow me, or notice something I didn't?

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:35 am

This game is nothing short of brilliant. Raizing's taken explosions/debris to a whole new level here. Arrange is stupid, but the real game is just fantastic. Super hard too.

subcons · Post by **subcons** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:46 am

cigsthecat wrote:Arrange is stupid, but the real game is just fantastic.

I've seen a couple people say the opposite.

Anxious to play this at any rate, Arrange or Arcade.

Valgar · Post by **Valgar** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 3:49 am

cigsthecat wrote:This game is nothing short of brilliant. Raizing's taken explosions/debris to a whole new level here. Arrange is stupid, but the real game is just fantastic. Super hard too.

Agreed.

Arrange mode bothers me because it is a Raizing game and then they tried to shove that into a CAVE shell. The slowdown of the ship while having fire held (and the increase fire power) is blah.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:24 am

Well, the whole reason Black Label was made was because Ibara was ill received by Cave players. They are simply giving the Raizing guy(s) a chance to develop something new while trying to still please people that perfer Cave's own style. It's not like you can't play OG Ibara.

Post by **Icarus** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:28 am

Valgar wrote:Arrange mode bothers me because it is a Raizing game and then they tried to shove that into a CAVE shell. The slowdown of the ship while having fire held (and the increase fire power) is blah.

Arranged Mode bothered me when I heard about the new things that were in it. Then again, I don't have to play it if I don't want to.

Just got the PS2 port in, I can finally do some capturing of stages and full runs. And can pack my PCB safely away for safe keeping ^_-;;

sammaza · Post by **sammaza** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:19 am

Damn this game is intense!

Arrange mode is so cool...You are constantly changing your layouts on the fly and it never stops! You get to points where you are in massive bullet "mazes"! ...sometimes like in level 2 Boss I have to use bombs to get free...but thats when you get mad points if there are tons of Boss's bullets on the screen and you kill him at that time...Then your raking in the points...I Luv the animations on the ground (Playing on 29in Neocandy Arcade cab...), so I can een see the little cow in the field on the begining of level 2 eating grass...and how your little buddy guys spurt smoke from the rear every time they fire the flamethrowers. Its just sweet !

Favorite weapons so far are Gattling guns, missiles, and of course Flame throwers...

BTW! This game can be 1cc'd if you can master the ship configuration switching on the fly...

ex. You can switch to "back" fire mode and go to the top of the screen and clean up at certain points you have too!

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 6:22 am

Just picked up my copy at the post office this evening. Overall it's pretty intense and brutally hard. Arrange is sorta blah, which is a big letdown.
And the load times are sorta annoying but oh well. The PA bastards didn't give me the arcadia booklet it was supposed to come with.

I preordered a copy from Yesasia too (which should arrive on saturday or monday), I'll see if they gave it to me (I doubt it).

Overall I'll have to give the game some time. Right now, I'm having more fun with Radirgy though.

EDIT: Just played the game an hour and it has finally 'clicked' with me. I love it!!!

Post by **system11** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:24 am

cigsthecat wrote:This game is nothing short of brilliant. Raizing's taken explosions/debris to a whole new level here. Arrange is stupid, but the real game is just fantastic. Super hard too.

The best of all worlds would be an option on arcade mode that changes the bullets to bright solid colours as in arranged. My #1 cause of death right now is being unable to focus on the damn mini blue spinners. That's not a good reason to die.

Ord · Post by **Ord** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:02 am

Y'know it's weird, as those bullets never really affect me. Maybe it's because i'm colour blind, but i've never had any bother with the bullets in Ibara.

sammaza · Post by **sammaza** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:12 am

you drop the bombs when the screen is full and you will have mad points!@

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:43 am

If anyone cares, there's also an Ibara telephone card. I've seen it in a couple of shops, though you have to pay around 800yen extra to get it.

mannerbot · Post by **mannerbot** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:24 pm

Hmm, my interest in gaming in general has definitely waned as of late, but it sounds like I may have to pick Ibara up regardless. Let me know if the Arcadia booklet is worth the ~$16 extra I'll have to pay to get it from NCSX.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:06 pm

icycalm wrote:Every shop I went to in Tokyo has the game with the booklet. I have not seen any games without the booklet yet. This may very well mean that it is not a limited edition, in which case PA could be stashing them to sell on ebay later.

Hmm, my copy from PA (without the booklet) came with a sticker saying "This software is distributed in Asia by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Pricing and FOR JAPAN ONLY mark printed inside the case are not applicable." This makes it sound like PA could have got a regional version without the booklet.