R-Type Final2

[xxx1993]

Got through 7.1 without the game crashing on me this time, so I've now seen all the normal stages available and since I got the 1CC earlier as well, I think I can post more thoughts.

Overall, I like R-Type Final 2. Not much of a surprise personally since I like R-Type in general. I also didn't play Final 1 much at all, so to me unlocking the ships here doesn't feel like a repetition of the previous game. Getting new ships and taking them for a run is fun. That said, the rate of resources dropping should be higher (if not from the start, then upped after some accomplishment - seeing all the stages, finishing any route, getting X hours of flight time, etc, or make the resource packs re-buyable in the shop). I'm at 36 ships and it'd take a lot of grinding (~20 hours, maybe?) to get enough resources to unlock the rest of them. I do want to see the rest of them, but man...

I think the game's one of the more easier R-Types, maybe a step below Delta. Until 6.0 or 6.1 memorizing the environment isn't really an issue, which is further helped by how hitting walls no longer kills you. This is a good thing in a 3D game, but I think Delta's way of letting you scrape against a wall for a while before it kills you to be a good middle-ground for this thing. 6.2 -> 7.2 route is probably the easiest clear.

I actually like 6.1. It's these kind of stages that horis uniquely bring to the shmup table. 6.0 felt like the hardest one of the three. Luckily I came there with a ship that could charge blast enemies on the other side of walls, without that ability it'd be even more hellish.

I didn't pick any of the orbs by intention, because I wanted to see which path it will take me when you don't pick any vs. when you pick some. I must assume that I got the "worst" ending.

And regarding the endings: I think it's confusing when people refer to the "bad" ending, since two of the endings could be interpreted like that. So, my clarification:

Spoiler

Good ending from 7.0 - Bydo destroyed, pilot survives.
Bydo ending from 7.1 - Pilot changes into Bydo and destroys the Earth Space Fleet.
Bad ending 7.2 - Bydo destroyed, pilot MIA.

I'm pretty sure when I tried not picking any of the orbs, I got sent to 6.2. I think picking the bottom-most one sent me to 6.0.

As for 3.0 and whether the art style is intentional or simplified due to lack of time from the devs - I think the stage looks good on its own, if every stage looked like that I'd be fine. It's the inconsistency with the other stages that makes it jarring.

My favorite ships, at the moment:
TX-T Eclipse: Solid ship in every regard. The Force covers more area vertically so it's safer to hit enemies and their bullets with it. Detached it homes in on enemies which makes short work of most things.
R-11S2 No Chaser: The whole series, inspired by Armed Police Unit Gallop, is fun to use because of their Force. The weapon effect changes depending on the ship speed, so Yellow and Blue go at different angles and Red gets narrower and a lot more powerful. With Red, at Speed 1, I was able to destroy Dobkeratops before he got a single attack out.
R-9B3 Sleipnir: Kicks like a mule on steroids. Red shot is strong by itself, but the ship comes with the Balmung missile which makes a big boom that lasts on the screen for a good while. On the flip side the charge shot is rather useless, but even without it the ship just tears through enemies.

The Switch version plays perfectly fine for the most part, other than crashing on me once at 7.1 and in the same stage there's a 5-second period where the framerate plummets. Luckily there aren't many enemies at all on the screen at time, but it also makes me wonder why it chugs there, when otherwise it's so smooth. I do want to try the PC version at some point, mostly to see if it looks that much better, but the thought of unlocking all these ships again is not very appealing. Though I guess I could just find a complete save file from somebody else.

I thought this game doesn’t have a good or bad ending.

[Herr Schatten]

Still waiting for my download code. Ironically, I specifically backed a digital release, because I assumed that physical editions would be sent out on release day, and I didn't want to wait a couple of days for my copy to arrive.

I'm looking forward to playing the game, though. I like what I have seen so far. I'm just surprised by the apparent lack of sexual references. R-Type without the naughty bits is like Gradius without Moai.

[Wilsoncqb1911]

I got through the Ebon Eye path. That might be my favorite as well. Although even there there are a few cheap deaths that you wouldnt know without having seen it and memorized what will happen. That's R Type though.

[MJR]

I'm just surprised by the apparent lack of sexual references. R-Type without the naughty bits is like Gradius without Moai.

Combined with the dirty Moomin, there is something glorious about this post

[MachineAres 1CC]

On another note, I think the Xbox version's achievements may be bugged? There are several I'm sure that I've completed and can not get them to trigger. Anyone else have this issue?

The only one I've had issue with is the reading the manual one, which is weird since it has like a .27% unlock rate, though this one might be a tricky one, since I think you need to unlock certain ships to unlock all the sections of the manual. I've got 25 out of 40, including 3 of the DLC ones, and they all popped correctly when I did what was required. Some of the descriptions are pretty vague and unclear, so maybe you're misunderstanding the requirements for some of them? Happened to me with a few of them. Several of the ones I unlocked also still showed 0.00% unlock rate, but they still unlocked for me, so they're not unobtainable.

Went back and played Final 1 after getting 1CC on Normal in Final 2, just to compare. Some things that stuck out to me.

For all those complaining about Final 2's art design, Final 1's art design also isn't the greatest thing ever. It's pretty good for it's time (which Final 2 also is) but Final 1 isn't some paragon of shmup art design. Some very cool water effects and other things in Final 1, but also that horrible distorted filter on the open space stage is just painfully done. The similar effect in 6.2 of Final 2 is much better done and less distracting/crippling.

Also, for anyone complaining about performance on PS4/XB1, go back and play Final 1 and see how bad the framerate drops on a pretty regular basis on original hardware. I'd say maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the game runs at 20fps or below. Can't speak for the Switch/PC performance since I haven't played those, plus there's too many variables for PC, and well, it's the Switch. I think a lot of people complaining about 2 are probably just more nostalgic for Final 1.

I noticed in Final 2 (can't remember if it was in other pre-Final R-Type games, but I'm noticing it more in other games lately too) that whenever you change your thruster speed, the flames from the thrusters still do damage to whatever is behind you. In Final 1 you can spam the hell out of this by just hitting the speed up or speed down buttons even if you were already at highest or lowest speeds, but they disabled that in Final 2 and you have to alternate them.

They also nerfed the hell out of the red Tentacle Force laser and seem to have beefed up the blue one a bit. Just a weird shift after how good the red was in Final 1.

Another great improvement in Final 2 is there are FAR less surfaces and things to bump into with your ship for accidental deaths. Final 1 had quite a bit more of that.

Another interesting thing is how much the gameplay has changed in the switch from 4:3 to widescreen game space. So much more screen real estate and doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, which is kinda nice.

Otherwise, there are SO many similarities between the two, from the museum, which is nearly identical, to so many of the scenarios of the stages themselves being just slight tweaks of Final 1 patterns. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just kinda noticeable when playing the back to back.

Overall, I might say Final 2 is a little bit better, though they're pretty close to each other in my book.

[Wilsoncqb1911]

With rtyper difficulty the first stage boss is significantly different in appearance. Do any of the other bosses change like that? I am just starting with this difficulty and cant get far yet.

[Mischief Maker]

Hat in hand, I've repurchased, now that I've watched footage of 7.1 and understand stage 3's look was deliberate. Fortunately a lot of people bought the base game on GOG at the moment of release only to refund and repurchase deluxe edition shortly after, so my account probably won't get flagged.

I'm just surprised by the apparent lack of sexual references. R-Type without the naughty bits is like Gradius without Moai.

There's the opening cutscene where a female tech in a skin-tight spacesuit straddles your cockpit, and you have the option to give her a naughty wink.

Not exactly giant vaginas with teeth, no...

[To Far Away Times]

I credit fed through the 7.1 ending. Good stuff. Bit of dead space in the final level unfortunately, but its epic as fuck. Like a much, much better take on stage 3 from Final 1. No final boss on stage 7.1 but the stage itself is longer. Stage 6.1 is devilishly designed with its bouncy lazers and vertical decent.

[BrianC]

There's the opening cutscene where a female tech in a skin-tight spacesuit straddles your cockpit, and you have the option to give her a naughty wink.

Even when your pilot is female.

[system11]

Etherium.

[VanillaLucia]

Also, for anyone complaining about performance on PS4/XB1, go back and play Final 1 and see how bad the framerate drops on a pretty regular basis on original hardware. I'd say maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the game runs at 20fps or below. Can't speak for the Switch/PC performance since I haven't played those, plus there's too many variables for PC, and well, it's the Switch. I think a lot of people complaining about 2 are probably just more nostalgic for Final 1.

This was the main thing that put me off of R-Type Final for replayability because several stages (Stage 3.0 and Stage 3.5 for example) are littered with frame drops where you can tell the PlayStation 2 cannot perform at normal speeds when you get to parts of the map where you have explosions, specific camera angles, or the trees moving around. It's even more jarring when you play this game in emulation (even in software rendering for more accuracy) and you realize that on modern machines you can zip right by this at normal frame rates but then the game starts to take a dip at Stage 5.0 because the whole screen distortion filter tanks performance.

When you play at speeds like that, the pacing and the speed of R-Type Final 2 is noticeably faster than even that and I definitely enjoy the much faster-paced game even though to me it doesn't quite reach the level that R-Type Delta and the previous games had in terms of speed. However, there are definitely obstacles and other things that trip me up such as those evil plants in Stage 2 (I naturally charge the wave cannon and have had to stop because it triggers the plants shooting back if you hit them even with a single bullet). In terms of a game with "dead air" it seems like Stage 7.1 is definitely the closest you can get to R-Type Final's level of dead air but you have much more going on even in comparison. I cannot tell where the projectiles are coming from when you see them and did not realize that the projectiles fired on screen can actually hit you even from their strange angles. To me this is easily the most "tedious" stage if only because you have a three-to-five minute segment every time you die and you just have to make it through to the end and the mistakes towards the end just force you to start over.

I don't mean story though. More like "seeing boss/enemy/ship for first time"

edit:
So i hope, i can start with Final 2 now and "revisit seriously" older games after it. R-Type isn't a game i credit feed to look, so i never went more far than stage 2 maybe in RT1 or Delta

From what I have played, the boss that shows up in the homage stages are the "same" bosses but as I mentioned the gameplay in R-Type Final 2 makes them very different to handle and deal with. You aren't going to be playing with the overpowered ship mechanics from some of the older games and in R-Type Final 2 some patterns were adjusted so that you do have some leeway with being defensive having a force unit and all where in some previous games you did not. You can chalk this up to how even Dobkeratops or a variant appears in just about every R-Type game and is different every single time so I wouldn't consider it a spoiler in that sense. This game doesn't replace any of the older games so you should be safe with "spoilers."

[ZaKa-tokyobassist]

Etherium.

I'm pretty sure I kept laughing about "Investing in dat crypto" for ship materials. Unintentionaly funny.

[ZaKa-tokyobassist]

So does anybody that have the DLC know if those levels can be used alongside the base game stages in the Route Creator? I've been dying to know.

[Mortificator]

There's the opening cutscene where a female tech in a skin-tight spacesuit straddles your cockpit, and you have the option to give her a naughty wink.

Even when your pilot is female.

Killing Bydo gets everyone hot.

I wasn't going to get Final 2 anytime soon, after playing a ton of Darius recently, but MM's turnaround has me reconsidering...

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Etherium.

In Tactics you can only really mine etherium once you get into warp space. Has anyone tried farming the purple stage?

[Last Credit]

Etherium.

In Tactics you can only really mine etherium once you get into warp space. Has anyone tried farming the purple stage?

A madperson compiled the data for every stage and even calculated the statistics. It looks like Stage 6-1 is far and away the best place to get Etherium.

[Zach Keene]

Etherium.

In Tactics you can only really mine etherium once you get into warp space. Has anyone tried farming the purple stage?

Resource rewards are fixed per stage (but increase by difficulty - Bydo gives 10% more than Normal).

Stage 6.2 (110) does happen to give more Etherium than stage 3 (88) but I don't know it that works out to be more efficient.

[Zaarock]

Heads up you can unlock r-typer 2 & 3 difficulties by clearing a Stage 7 via stage select on the previous difficulty (stage 7.2 is pretty easy). R-Typer 3 shows up as 'LV7' on the multiplier display on the top right that pops up on checkpoints, so it seems like a gradual difficulty increase just with a weird naming.

I think if they keep adding some new quality stages over time this game has some potential. Like how the space stage with image fight enemies and simulation stage were some gameplay highlights in Final 1. The game is missing 40+ of the intended 100 ships so hopefully they don't just patch those in without stages to go with it.. as it is this is OK but there are a lot of recentish hori releases like Dariusburst, Natsuki Chronicles, Infinos, Vritra, etc. some which arguably have straight up more solid game&level design overall. Without the ship unlock gimmick this would be in a awkward place.

Some of the stages are cool but the direction seems a bit all over the place. You can actually view per-stage developer credits in stage select, pretty interesting. Maybe explains why stage 3 is out of place. 6.2 (and 7.2?) were designed by the main level director, which kinda shows as they're reminiscent of older games.
That and the custom course edit mode make it look like they intend to release quite a few stages. Maybe add more branches to the main campaign? The implementation of difficulty modes seems good as a positive, stages gradually gain little additions from kids to r-typer 3.

Is it just me or Stage 2 boss on r-typer+ is like the hardest thing in the game?

So does anybody that have the DLC know if those levels can be used alongside the base game stages in the Route Creator? I've been dying to know.

Don't have them myself but saw Icarus streaming and adding them to a custom course. That's a great feature as those seem like some of the better stages.

Etherium.

In Tactics you can only really mine etherium once you get into warp space. Has anyone tried farming the purple stage?

Resource rewards are fixed per stage (but increase by difficulty - Bydo gives 10% more than Normal).

Stage 6.2 (110) does happen to give more Etherium than stage 3 (88) but I don't know it that works out to be more efficient.

Higher difficulties appear to give more resources. 6.2 gives 160 Etherium on r-typer 3 which looks efficient to me. iirc 6.1 gives a lot of etherium too but that stage is a pain, might be a little shorter but not worth cranking the difficulty up.

[Wilsoncqb1911]

Wait, there's a stage select? How do you access that?

[ZaKa-tokyobassist]

Thanks Zaarock! That's an amazing feature honestly. One thing I really liked about Delta was the passive storytelling and it made the game feel like a journey. Being able to recreate something to that effect sounds awesome.

Off topic but I love your Rival Megagun matches. I'd love to throw down on that with ya sometime.

[ZaKa-tokyobassist]

Wait, there's a stage select? How do you access that?

It's under Score Attack and it adds levels to them as you complete it. You pick the top most option then go to Course Editing. Despite having 4 slots, it resets every time I close the game out. Not a big deal but I found that odd. If they can afford leaderboards and Course Sharing, that would really add a lot of long term value to this game. It's a missed opportunity I feel.

[MJR]

So does anybody that have the DLC know if those levels can be used alongside the base game stages in the Route Creator? I've been dying to know.

I have the DLC, when you start the game you can either select main campaign or the DLC. But what the heck is the route creator??

[MJR]

Those who hated the ending music: did you know that you can select the ending song via options; between english scat/instrumental version and japanese version?

[To Far Away Times]

Can we talk about that checkpoint in stage three? So brutal.

[TrevorMcFurr]

Is there any significance to the colours of the Stage 2 bosses? They seem to alternate between red and white/blue. It reminds me of the stage 2 boss from R-Type Final, where destroying either the red or blue nubbin would make subsequent replays of that stage hotter or colder.

[Icarus]

Is it just me or Stage 2 boss on r-typer+ is like the hardest thing in the game?

Nah. :v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hTu-EUti8

[qmish]

From what I have played, the boss that shows up in the homage stages are the "same" bosses but as I mentioned the gameplay in R-Type Final 2 makes them very different to handle and deal with. You aren't going to be playing with the overpowered ship mechanics from some of the older games and in R-Type Final 2 some patterns were adjusted so that you do have some leeway with being defensive having a force unit and all where in some previous games you did not. You can chalk this up to how even Dobkeratops or a variant appears in just about every R-Type game and is different every single time so I wouldn't consider it a spoiler in that sense. This game doesn't replace any of the older games so you should be safe with "spoilers."

Thanks. Anyway, i now purchased and started playing

[Zaarock]

Is it just me or Stage 2 boss on r-typer+ is like the hardest thing in the game?

Nah. :v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hTu-EUti8

First time I cleared it I was using Eclipse/Albatross with no power from checkpoint, took over an hour of restarts.. Blue / yellow on tentacle force are abysmal for hitting behind, only way to do it was constant repositioning of the seeking force to clear a path ahead of you.
I think they had one movement pattern where there's a forced death if you get trapped between a stationary one on the bottom and dont have a force behind to block random shots

[Icarus]

Is it just me or Stage 2 boss on r-typer+ is like the hardest thing in the game?

Nah. :v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hTu-EUti8

First time I cleared it I was using Eclipse/Albatross with no power from checkpoint, took over an hour of restarts.. Blue / yellow on tentacle force are abysmal for hitting behind, only way to do it was constant repositioning of the seeking force to clear a path ahead of you.
I think they had one movement pattern where there's a forced death if you get trapped between a stationary one on the bottom and dont have a force behind to block random shots

The biggest challenge in the stage2 boss fight is freedom of movement, because the boss is always trying to herd you into the path of the tentacles its trying to spawn everywhere through its own movements, and by creating roadblocks everywhere. This is considerably more problematic on higher difficulties as the drones move much faster, and if you're just reacting to the movement patterns.

The fact that there's just enough space to slide under/above the drones actually trivialises the fight a great deal, as you're no longer constrained by the drones' movements and can move wherever you want, and it's just a case of predicting the movements and ensuring you don't fly into a pod or tentacle after that. It's worth practicing, especially if you're going for R-Typer+ attempts. It also gives you an option to time-out safely if you accidentally pick up a yellow powerup for the fight.

Also note, there's also a perfect safespot for the 6.2 boss, but it only works with Force Devices with a continuously-firing laser.

[Mischief Maker]

I thought I had a bug because of how the stage 2 boss' glowing side texture looked, like Unreal Engine was unnecessarily downgrading textures.

But I checked the trailer and sure enough, that was intentional.

That seems to be the story of this game's graphics: "wait, you wanted it to look that way?"